Our hospital room at CMC University.  Jen's contractions started at 6am.


Excited parents waiting for their baby girl's arrival. 


Jen starting to push and feeling the thunder from down under.


The first photo of Claire Nicole Frank.  5 lbs 4 oz & 18 1/4 inches.



All dressed up and nowhere to go.


Pushing for 2 hours was well worth it for Jen and Claire.


I'm so pumped to finally meet my little girl.

CLAIRE NICOLE FRANK
Born 2/15/2010 @ 8:08pm
5 lbs 4 oz & 18 1/4 inches

Jen and I decided to start trying to have a baby back in November of 2008.  After a few months Jen told me she was pregnant but at 11 weeks she miscarried.  During that process we found out that she had an ovarian cyst the size of a tennis ball so she had surgery to have that removed.  We started trying again a few months later and in July of 2009 she was pregnant again.  She bled during her first 16 weeks of pregnancy so we were hesitant to get too excited knowing that it was possible to miscarry again.  At 20 weeks we found out the baby was going to be a girl and started getting everything ready and became more excited.  All throughout her pregnancy Jen kept on saying that she thought the baby was going to come early.  We were thinking maybe 2-3 weeks early.

At 6am Jen started to feel some cramps but still trained her clients at 6:30am and 7:30am.  After that she came into the bedroom and said that she thinks "today is the day".  We were both a bit surprised since she was only at 35 weeks so I was a bit skeptical.  We started timing her contractions and they were coming 7-8 mins apart.  Jen called the doctor's office and after talking with them she threw up after one of the contractions so was a bit frightened and we called again.  They told her to come in and when we got there she was 5cm dilated.  We headed over to the maternity ward at around 11:45am and got checked into our room.  Her contractions were now around 5 mins apart and she was very uncomfortable and looking to get some epidural. 

The epidural came at around 2pm and Jen started to feel much better.  By 6pm she was ready to start pushing and continued to do so for 2 hrs.  It didn't look like much fun from where I was standing and I was thankful that the women deliver the babies.  During the pushing process I was helping Jen to pull her legs back and curl her head forward.  Every once in a while I'd take a look down to see the baby's head coming out little by little.  After a while the doctor decided to make an incision to speed the process because he said Jen would most likely tear anyway.  And moments later our baby Claire let out her first cry followed by me cutting the umbilical cord.  After the nurses cleaned her up they took her to the NICU for about an hour for testing and then we were able to have her in our room with us for the rest of our stay.  We were so excited that we stayed up most of the night just looking at her while she was sleeping.  What an experience!!