Women's Hospital of Texas is just about 5 minutes from our house, but the drive took forever -- and I was completely impatient with everyone else on the road. When we finally got to the hospital, I pulled up to the valet area, unloaded and we made our way up to the 3rd floor, Labor and Delivery area. As promised, they were booked solid and even though they were expecting us, they had to search a minute to get all our information. "Are you alright to sit in the waiting area?" Sure.

So we went down the hall and waited in a room of 6 or so 50 + year-old men and women, all apparently waiting on the birth of their granddaughter. "Are you here to be induced today?" one lady asked. "Yep" -- might as well lie. I'm sure "Well, we're in pretty serious labor now, water busted all over the floor and everything, but there's no room for us, so we're waiting here with you," isn't what they were expecting to hear.

Well, we had screwed around enough that by the time we got to the hospital, Mom and Row were already almost there. I knew this, because as I was sitting in the waiting room, I figured I'd kill some time by loading the camera with the film we picked up at the store on the way over. Right, film -- that's what I forgot. I got 12 bags of Cheeze-Nips, magazines, 2 diet Cokes, a Snickers bar, extra batteries for the digital camera and some Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, but no film. Well, when I called Mom to get her to pick some up on the way over, she was turning into the parking lot. So she sent Row to get some, and then they met us in the waiting area.

About 2 pm or so, Laurie, our first shift nurse, came and told us our room was ready. LD8 -- that's where we would spend the next 11 hours and where Jackson would be born. We gathered all our things up, moved down the hall, and started getting settled into what ended up being quite a large room. The room was set up with a monitor for both Katie and Jackson, a TV, a bathtub (with sauna jets), separate bathroom, rocking chair, recliner, nightstand, baby warmer and tray table.

I got the radio all set up while Laurie strapped Katie in to all the machines, and Mom began settling in for the afternoon.

It turned out that my sister Myra was flying into Hobby Airport on a 2 hour lay-over from a business trip to Chicago on her way back to Austin and had left instructions for someone to let her know if anything was happening that day. What a coincidence!

So Row took off to go pick her up from the airport and bring her to the hospital for all the big events.