The Birth (from Terral's perspective)

I thought it would be fun to write the birth story from both my perspective and Mary's. It all started on Wednesday the 29th. Mary was tossing and turning in bed that morning. We had slept in although we were both planning on getting up. Right now I know it was divine intervention that led to our sleeping in since we haven't had much sleep since. She was uncomfortable and was apparently having very small contractions. She didn't tell me about it until later that day when she had a few random contractions. We both passed them off as Braxton Hicks contractions and didn't think they were actually leading to anything. That night I was working late on a project and Mary came in and said she had what they call a bloody show. The description isn't pleasant but it basically means that real labor is right around the corner. She also told me that she had been having regular contractions for a little while. They were about 8 minutes apart.

At this point we didn't really know what to do but since it was kind of late I thought that we should go to bed while Mary would be able to get some sleep before she couldn't. She, of course, began to worry about all the things we would need to get ready for the birth since we were planning on having him at home. She wanted to clean the bathroom, at least since she would be laboring in the bath tub. I protested a little bit because I though that rest was more important for her than a clean bathroom but she said she probably wouldn't sleep if she was worried about it. I knew from experience that this is true.

After we cleaned the bathroom the contractions had continued to strengthen and were more regular at about 7 minutes apart. We decided to call our midwife who lives in St. George so that she would have a heads up. She told us to call when the contractions were 4-5 minutes apart and about 40 seconds long. We went to bed at sometime after 12:30 a.m. but between the excitement and the contractions getting stronger it was impossible to sleep. We finally just got up to prepare. It wasn't long that Mary couldn't do much because the contractions were getting strong enough that they took most of her concentration. I was supposed to be coaching her though them but there were so many things that we needed to do and she seemed to be doing perfectly on her own so I went out and shoveled snow so the midwife would have a place to park. I also began getting out all the baby stuff and preparing towels, etc. Right when I got done with the snow Mary had called the midwife because the contractions were getting less far apart and longer. The midwife thought that if she left right then, she would have to wait here for a long time (which is not that unusual). She said just to call back when the contractions were more intense.

Mary had labored in and out of the bath tub, but decided that the tub was better so at this point we were pretty much in the bathroom the whole time. She was working pretty hard with the contractions and I could tell that they were intense. She looked at me and said, very sternly, "call Janae!" I called her and she began getting ready. From there the labor was getting pretty serious pretty fast. I thought that there would still be several more hours so I wasn't too worried about the midwife getting here on time. I was, however, worried about the snowy roads since the weather was so bad. Mary had begun making a little bit of noise though the contractions and she would squeeze my hand but she handled it very well. What I didn't know at the time was that the urge to push had begun. Soon after that she was pushing and I thought it was just some hard contractions.

We had read all about the different stages of labor and the last stage usually accompanies self-doubt. They all said that the mother would say something like, "I don't think I can do it!" Mary never said anything like this. The only thing she said was, "where's Janae!?". This was part of the reason I didn't think that labor had progressed as far as it really had. Our midwife finally came and checked Mary. She told us that she was dilated to a 10 and that he was well on his way. Only a few minutes later he was crowning. Janae asked us if we wanted to drain the tub and have the baby in the other room where we had everything laid out and ready to go but by that time it was too late to move. Little Fox was almost with us. Janae asked Mary to straighten out a little bit and either lean back or squat. As soon as Mary got on her knees to straighten out he started coming. Mary made some smaller pushes and then one big push and he was out. Our midwife was there to guide us but we pretty much delivered the baby by ourselves. Mary reached down to get him but he came out so fast that he sort of slipped through her hands and into the water. We were not planning on doing a water birth but that's just the way it happened. I picked him up and handed him to Mary. I can't exactly explain how it felt but we were both very happy. After that I got the shakes so bad that when I put weight on my toes I bounced up and down like Tigger!

We are very grateful and we feel very blessed to have him with us!