It had been a long and difficult pregnancy already, a perfect complement for our first winter up in the Mendocino woods, but with the advent of warm, dry weather things had been looking up. Kathy was strong and healthy, and we had a plan to manage Sweet Pea's (Arete's in utero nickname) birth. With a due date of July 20th, we would head down on the eleventh to our San Francisco pad located just two blocks from the hospital and begin the birth watch. Well, the old saying about "best laid plans" is indeed true. Kathy's water broke quite early in the morning of the eighth -- a whole week and a half early. With frequent if not quite regular contractions, we quickly folded up shop and loaded our gear and a very sleepy Sophia into our car for a record-setting run down to foggy San Francisco.

After handing off Sophia to our friends Pamela and Mark for some pre-arranged care, we landed into our birthing room at 7:30AM. Turns out Kathy was already dilated to six centimeters and events proceeded quickly. At 9:02AM, out popped Arete (pronounced Ah-reet-ah) Joy. At six and a quarter pounds, she appeared a healthy and quiet baby. Kathy delivered Arete as she did Sophia, without the benefit of drugs or other extreme medical aids.

Normally, we understand that mid-summer is not exactly prime time for births, but it was just our luck that our hospital was slammed with a flood of newborns. To make matters worse, many of them were premature or other high risk deliveries, so our normal situation was hardly the priority for the Kaiser staff, and the first night in the recovery ward was hectic and sleepless.

Come morning it was Arete's turn for the usual set of neonatal tests and the nurse who conducted the hearing tests said Arete looked a bit yellow -- a symptom of jaundice. After a quick blood test, the prognosis was ABO incompatibility jaundice, and though Arete's bilirubin levels weren't dangerous, they were troubling for one so young. Since the neo-natal recovery room was crammed full of very high risk babies, we were offered a room up on the pediatric ward so that Arete could receive ultraviolet light treatment to break the bilirubin down.

Sophia was jazzed as the pediatric ward had one of the coolest play rooms we've ever seen, and a video cart the size of a small house. That and the simply wonderful and supportive staff made it easy for Mom and Dad to maintain a twenty four hour vigil at little Arete's side.

Though Arete was unplanned, we're happy to have her in our lives. Kathy and Jim had tried to have another child shortly after Sophia was born with no success. That was alright, as Sophia is soon to start attending school and we were eager to pick up our adult lives again. We didn't think we could get pregnant any more, but it wasn't three weeks after living full-time in Mendocino that we conceived Arete -- guess it's something about the clean air and outdoor's peace and calm.

If you're curious about where we got Arete's name, check out either this article on what the ancient Greek word Arete means. Just as we chose Sophia's middle name "Rose" after her Grandma Gagnon's middle name, we chose Arete's middle name "Joy" after her Grandma Krieger.