The arrival of Sam

This day 9 years ago I was at home in our basement suite in Vancouver, Canada and I was 40 weeks and 1 day into my first pregnancy. It was a cold Autumn day and my mum had arrived from Australia hoping to catch the arrival of our first born.  Sorry for the indecent exposure below, remember this is my journal :+)

We'd had dinner and my mum, with washing up gloves on, was doing the dishes.  Donald, I believe, was probably chastising her for doing the dishes.  I felt an urge and went to the bathroom.  While I was sitting there (on the toilet) I felt what was like a balloon popping and water gushing.  Thank goodness I was in the right place at the right time and with a cupboard beside me full of giant maternity pads.  I walked out of the bathroom with an excited look on my face and declared that I think my waters just broke.  My mum, full of excitement with rubber gloves still on came at me holding  her hands out ready to catch the baby.  There was an air of excitement as I packed my bags and tried to read up on how to have a baby, funny jokes were flying back and forth as my brain tried to remember all that we'd learnt at our pre-natal classes.

Half an hour later at 8pm the increadible pains began.  I wasn't certain where they were coming from or how long they lasted.  It became a combination of back pain and contractions and I knew I couldn't do a thing while either was happening.  We spent a while on the bed a candle flickering on my bed side table, my mum putting warm cloths on my back to ease the pain, me breathing trying to blow long and slow to reach the candle by my bed, Donald quietly talking by my bed or rubbing my back when needed. When the contractions came closer it took me half an hour to change my clothes and another half hour to get me into the car.  It was about 11pm when we drove the 5 minutes to the hospital (I was still giving directions to Donald's driving).  We got to the car park and I felt like pushing, my mum suggested a wheel chair, Donald thought I should walk it in.  I couldn't walk, so I got the chair.  The urge to push was so great but I needed to slow my breathing down.  A little gas helped to focus my breath then they took me up to delivery.  On November 22nd in the wee hours of the morning after 2.5 hours of pushing, our bouncing 9lbs 3oz Sam came into the world (with ACDC playing quietly in the background on the radio).  We didn't have any camera's there at first as Donald left everything in the car thinking we'd just be at the hospital for a check up and back home for the night.  

Sam was such a beautiful baby and we knew his name was to be Samuel James Hammond Walker.  Named after two of his Great Grandfathers, although we didn't know we were having a boy.  He had such strong little muscly arms, broad strong hands and fingers just like Donald's and a perfect little face that looked so familiar that I knew he was our little boy, it just seemed so right.