Culmination part 1

You watch television and movies or read stories and imagine the event happening to you. How will it unfold: will you be eating at a restaurant when your water breaks, will you be at a sporting event and have to be taken by ambulance to the hospital because you parked too far away or will you experience contractions watching the latest blockbuster at the theater?

We were hoping to provoke the miracle by putting ourselves in those less than convenient situations because we desperately wanted to meet our little man. To be fair we were SEVEN days past our due date, we just figured that we could tempt fate and at the very least, we'd have a jaw dropping story to tell about the circumstances surrounding our labor.

Many of you already know the play by play, but seeing how that this is my journal of sorts I'll proceed like you don't so that years later I can look back and get a warm dose of nostalgia when reading this.

Monday morning was here, the start of the work week and I decided that even though Ash was not in labor or even showing any signs, that I would not go in to work. Being seven days over due, there was no end to the question from my co-workers "George, when you gonna have that baby? I couldn't take another day of it. Don't take me wrong, I am grateful to all that were concerned and showed genuine excitement for me but that question got to be the equivalent of hearing nails run down a chalk board that stretched a city block.

I knew that we had a doctor appointment early Tuesday morning, and more than likely we would be induced if we didn't go in to labor on Monday so Ashleigh and I decided to take advantage of one more "George and Ash day". After a morning filled entertaining anything and everything that we heard would induce labor no mater how ridiculous it seemed, (walks, pregnant break dancing, massages, chiropractic alignments and other "activities"), we decided to catch an early movie.

After the movie was over and the nearly full bag of over priced popcorn and soda were tossed in to the waste basket we headed home. It was still late afternoon, we had a snack and watched the season finale of Top Chef (an under whelming season). While my parents, (whom were staying with us the last days to help out) were making dinner, Ash and I ventured on yet another walk around the neighborhood and that is when she told me that she had a few contractions. Not wanting to get too excited over a few contractions we tried not to talk about it but it became apparent that this was not false labor, we must have stopped four or five times for her to absorb the 20-30 second bursts of pain.

Upon arriving home my parents surprised us with what they made, a romantic "dinner for two". Sweet of them right? We decided not to share the news until we were absolutely sure. As we ate our meal, the contractions started to come closer together. After dinner we headed upstairs to our bedroom and looked at the previous hours' statistics (which we kept via an App from the android marketplace). The stats warranted a call to Ash's parents which was around 7pm, Susan answered and I asked "are your bags packed"?, "yeah, why?" said Susan "because we're having a baby".

Susan and Dempsey arrived from Ashland around 9:30. I put the bags in the car, locked in the Chicco infant car seat and went back upstairs to check on Ash. After laboring at home in the bath and on the yoga ball, contractions started to come more rapidly, four minutes apart, lasting for an average of 90 seconds. It was time to head to the hospital.


cont.....