Yes, Saint Nick,,,

The Sprout has finally arrived! :) And, if we do say so ourselves (and we do...) he is one of the cutest sprouts we ever did see! So, without further a-do, we are happy to announce to you the birth of our precious little boy:

Nicholas Makana Rocco was born on Saturday, May 26, 2007, at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California, at 5:01 p.m. He weighed in at a perfectly pleasant 6 pounds, 12 ounces and was 20.5 inches long - wow! He was named if you haven't already guessed after one of my favorite saints - good ol' St. Nicholas (which is appropriate because he's not only the patron saint of children but of scholars, but also because we found out he was a he on December 20!). His middle name was chosen by Mark (known to our little guy as Daddy of course!) and means "gift" in Hawaiian. We truly do feel blessed with this gift that the Lord has bestowed upon us so we really liked this name. It also holds special meaning for us because on our honeymoon, MeLissa swam with a dolphin named Makana.

And now, for those of you who are interested, the rest of the story:

As seems to be the case, Mark and I never do things low key and so you can probably classify our son's birth experience as an adventure! It all began on Friday evening. I went to the clinic for a last minute adjustment and then we went to dinner at Mimi's Cafe. After our yummy meal, it was a surety that we'd be late, but we figured we'd have to wait anyway so no big deal. As things turned out, we should have just waited until morning...

We got to the hospital and after finding a solution to the problem of too many bags and not enough coordination and talent to get all of those and the two of us to labor and delivery, we finally made it to check in. They showed us to our birthing suite and we began the process of getting me ready for the "marathon" that lay ahead. Once I was all dressed up with no place to go but a birthing bed (ha ha!), I crawled in and was hooked up to monitors that checked whether I was contracting and how the baby was reacting to it based upon his heartbeat. I was supposed to be in monitoring only state for about an hour...3 hours later after being in many uncomfortable positions and despite not getting a picture perfect grade on how we were doing (the sprout's heartbeat was being difficult to track often cuz being the little wiggle worm that he is he couldn't stay put), the doctor finally told the nurse to put in the Cervadil and get going. So, she did...

But, it came out before too long (by the way, I'm typing this one-handed with lots of drugs in my system so keep this in mind if there are lots of weird things) because the sprout (aka Nicholas), was again looking a little less than perfectly happy with the process. They decided to wait until morning and give me pitocin (yea! ha ha)..hence why I say we should have stayed home until morning. What I failed to mention is that the rest of the night was spent "enjoying" the periodic influx of numerous nurses when the baby's heart rate went off the monitors. So, I can't really tell you I had a pleasant night's sleep...

Morning finally came and a whole 'nother bit of exciting happenings...unfortunately, dinner is about ready and so you'll just have to tune in to the next installment to find out what transpired during the rest of the adventure...sorry for the additional suspense!