Andrew's Birth Story

The birth of my second child was so fast I almost missed it! My first child was eight days late, so with my second pregnancy, when I woke up the morning of my due date all wet I was in denial.

I awoke at 3:30 a.m. to use the bathroom and noticed some wetness in my underwear. After nine months of almost not making it to the toilet on time, I figured it was just urine. Just in case, I put on a pad and headed to the computer to play Spider Solitaire. It wasn't too long before I was soaked again and I was convinced my water had broken. During my first labor, my water broke as I was pushing, so I wasn't expecting this to happen. I woke up my husband, called the midwife, and called my mother-in-law to come watch our son. I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom so I tried desperately because I didn’t want to poop on the delivery table. I finally gave up and took a shower.

When my mother-in-law arrived, I took my time telling her what to do if my son woke up, what to feed him for breakfast, etc. Finally she said, "I think you should go.” We checked into the hospital at 5:30 a.m. and I was having sporadic contractions with no pain. I walked up to our room, got changed, and was told that I was six to seven centimeters so we called my mom and two sisters to tell them they should head over soon. I got settled and my husband and I discussed boy names between contractions as we already had a girl name. Soon, talking was no longer an option. My mom arrived, then my younger sister. Things were so intense and all of a sudden my husband says accusingly, "Did you just push?" All I could muster out was, "I don't know" even though I perfectly well did know. My mom rushed to get the midwife as I'm saying "Michelle's not here, she's going to miss it!" It was too late. The midwife had barely enough time to get her gloves on, and out came our baby boy. My sister arrived two minutes later.

In the span of one hour I went from no pain to miraculously pushing out our eight-pound, 12-ounce baby boy, Andrew Jonathan. My family says next time I should go directly to the hospital when I see the blue line!