The Kennedy Express

Twenty-six minutes.

That's how long it takes to get a hot dog at a chip truck, or to exchange a sweater at Winner's.

And that's how long it took my newest granddaughter to pop into this world, after giving her mother nothing but trouble for the last four months.

One minute Marissa's cervix was a centimetre and the next, Kennedy Rose was shooting out of her womb like a torpedo. No time, not even for the good drugs.

It was the Kennedy Express.

The docs called it a Precipitous Delivery, and it only happens in about 2 percent of deliveries.

For this "express delivery" to occur, there has to be a perfect storm of genetic and physical factors:

• an above-average "pelvic outlet"
• a well-aligned pelvis, pubic bone and birth canal
• an unusually small baby
• a well positioned baby
• a female relative who also experienced fast labors.

I had to think on the last one.

Then I recalled that my mother Vera gave birth to my brother Gary in a manner that had the placenta literally explode in the doctor's face. So Marissa can thank great grandma Vera for the baby eruption.

I'm just glad she was already in the hospital given the fact that Kennedy was born yesterday on perhaps the worst snow day of the decade. It took us an hour and a half to get to the hospital which is only about 20 minutes from our house.

I have visions of Jeff parking the SUV at the side of the road and catching Kennedy while Marissa was having her third contraction.

Anyway, I'm grateful and thrilled that our little granddaughter made it into this world to give her mother both joy and trouble for the next 50 years. Children are gifts that keep on giving, in good times and in bad.

In the long run, and for the most part, they are worth all the trouble.

Kennedy joins both her grandparents as children born in the Year of the Monkey.

Marissa and Jeff just have to look at us to see the trouble she'll be causing.

Welcome to the world, Little Monkey.

Go Bananas.