birth story: Judah James -- part one

Part ONE of Judah's birth story - with all the details (beware!)
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It's been an eventful week!  Our precious fourth child, and third son, was born on Monday morning.

This fourth labour was the longest, but also the most fulfilling.

I started having contractions really sporadically on Saturday afternoon, Sept 27th.  They weren't long, and whenever I rested they stopped, but as the day progressed they became a little more intense and I became suspicious that labour was imminent.  We had arranged for our friends Steve & Barb to come stay with the kids while Stewart and I went to the city to give birth.  I gave them a call that evening to warn them that I thought I might need them to come sometime in the night.

Sure enough, at 2am Sunday morning (my due date), I awoke to contractions every 10 minutes.  After almost an hour, I woke up Stewart and called the midwife.  She suggested we get ready and come, knowing that labour could slow or stall with the drive, but would likely pick up again once we were settled in the city.  There was a little adventure as we sorted out vehicles.  Barb was coming to stay with the kids and we were going to trade vehicles, so she could have our van and we would take her SUV.  Of course, at 3am when she was leaving their house, their SUV wouldn't start.  Not a big deal, because we could take their truck instead, but it only had 1/4 tank of gas, and we would need at least 1/2 tank to make it to the city.  And the gas station was closed until morning.

After much debate and brainstorming, we realized that the cardlock gas station just outside of town would be open, but neither us nor Steve and Barb were cardlock members.  Then came the realization that my uncle could access the cardlock, and would be happy to come meet us, even in the middle of the night.  So it was around 4:30am that Barb met us at the house, and we then met my uncle at the cardlock gas station on our way out of town, and finally hit the road.  Thankfully, the midwife was right, and contractions had slowed as we got ready to come.  Managing contractions in the truck on the highway was not an enjoyable experience, but thankfully they had slowed enough that they were generally few and far between.

We arrived at my Aunt and Uncle's house in the city around 6:30am, and since contractions were really far apart, we went straight to bed.  After an hour and half of no contractions, we woke up.  The midwife (Sarah) came around 11am and swept my membranes to see if that would help labour pick up again.

It sure did!  Contractions started coming every four minutes, lasting a minute long.  I knew I was only at 2cm, so we went down for a walk by the river and laboured there.  It was a beautiful fall day!

To be continued...