Naomi's guess date was August 11th. Judging by Elliora's early arrival, the 1st was my personal estimated time of Naomi's arrival. However, Friday, August 1st, was just the beginning of my 3 day long birth waves.
My home church was hosting a conference which involved a handful of churches across the country. The conference was from Thursday July 31st to August 3rd. To top off this crazy weekend with even more excitement, I was a part of youth leadership in the church headquarters. So, my presence was pretty much required at all time. The event started on Thursday, the one out of two days that I attended.
That night I started getting practice waves (Braxton Hick). And of course, in my mind I was thinking "I was so right! She's going to come tomorrow!". Well, I stayed home as Friday rolled through and I even made time to distract myself by hanging out with friends and taking Elliora swimming. But the ongoing waves did not stop nor get any stronger by the end of Friday.
So, I dragged myself to the conference on Saturday, hoping to distract myself even more from the discomforts of pre labor. And even though I felt like passing out the entire time, Saturday came and went...and I was still getting practice waves.
Well, by Sunday morning, my waves became more consistent and stronger. Everything that happened that morning lined up perfectly with Elliora's birth. But by afternoon the waves were inconsistent for several hours causing me to feel really stressed out and tense about laboring for so long. My only birth experience so far was with Elliora; and with her, everything happened in one day progressing fairly quickly. Well, constantly comparing this whole experience to Elliora's birth really threw me off. I told myself not to, but what other reference did I have to go off of right?
So by about 10pm, I went into active labor but things had been going so slowly that I was kind of in denial. Things started to progress quickly from that point and by about 11:51 we called the midwife and ran out the door because I was suddenly pushing. I hopped in the passenger seat straddling it the opposite direction and held on to the head rest for dear life.
Thank God it was so late...David ran every red light we came across and booked it 95mph down the freeway. When we got to Morning Star Birth Center, the midwives weren't there yet and this baby was not going to stay in any longer. As David stopped the car, Naomi was making her way out and so he jumped out of his side and ran over to me just in time to catch her as she was coming out. And following Naomi's arrival, the midwives both finally got there to usher us into the birth center for further procedures.
What a wild experience that was. God is good!