Gavin was born on June 11th after over 24 hours of labor and six hours of pushing. He was one day early from our due date and my first baby. My Husband, mother, father, Shelly, the doula, and Nicole were there from 6am until he was born at 4pm. I was planning on having Gavin in the birthing tub, but it just wasn't comfortable with me. Gavin had his arm up in some way so in between contractions I was still having a lot of pain. I needed a lot of stretching and help and support from every person. Nicole was able to help keep me stretched and held my cervix open till our little 6 pound 6 ounce peanut came. I didn't tear and was able to go shopping the next day since we had no clothes other than one outfit since we did not find out what we were having.

We aren't big on Chinese food, but that night there wasn't much in the way of dinner in our pantry. Our two year old had just woken from a late nap, and was being a bear, so all three of us went to pick up our order. On the way home my husband and I discussed baby names. After months of discussing nothing but boys names, we started talking about girl names. We'd had a girl's name picked out before Darin was born, but something about it didn't seem as appealing this time. We decided in the car on a new choice.

Dinner was delicious, but my fortune was the highlight: “Nevermind tomorrow, TODAY is the day.” I scoffed. It was 8:30pm, today only had 3 hours left. Confucius laughed because around 10:30pm, my water broke.