It was 3:12 a.m. In the five minutes since my brother called, telling us to come on back to the hospital - that his wife was about to deliver their baby girl - I had managed to pull myself together and was ready to head out the door.

My mother, however, was fishing through her jewelry box, searching for the perfect pair of earrings and simultaneously trying to apply a coat of mascara. That's when I, the picture of patience, started yelling.

"Mom! You're going to miss the birth of your granddaughter. Let's go!"

"Well, I'm not 27 years old like you," she said, forgetting for a moment that I'm 29. "I don't just look good at 3 in the morning!"

Maybe I should have listened to her. About a thousand pictures were taken after Brianna Marie Keister was born at 3:45 a.m. (and yes, we barely made it there.) They then were passed around, put in albums, circulated on the Internet and framed. I look like a zombie. And there's my mother - proud Grammie - with a glowing smile and popping eyes.

A day of chaos - with most of us on two hours sleep, anxious as anything - ended with a new grandmother and two new aunts unable to leave a new family's bedside in the middle of the night.

Then things began to change. I guess that's what happens when a new baby comes into your family.

I could not get over how happy and peaceful her mom, my sister-in-law, was in the delivery room. (And darn she looked good for having just given birth!) Three weeks later, there's a new calmness to her. Where anxiousness formerly crept up, there instead is ease and openness.

And thank goodness she's the sharing kind of mom. Brianna will never be able to say enough people didn't hug her in her childhood. There are pictures of every single family member holding that little one-day-old peanut. (Except my youngest brother, who looks a bit greenish every time we ask him.)

Then there's my brother. My little brother. He's a father.

He's a bit more nervous than his wife. He was the pacing father-to-be, the one who (almost) fainted in the delivery room. But he is absolutely enraptured with his daughter.

They've been over the house a lot. We've been going to their place more often. We have more family dinners.

It almost doesn't make sense to love someone you just met so much. But darn is it happy when that happens.

Next time someone is expecting, though, I'm packing a middle-of-the-night hospital bag -with the perfect earrings. REBECCA KEISTER can be reached at 508-236-0336 or at rkeister@thesunchronicle.com.