More Memories

So ... Benji kept getting bigger and we were so relieved that at every doctor's appointment, everything looked great. I gained 19 pounds during my pregnancy, which I lost almost immediately when Benji was born. When I was in Mexico, my due date was September 7th, but in Utah, the doctor told me that it was September 13, but that the baby could possible come a week early. So Daniel and I were always reading articles online and the two books about pregnancy that Daniel bought me. The first was one that went through the pregnancy week by week, and it showed what parts were growing each week and so we always said a special prayer each week specifically for where Benji was developing. The second book, was the secret to having calm and happy babies. I still use that book today.

So, the truth, Daniel and I were pretty excited and impatient. After the 8th month went by, we knew that the baby could come at any moment and that he would be okay. We spent the days talking and wondering how our baby would be. Blue eyes or Brown? Blonde hair or dark? etc... We didn't have any idea how he would be. We only knew that he would be beautiful. We decorated the baby room a couple of months earlier and seeing it every day made us even more impatient, because we wanted him to be there and be able to use everything that we had bought. A few times we took our mattress from our bed into Benji's room because we felt like the time was going by so slow and we were so excited for him to come and use his room. Many times we talked to him and told him that we wanted him to come already. And one time we were really crazy and we even got teary eyed thinking that he didn't want to come and meet us yet hahaha :).

One day, my sister-in-law invited me to go with her and her kids to the park and I was jogging around a little bit and helping to push the kids on the swings. That day I started to have small pains in my stomach, but I didn't think it was a sign that it was the big day. Later, my sister-in-law and I went to Smith's grocery store, and we were there for a little while when I started to feel a little bit worse, but nothing that I was expecting. I was expecting a pain that would make it so that I couldn't even walk. So, finding myself at home with my husband that night, and sitting down with him. I realized that the pains became to get a little stronger, and that was when I told him that all day I had been having pain, but I didn't think that it was really time. And Daniel got excited and asked if it was really time and started saying that we needed to go to the hospital right away! But I told him to calm down and that it wasn't time yet, but he decided to call his sister and they told us to rest a little bit, but if the contractions got worse that we should go to the hospital. And it did get worse, so we went to the hospital, which fortunately was only about a minute from the house.

After checking me and giving me a shot to calm down the contractions, they told us to go back home, but that if the contractions kept going that we should come back because it would be time for Labor for sure. We tried to sleep, but at about 4 in the morning I jumped and told Daniel that it was time and he woke up right away like a crazy telling me to hurry and get to the car. We got to the hospital and they checked me again for about half an hour and the pain got a little better, so I didn't feel too bad until the contractions got a little bit stronger and they asked me if I wanted my epidural, and they said that I was dilated at a 2. So Daniel went downstairs to the car to get a bag for about 10 minutes and when he came upstairs again I was already a 7! So, because of a small infection that they detected before, they had to give me a medicine that had to last 4 hours. So they were going to have to slow down the labor a little bit so that I could finish the medicine so that the baby could be born without worrying about him getting the infection. It was a little bit hard, because they said not to push too hard and that the doctor would get there at 8:30 in the morning. Oh my, how was I going to be able to wait so long for the doctor to get there if the baby already wanted to be born? When the doctor got there, he clapped his hands together and said lets go, and Benji was born in like one minute. It was at 9:04 AM on September 11, 2010.

This baby has been such a great blessing and he behaved well during labor too and didn't make mom suffer (or maybe it was the epidural that helped more). It has now been about a year since that all happened, and we are so blessed to have Benjamin Jayden Barker in our life, and we can say that it has been much better than we had ever hoped for.