The birth of Saralynn. An Aunt's perspective.

The time was 2:33. Mike had just, yes just, crawled into bed beside me. He's crazy like that.

Fast forward 2 minutes.

2:35.

The phone rings.

My first instinct is to panic. Phones don't ring at 2:35am. They don't unless there is an emergency.

Mike jumps out of bed and rungs to find the phone. Doug is on the line and he says, "It's baby time."

You see, I had volunteered to be the one that they call in the middle of the night if the baby decided to arrive. The baby had.

I grabbed my clothese (already laying out on the spare bed - I'm crazy like that) and my lunch (already made in the fridge - I'm crazy like that too) and I'm out the door in about 10 minutes.

I raced to Doug and Melissa's house - only about 5 minutes away - preparing my story in my head in case a cop decides to pull me over. I'm aloud to speed in this scenario right?

I got to Doug and Melissa's at about 2:45. Melissa was feeling pretty good and we even sat and talked for 15 minutes.

At about 3 Doug asks if I wanted to go back to bed. I headed upstairs, because after all, I had 12 kids to watch the next day. 12 crazy kids. I didn't really sleep well. Actually that's an understatement. After crawling into the bed in Jesse's room we talked for a while because he was wide awake and he thought it pretty cool that I was sleeping in his bedroom. I heard them downstairs till they left at 3:30. I heard Alisa at 5:00 crying for Mom. I went in there, she takes one look at me and smiles, "Hi". I heard the phone ring at 5:30 with the news of a new niece, Saralynn Grace. My first thought was how much I loved the name and had thought of it first to claim it for us someday. I heard the alarm at 6:00 and again at 6:30.

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep.

But I did get a new niece at that made it all worth it.