It Begins

So much for catching up on things before the baby gets here. :)  I can hardly believe it, but I'm in labor.  I kept passing it off as prelabor or Braxton Hicks or something, but it's continued for about four hours now, so I guess I just have to accept it!  I can hardly believe that by this time tomorrow our little boy will be with us.

Last Thursday (the 23rd) we had a midwife appointment.  She checked to see if I had dilated or effaced, and there wasn't any progress.  So we traveled to Delta the next day to celebrate Christmas with my family.  Terral was quite nervous about that at first, but then we both felt good about it.  We ended up staying until Tuesday.  On the way home I was quite uncomfortable and I knew something was in the works.  Up to that point I hadn't experienced any Braxton Hicks or anything.  Even though I could tell the process had started, I was still expecting it to be at least a week before I really went into labor.

This morning (or rather, yesterday morning) I woke up quite a bit because of an uncomfortable crampy feeling.  At one point, I thought, "I should look at the clock in case this turns out to be something."  When I did finally look at the clock it was around 10:00 am.  We somehow slept in quite late because we hadn't slept all that well at my parents' and it was very overcast this morning so we didn't have sunlight to wake us.  I guess it's a good thing we did, though.  It's probably the last long sleep we'll have in a long time!

I had mild contractions the rest of the day, but they were really sporadic and I didn't keep track.  Finally sometime after 11:00 pm I decided they were coming close enough I should probably start tracking them.  We called Janae (our midwife) at about midnight.  The last set had been about 8 minutes apart and we thought we should give her a heads up just in case.

I told Terral I really wanted the bathroom clean before we went to bed, so he suggested that I read the Book of Mormon out loud while he cleaned.  (We were on 3rd Nephi chapter 18)  We finished cleaning together, and then Terral gave me a wonderful blessing.  Finally we went to bed to try to get some sleep while we could.  I almost drifted off a few times, but eventually I decided the contractions were intense enough and close enough there really was no way I was going to sleep.  Especially not when I kept thinking of things we needed to do before Janae got here.  So we got up, and now Terral is out  shoveling snow while I write this post. :)  Of course our baby's birth coincides with a winter storm when we've been having such mild weather.  I think the majority of the snow has passed though, so traveling should be manageable for Janae.

I can't explain the emotions I have right now.  I've done as much preparing as I could in these months leading up to the birth, but now I feel so unprepared.  Well, I guess that feeling has mostly subsided since the blessing Terral gave me.  We've got all the essentials.  The projects I wanted to do will just have to wait.  I've got something more important to concentrate on now. :)