The Pieroni Man Child is Introduced to his Competition

So I know this blog is supposed to be about Sam, but I am entirely too beat after today to start a new blog for Katie, so Sam has graciously agreed to share his web space with his new little sister, Katherine Rose Pieroni. Most of the folk reading this probably got some amount of low-down via text messages from the Labor & Delivery room and/or Facebook posts, but not much detail has been shared, so I'll take the opportunity until I pass out at the keyboard to fill you all in. I (Jake) am home now with Sam. Marne and Katie are at Torrance Memorial still. A fun-filled day of man-outings (including Mommy & Me at 9am) is in store for me and Sam tomorrow. Then we'll go visit mom and Katie later in the day.
Katie, who's gender was not known until she emerged, was due 8 days ago. Marne and Sam were quite ill all last week though, so Marne willed Katie to stay inside until they got better. As soon as they were on the mend, I got sick. I was deathly ill Sunday and Monday, but by Tuesday, felt a lot better, so Marne and I told Katie that her eviction notice was being formally served, and formal proceedings would commence post-haste. We figured it would go about like Sam's birth, whereby Marne should start feeling mild contractions sometime in the middle of the night, then we'd be ready to roll on Wednesday morning. Well, Wednesday morning came, and Marne was still sound asleep as I got ready for work, and no sign of cooperation from the squatter. So as I was leaving for work this morning, Marne advised that she thought maybe she was feeling something, but it was probably all in her head. By 7:45am, Marne called me at work, and said that she likely was actually having contractions. So I said I'd call her in 15 minutes to see how she was feeling, to see if it was real. When I called back, it appeared it was real. Marne was moaning through a contraction, and Sam was yelling at her in the background to serve him his breakfast. I wrapped up matters at the office, and headed home about a half hour after that. By the time I got home, Marne was definitely in some stage of labor. But they tell you that you have to be having 1-minute contractions that are 5 minutes apart, for an hour, before the hospital will admit you. Marne's contractions were more like 20-30 seconds long. It had been over an hour, and they were more like 2-3 minutes apart, but still...they weren't a minute long. The last thing we wanted to do was to get to the hospital to be turned back. So we waited till 9:00 and called her doctor's office. I explained the situation with the 2-minute periodicity, and they highly recommended we get ourselves to the hospital.
So Rose showed up to watch Sam, and off we went. Good thing. Turned out she was already 8 cm (out of 10, for those who haven't gone through this yet), and it was pretty much time to get everything rolling. Just made the cutoff for an epidural, much to Marne's pleasure, as she had NO intention of this being a "natural" child birth. Meds all the way for us...no shame. Once that kicked in, Marne was all smiles again.
Things went pretty quick from there. We had to wait for our doctor to finish her lunch, and we also had to wait for a neonatologist to be located. The reason for the neo was that when the water broke, some let's say "unsavory material" was found to be contaminating the amniotic fluid. I'll spare the deets for those who don't care to know, but all the ladies having giving birth before probably know what that is. Anyhoo, it can be dangerous for the baby if she accidentally ingests that stuff, so a neo has to be in the room to examine. Once they got there, about two pushes was all it took to get Katie out. We were very excited to see it was a girl. We were also ironically glad to see that the cord was wrapped around her neck, because that prevented her from ingesting the fluid. She got a clean bill of health from the neonatologist, and everything was just great from then on. She was born at 1:21pm. She is 19 inches long, and weighs 7 lbs 12 oz...exactly the same her her brother Sam.
She's very sweet. She got to meet her Aunt Paige, Uncle Aaron and lady friend Brooke, and all four grand-people. She's still learning to nurse, but she'll get there.
We thank everyone for all the texts and calls and FB posts, showing your support. Pics will become available shortly, as I forgot to bring the camera home tonight.
Talk to you soon -- Jake, Marne, Sam, and Katie.