Clark Walter

Yesterday I woke up around 3:30 am having contractions that were definitely real, but had no pattern to them yet.  I went back to sleep and let Jeff know in the morning that he didn't need to go to work as the baby was coming.  All morning the contractions continued, but again didn't really get a regularity.  Jeff kept asking me, "Is it time to go"?  Before lunch we took walk around the block to see if we could help get them going in the seemingly right direction.  After we returned home, I made lunch for everybody.  Then the contractions started to be more regular and more intense.  I sent all the kids for quiet time around two, and laid down for a little while myself.  Around 3 pm the contractions were getting to be 7-10 minutes apart so we knew that we would probably need to go soon.  I called a local friend and asked if they were available to watch the kids in a little while and we made arrangements to drop the kids off at their house on our way to the birth center.  We had been kind of planning on having a home birth, but knew that our midwife wasn't available to do a home birth yesterday and that we would need to go to the birth center.  I called the birth center and let them know that we were leaving shortly and had to drop the kids off first.  We dropped the kids off and continued to the birth center.  Jeff was in a hurry to get me there and I kept telling him, "its okay, slow down, we'll be there in time".  We arrived at the birth center about 3:55 pm and they took us right back.  I was already dilated to 8 cm.  I had no idea, but I knew when the midwife on duty said that, that it wouldn't be much longer.  We went to the birthing room and started to fill the tub with water for a water birth.  After two more contractions I knew I was going to need to push soon.  The tub wasn't full enough to have a water birth yet and I just said okay, lets not have it in the water then.  Clark Walter was born at 4:09 pm.  We spent some time snuggling and after a while they weighed him and did the assessments they needed to do.  He weighed 8# 14 oz. and was 20 3/4 inches long.  We were back at home around 7 pm and Jeff picked the kids up a little later.