At 36 weeks, I went into to see the doctor and they told me “You are 3 centimeters dilated and 70% effaced”. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means (according to the doctor) I was due ANY day. Well that’s a LIE.

3 weeks went by and two false alarms later, I was OVER it. I was bouncing on exercise balls, squatting, eating spicy foods and nothing. So on week 39 I had given up. Every one told me, “Oh you will know when its really happening”. Well I didn’t know, so I prayed.

Dear God. Please let my water break so that I HAVE to go in.

*Fun Fact: Hollywood lies when every movie you watch has a pregnant woman and their water ALWAYS breaks. It only happens to 15% of women and I never knew that (SO kudos, you learned something while reading this).

ANYWAYS.

On Friday, April 21^st 2017 I went to have (shout out) lunch with Hannah Schellenberg and I kid you not she joked and said “I was so worried your water was going to break or something and we couldn’t meet”. I’m pretty sure I shared that fun fact with her and I joked back and said that I doubted the baby was coming out anytime soon. While at lunch I was informed that my grandma was admitted to Wolfson’s downtown hospital and figured I would stop by there after eating lunch (It wasn’t an emergency or I would’ve been there immediately).

Luckily enough Nate had a case at the hospital and my mom drove up as well to be with me and my grandmother.

So to set the scene: it was me, Nate, my mom and someone else (but “mom brain” and I cant remember who it was). We were talking and suddenly I felt a little trickle of water. I didn’t think much of it because when you are pregnant you literally pee yourself ALL THE TIME. So I was like “sorry guys, I’m peeing myself, gotta go to the bathroom”. They all laughed, I went and peed and then came back out. But then it happened again. I looked at my mom and said:

“I just peed again! Why do I keep peeing myself?”

So ya’ll picture a penguin. That was me walking back to the bathroom with my mom following behind me. So when my mom came in (I had my pants down) and she was like “do you think your water broke?” as she was literally bent over and “looking upward”. As soon as I was about to answer the FLOOD GATES opened!

“OH MY GOSH YOUR WATER JUST BROKE!” My mom opened the door to the bathroom and started yelling down the hall to everyone “Her water just broke!”

I wish you guys could’ve seen Nate’s face when I came down the hall with my jeans soaked with fluid and other unmentionables. If you googled a deer in headlights, his picture would pop up. You could tell he was getting nervous! He started to walk out with me while they were pushing me in the wheel chair and I said “Babe don’t you have a case?” he said yes, but that he needed to go with me! I finally convinced him that it could be a while and he stayed at the hospital, but you could see he didn’t like leaving me.

My mom drove me to the hospital and looking back all I can do is laugh. No joke, we were sitting in traffic with the hazard lights on. I looked over and said, “Mom, why do you have those on?” Her response was, “I want people to know we are in a state of emergency!”. She was just as nervous, if not more nervous than I was.

They admitted me around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and one by one more people trickled into my hospital room. By the time I was 5 centimeters I had about 8 people in the room, including Nate. At that point, I was in active labor and ready to get some DRUGS.

I got the epidural and I went from 5 ½ – 6cms to 9 in about an hour! At that point they told us “Ok, whoever is going to stay for the birth needs to stay and the rest need to leave”. My brother and dad left that room so quick, I felt a breeze run across my face. My mom was standing there next to me, along with my aunt and cousin. My sister in law had the best seat in the house, as she was sitting in a chair directly in front of my legs eating snacks as if a movie was about to start.

Then I see Nate.

 He was still standing there, looking at me.

He said, “Do you want me to stay or go?”

I wish I could say I said something romantic like, “never leave me!”

But instead I just said, “Yeh, but just stay back there and don’t look!”. I didn’t want the first time this man “sees” me (ladies if you catch my drift) is when a human is coming out of it. Lets be real for a second, the poor man had endured enough.

35 minutes later, 12 hours of labor, my mom cut the umbilical cord and my life changed forever. David Dawson Kelly was born and I never knew I could instantly, unconditionally love someone so quickly and SO incredibly much.

I was a mom.

And how cool, unknown to me at the time, that his daddy decided to stay and be there to experience the birth of our son.

*Confessed to me later: Nate “peeked” and saw it all.