Caleb's Birth - Part 1

On the morning of September 8th during church, I started to feel very mild cramping.  I thought it could be contractions, but I didn't think very much of it since they were so mild an sporadic.  I also suddenly started getting very anxious about whether Caleb was breech or not because they day before we had gone swimming and he was shifting around a lot.  The top of my stomach seemed harder and it reminded me of when I was pregnant with Haven.  

When the service ended, I went over to a lady who is in her 70's and is a midwife who had delivered thousands of babies.  I asked her if she would check my belly to make sure Caleb was head down.  She graciously agreed and after church cleared out some, she had me lay down and felt my belly and assured me he was head down.  While she was feeling my belly, she said "oh, you are having a contraction right now".  I felt so much more peace after that and it made me so thankful for all the different gifts of the members of the body of Christ.

I told Brad on the way home and we just took it easy the rest of the day in case Caleb was going to decide to come.  By the evening, I was still having contractions, but they were still pretty mild and inconsistent.  We ate dinner at one of our favorite Bar-b-q restaurants.  When we were done, we took some pictures because I was thinking it could possibly be our last night as a family of four.

And the last night with just my two girls.

Afterwards, we decided to walk along the Trinity River to see if I could get the contractions going.  They didn't really pick up, but it was a beautiful night and we had such a good time as a family.  It was sweet of the Lord to let us have this time together.

We went to bed around 10 that night and as I was falling asleep, I put earphones in and listened to my birth playlist.  I woke up around midnight and the song Holy Spirit was playing.  Right then, I felt like a jolt or a kick and some fluid came out, which I assume was my water breaking.  I started tracking my contractions on my handy dandy app.  They were definitely getting longer and more frequent, but not enough to go to the hospital. 

I got up to take a shower thinking if this is it, I want to be clean!  I also wanted to stand to see if things would pick up.  Sure enough they did, so I called my mom at just before 2 a.m. to come over (thankfully she answered the phone!).  I woke up Brad and told him it was time to go and he jumped because he had to force me to go in the last two times.  At 2:30 a.m. we arrived at the hospital...