April 29, 2012, one day before D-Day. It was a Sunday and everything felt like it had the previous nine months of my pregnancy. I heard all the comments at church “you’re still here?”, “you haven’t had that baby yet?” I felt bad for Wyatt, he wasn’t even late and people thought he should already be here. I still wanted to give the little guy a chance at being on time, since his due date was April 30, we still had one more day.

For whatever reason, both Jon and I knew he would be a boy. At that first ultrasound, in the back of our minds, we knew it would be a boy, even though we didn’t have a preference either way. Both Jon and I had that same feeling when it came time for Wyatt to come. We both had this feeling that he would either be early or on time.

Well, after church on Sunday and after lunch with the in-laws, we came home and decided to do all the recommended activities suggested when trying to get your labor started. I know these things aren’t always known to start labor, but we were willing to give a few of them a try. Some friends of ours showed up later in the afternoon, asking if we had any tennis balls so they could play tennis at the middle school across the street. We decided to ride our bikes over to the school and join them.

Now before you get all excited, no, I didn’t play tennis, but I did ride the bike over and I’m proud to say I didn’t crash at all.

We hung out at the school for a little bit and headed home to get ready for church that evening.

At this point Wyatt was starting to feel a little different. He was sitting different. I didn’t have any pains or contractions, but he just felt a little lower.

We went to church and afterwards we headed over to my sister’s house with some friends for pizza. Again, nothing was happening, but he just felt a little lower. We ended up leaving shortly before 11 and came home.

After getting home and letting the dog out, we got ready for bed. I had just brushed my teeth and crawled into bed, not ten minutes after we were home. I was all comfortable and snuggled down under the covers when I felt Wyatt kick  once, then twice and I felt my water break. I called to Jon who was in the other room and calmly told him my water had broke. He didn’t believe me for a second. I told him to come look if he didn’t believe me and see for himself.

My very first thought was, this is going to be a long night. It was 11:23 pm April 29.

I called my doula and told her my water broke. We chatted for a few minutes about our game plan. I took a shower and at this point there were no contractions, just the feeling of some indigestion, which I later learned was a mild contraction. As I was in the shower, Jon cleaned the house, I mean, really, who wants to come home to a dirty house right?

Anyways, we hung out at the house for a while, I wasn’t ready to go just yet. I knew we would be at the hospital long enough and I was doing just fine at home. Jon was persistent and we ended up leaving our house around 1:30 AM.

After checking in and ensuring that,  yes, my water did break, we were moved to our room where we began the waiting process. Contractions were about eight minutes apart and still not terribly uncomfortable. We ended up talking with our nurse for about thirty minutes, just shooting the breeze and hearing all her birthing stories. I felt like we really connected with her, but knew she wouldn’t be our delivery nurse since she was the night shift. Around 2:15, the nurse checked our progress and we were still at 3 cm, which we had been since my appointment the previous Friday.

Around 5:30 our doula came. We were going to call her when things started to get a little more intense. She was already up, having had to take her husband to the airport early, she decided to come by the hospital since she was already out. The nurse came back at 6:30 and said we were at 7 cm.

It had been my goal to go all natural and I was determined to stick with it. I didn’t want any drugs to help start contractions either. I was so thankful to have progressed enough on my own so we didn’t need anything to help push things along.

Contractions were starting to get a little more intense, although it would be one intense one and then several mild ones, followed by another intense one and another mild one. I had to laugh when I would let Jalaah know a contraction had been intense. She would correct me and say, “no, it was a productive contraction”. Loved her positive outlook.

Having Jon and my doula there really helped me get through each rough contraction. Jon was there to hold my hand and Jalaah was there massaging my feet and reminding me to breath slowly and deeply.

Contractions started coming about 2 minutes apart, but again, it was one strong one followed by one less intense. I never felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. At this point we decided it was time to start pushing. When this happended the contractions slowed back down to 4 minutes apart.

The doctor was called in and that’s when the pushing and contractions started to get serious. Because my contractions were about 5 minutes apart I was falling alseep inbetween pushing. The time from when we started pushing to when Wyatt actually came out was about an hour and a half, but I wasn’t pushing that entire time. I was doing more sleeping than pushing.

Finally, the last push and his little head came out. I didn’t feel that dreaded ring of fire that you hear mom’s talk about. I was just glad it was almost over. Everything else followed just like its supposed to and we had our beautiful baby boy. It was 12:59 pm on April 30.

I joked with the nurses and told them they could tell me if he was ugly. They all laughed and said some babies are precious and other babies are cute; mine was cute.

I am so thankful for Jon and his support, he was a fantastic husband and he actually watched everything that went on. He didn’t get sick or nauseous and said he even teared up a little when he saw Wyatt for the first time. I think he held him more than I did those first few hours. That was fine with me, I had been able to hold him for nine months, so Jon had some catching up to do.

We went home a few days later and have adjusted to being parents. Wyatt’s a good baby and so far only gets up once at night. He’s definitely his daddy’s boy. Jon seems to have the touch to calm him down when he gets fussy.

I have never known anyone to actually deliver on their due date. I’m glad my son can continue that personality trait of his mother’s and be different than everyone else.

I am so glad that Jon is a handyman, can fix anything, and make just about anything. One night I was going through a board I had created on Pinterest with ideas I had for the baby’s room. I was showing him some of the pictures and we came across this sign above the crib.

I thought it was pretty cool and was trying to figure out how to incorporate something similar into Wyatt’s room. Jon immediately told me could easily do that.

Later that night he disappeared in the garage and started working on the sign. We had received a chunk of wood from Michigan from some trees Jon helped my uncle cut down. Jon wasn’t quite sure what he would do with it at the time, but it was a nice piece of wood, so he brought it back to South Carolina.  Who knew it would end up in a baby’s room?

The first dilemna we had was what to put on the sign. I had told Jon it was his present to Wyatt, and he could put whatever he wanted on the sign, but I still had a say in it.

After a few discussions, I finally compromised and agreed to Wyatt Byrnes. So, being the not-very-creative-person I am, I hopped on photshop and printed off the letters for the sign. I then cut them out (making me so thankful I’m not an elementary school teacher) and we arranged them on the wood Jon and cut and sanded.

Then we traced the letters on the wood and Jon started routing and chiseling the letters into the wood.

It was quite the process, as he wanted it to be perfect. We toyed with different ideas on if we should give it a weathered look, or an aged look, but ended up deciding to keep it the way it was, why mess with perfection?

Jon added a coat of stain and we let it set out in the garage to dry.

I am so happy with how the sign turned out! I want him to make us one! Not sure where we’d put it or what we’d put on it. But I think it’s a pretty unique and custom piece of artwork and it’s something Wyatt will have forever.

The finished product!