October Surprise -- the story

For those that are interested in the birth story....

Diana's water broke on the evening of Thu, Oct 29 around 9:30am, while watching a comedy special (who knew humor was so good at stimulating labor?)... Julie had been watching with her but decided she needed to watch birthing videos instead -- rather providential, yes? She's just so smart... :-)

Contractions started about half an hour later and it was soon evident that it would be best to head to the hospital in a timely fashion!

We headed to the Birthing Inn at Loudoun Inova Hospital, a birth center where we were able to use a mid-wife practice (Loudound Community Midwives -- love them). Wendy Dotson was the midwife on-call that evening and was a great support & coach for both Julie & Diana.

Diana labored between 10pm and 7am and was finally given the go ahead to start pushing... things went well for a while but slowed down towards the end... Diana was tired, Koen was tired (and he had a big head)... so a small episiotomy was cut & about ten minutes later, Koen was born! And a good thing, too, as he did have his cord wrapped around his neck... It was evidently time for him to enter the world....

Of course, the full story of this adventure is really difficult to convey in words right now... too many special moments, too many "we'll never forgets, too much happiness to process right now.

One thing to note is that Koen's arrival (being two weeks early) took us by surprise, to say the least... Based on the assumption that most first-time moms hang on past their dues dates, we had planned on getting a LOT of stuff done this past weekend, including getting a list together of everyone we needed to call... for those who we love & have not spoken with yet, please know that we're sending love your way! We just packed in such a hurry that we had lots of things we didn't need (numerous pajama bottoms for Diana) and forgot most of the important things (like a list of people to call and their numbers)... I am surprised that we did manage to get the car seat in the car and the camera in the bag... Actually, I should say, that I am surprised that *Julie* was able to get those important things in the car as much as she did... Diana was the one throwing pajama bottoms in her bag... :-)

And no, Julie doesn't seem like she is going into labor any time soon -- at least we hope not!