As usual, some amazing force in the universe has been looking out for us. On April 30th, Providence found mommy in a place where there actually was an extra substitute teacher in the building. She took him up on his presence in order to get some bloodwork done as it was clear that her body was starting to dislike being pregnant.
After a long day that included a swim meet as well as a two hour stint at the local Labcorp, mommy decided it would be a good idea to go over to the hospital. Something just didn't feel right. Three hours (and even more bloodwork...) later she met Dr. Jack and it was clear that for better or worse, our new arrival was going to arrive even earlier than planned (Had Mommy known that her regular OB was to arrive early in the morning, she would have refused to sign the paperwork, but somehow no one would tell her who the next OB was and there was rather a lot going on).
Dr. Jack originally (at 10:10 pm) said that he wanted to take the baby as soon as possible. However, as Mommy explained to him that Daddy was at least 45 minutes away, he agreed to wait. It gave him a little bit of time to practice his big line, "It's a ......". He was rather excited that he would get to make such an announcement as apparently it doesn't happen much in his line of work anymore. Labor & Delivery was a little busy that evening and so we didn't get in to take care of business until 12:12 am. However, we were rather excited when...
Dr. Jack got to tell us: "It's a girl". She reminds Mommy a lot of a t-shirt given to mommy as a birthday present once. It said "Small but Mighty". Her name is Bronwynn ("fair-skinned raven" Mairead ("pearl" and either Mary or Margaret-both of our Moms in Gaelic).
She weighed in at a whopping 4 pounds, 1 ounce and she was 16.5 inches long. The nurses in the delivery room were joking about sending her home with Daddy that night as it was clear that Mommy was going to need some time to get her body back to normal. Daddy got to bring her over to Mommy and it was clear watching him walk around the room that he was already wrapped around his finger pretty tightly.
She went directly to the Newborn nursery and Mommy went to recovery. Several hours later she came to Mommy's room. She spent as much time with Mommy as possible until Mommy's special "anti-seizure" medication came to Mommy...this stuff makes Mommy a little less than lucid and so then it was best for her to head back to the newborn nursery....To be Continued.
In the meantime we spent lots of time memorizing everything that Brownie did so that we could tell the boys all about it. At this time it was very challenging for them to understand why they couldn't come in and see her. Lucky for us, we had visits from Mamina, Grandpa Bill and Papa Nick to help distract the boys. 
We had many visitors to the NICU, too. Nana Pat came and so did Papa Bob & Nana Shelby. Needless to say, we were kept busy. 
And slowly but surely Brownie started to get strong enough that we began to think we'd actually get out of there. 
The boys were great at helping Mommy pass the time in between trips to the NICU. They gave me a room close to the newly remodeled newborn nursery (3rd floor) because they didn't want me walking very far only to have Brownie moved to the NICU (2nd floor). I stole a wheelchair and kept it hidden behind a curtain in my room so I could wheel myself down when there was time. But most of the time I walked just because it got me out of bed. 
