Isabelle's Birth: Part I

So here's the first installment in Isabelle's birth story. It doesn't sound as exciting when you write it down. How can you translate into words all that we felt? It's impossible.

My doctor had told me three weeks before my due date that I would most likely be “early”. Those three weeks were long. The last Sunday before Isabelle was born (Nov 20), I sang and played a solo during a baptism, which I was really glad not to miss. After that, I was ready for the baby to come anytime. Thursday was Thanksgiving Day. We went to church in the morning and then had a dinner with friends around 4pm. That night I felt crampy, but no specific contractions. The next day (Friday the 25th), I felt sort of like I had the flu or a bad period. I basically laid in bed all day and watched movies and slept. I watched “Robots”, which ironically opens with a birth! That night my mom encouraged us to go for a walk so we walked to Breton Village around 6pm in the snow. We had friends over that evening for pie and we ended up re-watching “Robots”. During the movie I started having contractions, but they weren’t too regular, and I didn’t say anything in case it wasn’t the real thing. After dessert we stayed up awhile talking and it was then that the contractions started getting more painful. By the time our company left at 11pm, I was convinced that things were moving along. Ben had discussed going for a run the next morning with one of our guests, and I said “Oh, I don’t think you’ll be going.”

We bedded down for the night at 11:30pm with pen, notebook and stopwatch on the night stand. I ended up waking up Ben for most of the contractions, which were 7-10 minutes apart all night long. He would startle awake and write down the time, but he was usually asleep before the contraction was over!! Finally at about 5:30am I threw up, and then said, “It’s time to go.” So we called our parents just prior to 6am and started to get ready to go. Ben washed the dishes and packed the car and we left around 6:30am. Even though it was only a 2 minute drive to the hospital, I remember dreading getting into the Civic. Ben and I brought WAY TOO much stuff to the hospital.

Stay tuned.