One week and two days before my due date, God decided to surprise us with the birth of our 4th child!
It started as a normal morning with the Lillian wake up call at 5:30 am, Bible reading, prayer, Jamey’s appearance around 6 am, little play time, breakfast, Reuben waking up at 7 am and getting ready for my weekly doctor’s appointment. School time had to be by-passed since the appointment was scheduled for 8:45 am.
Jim and I left the house just after 8 to go to my appointment. With this pregnancy I have had contractions here and there for weeks so I thought nothing of the fact that I had a couple of contractions during the morning and on the way to the office (which is thankfully connected to the hospital).
I signed in at the front desk and sat to wait to be called back. I was so tired and was just trying to stay awake. I remember thinking “I hope they call me back soon. I really need to pee!” and then had a huge contraction that caused my water to break.
That, I was NOT expecting.
I looked at Jim and said, “my water just broke.” He looked as surprised as I felt. Jim told the people at the front desk that my water had broken. They got towels and a wheel chair and whisked me down to labor and delivery.
They took me to triage first to get admitted and checked out. Though I was not contracting regularly I was around 4 cm dilated. They soon moved me over to my designated labor and delivery room and the waiting began.
Thankfully, by God’s grace, my body responded to my water breaking and began to contract regularly after an hour or so. God gave me strength and, even with my water broken, thankfully held off very intense contractions until the end.
Because of my water being broken I was not able to move around as much as I would have liked in the hospital setting, but I was able to move around in the bed to help bring the baby down. Praise the Lord, I did not need anything to augment my labor. It took a little while, but by God’s grace my body did what God designed it to do. Around 1:30 pm I felt the rest of the water break and the baby moved into place. I knew it would not be long.
I am very blessed that when that happens, it happens quickly and at 2:07 pm the baby made it’s way into the world.
I looked down and Jim said, “It’s a boy!” “It’s a boy,” I responded laughing. I could not believe we had another boy. I really thought this one was a girl based on my pregnancy, though I had had some doubts. But a boy he is and a beautiful one.
This labor was so different, but a blessing as God helped me to give birth a fourth time. We named him Gabriel Jonathan. We chose Gabriel because it has the same meaning as the other boy name we were expecting to use, “God is my strength” and Jonathan for Jim’s brother. God completely named him and we know God has a plan for this precious boy’s life.
