Our Story! It just occurred to me (after telling the whole story once again) that many of you may not have yet heard about just how little Charlie arrived 2 weeks ago tomorrow....so....here is our story......

I had it all planned.... my sister, Bev, was here visitting from Aug 10-15th before moving to Scotland...so, Charlie would come 2 weeks before his due date while Bev was here! Well, that trip came and went and no Charlie!

Then, David had it all planned....Mom would be arriving on tuesday, just one week after Bev left, Aug 22nd, so, Charlie would wait the week in between and arrive after Mom got here!

On August 19th, Charlie had it all planned...he decided to come when HE was ready...imagine that??? I repacked my hospital bag before going to bed that Friday night and said to David: "don't stay up too late, you may be needing your rest...we COULD have a baby tonight you know!" His response was..."NO, you're waiting until Tuesday, remember?" So, off to bed I went only to wake up at 1:30am with a usual trip to the washroom; however, when I came back to bed I felt a little trickle and thought I just still had to "go". So, back to the bathroom I went, but nothing. I did this 3 times, finally I thought "OH...this could be my water breaking! But...no BIG production! Just little trickles! I called the hospital, told them what was happening and they told me to get a shower, something to eat and then come in. I woke David up and his response (once again) was...."NO, it's not tuesday!" Then, he cooked me some pasta, grabbed the bag and at about 2:30am we went to the hospital. So, here I am just before leaving the house....WOW....I WAS looking VERY pregnant!

Here I am in the hospital (the first time) looking mighty fine!!! The nurse confirmed that YES, my water had broken and I was in fact in labour; however, I was feeling nothing....yet....

So, we decided to go home and get some sleep. We returned home at about 4am and started calling people back east to let them know that we were having a baby TODAY!!!! Slept for a few hours until about 8am. Then, I got up, walked around a bit, talked on the phone some more, David watched golf until about 10am when things started getting a bit more intense. We called the hospital as I was then feeling pretty strong contractions every 3 minutes lasting about 1 minute each. Then, I got a bit shakey, the chills and then threw up! AHHH!!! that's when David said "OK....we're going back to the hospital!"

We arrived back at the hospital just after 11am - at 12pm I was 3 cent dialated - got in the tub to help me "relax"as I didn't want to take any morphine (for those of you who have experienced labour, I'm sure you're all laughing right now at how the word relax really doesn't fit into one's labour stories very often) - but...it worked! I dozed off in between contractions for about an hour - tried some laughing gas at about 2pm - told the nurse I thought she forgot to turn on the gas because it wasn't working so I threw the mask to the side - was 10 cent dialated by about 2:30pm - got wheeled into the "C-Section room" because they didn't have a birthing room for me (they thought I would be the last one to deliver that day as it was my first baby and there were a bunch of 2nd time Mom's there who they thought would be much faster than me) HA!HA! We showed them!!!! Pushed for about an hour and 15 mins....at one point I did tell David that I didn't think I could do it anymore as I was too tired, his response "Well, I don't think you have a choice!" Obviously I did NOT like David's response as I got just wound up enough to finish the job because about 10 minutes later Charlie was born (3:44pm) , as shown below!

Our regular doctor wasn't working that day, so here is a photo of the wonderful doctor who delivered our beloved Charlie....she was GREAT! She asked us where we were from as she knew David's accent was somewhere from the east coast...she had spent alot of time in Nova Scotia a few years back. She came to see us on Monday as we were leaving to tell us how much of a pleasure it was being part of the birth of our son! The nurse, Pat, was fantastic as well!

Here is the official weigh in! This is taken about 45 minutes after Charlie was born and he did have a full belly (he nursed within 10 minutes of being born and for about a half hour!!! Such a good boy!!!)

We were in our room by about 5:00pm, called Mindy to bring us some Pizza and come visit Charlie! So, that's it....now you know the rest of the story!