now comes the time of the prince

Wait, wait, wait…

That’s probably getting a little ahead of ourselves at the moment as I, the Jester, will still be responsible for the upkeep of this kingdom.  However, the prince has arrived.  We know from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series that all things serve the beam…  Well, in the matticus kingdom all things serve the prince even if he isn’t cognizant enough to realize or appreciate that.

So it goes.  And so it should be.

But, how did we get here?

The wife had her first round of “can’t sleep through them anymore” contractions around 3:30AM on March 24th.  They were sporadic in duration and time between them.  We did our best to sleep between each one, with me helping her sit up and massaging her lower back during each one.  We eventually got out of bed and went about our day as if everything was normal.  Morning turned into afternoon and the contractions moved to a more consistent 15 minutes apart and around a minute long each for an hour or so.  Then they tapered off again allowing the wife to catch a nap before late afternoon settled in.

As the sun went down the contractions came back stronger and more frequently and we called our doula to have her come over.  Shortly after the doula showed up, the wife’s contractions moved from around the 5 minutes between they had been to 2 minutes and I called the midwife to let her know that things were starting to progress and she might want to come sooner rather than later.  I may have said, “Come now!” but it’s all a bit fuzzy at this point.

After the midwife and her assistant showed up things got a bit hectic… There were a lot of people crammed into one section of our little condo, along with a lot of birthing accessories.  However, everyone and everything had a purpose and worked together towards the same outcome.  None worked harder the wife.

She labored on the birth ball.  She labored in the birthing pool.  She labored in the bed.  She labored in a squatting position.  She labored in our vanity area and at 2:14AM on March 25th she brought our son, our prince, into this world.  Ten fingers, ten toes, some hair that may or may not be reddish in color, two eyes that will probably be blue like his parents, and a whole lot of cute.  We’re talking internet crashing cuteness here.  There may be a dimple involved…

Thanks again to my guest posters for picking up the slack around the kingdom the last few days.  There are more lined up for next couple weeks too.  I’ll pop in from time to time as I can to say hello to my faithful readers and post updates… but, since I’ve been meaning to type this up for 3 days now and am giving up nap time to do it, I can’t say with any certainty how often I’ll be popping in for awhile.

I know, I know.  You’re thinking “But, you’re the jester, you’re supposed to be good at juggling things.”  No doubt.  But the best of us know that it takes practice to become good at anything.  So, thank you all, faithful readers, for your patience while I pick up this new skill.

And when I’ve got it down?  Oh, they’ll come from miles around to see the baby juggling jester…

“People will come, Ray.  People will most definitely come.” – Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) – Field of Dreams