Lisa: December 2009

"It's a boy!" I heard the nurse say as she held my baby up, before whisking him away to an incubator where they would check him over to make sure he was breathing ok. Even though he was five weeks early he was healthy and strong and soon brought back to me to hold for the very first time. Looking down at my newborn I noticed he was tightly swaddled in a warm white blanket, and I thought to myself... "he resembles the snowy scene outside my window." Overnight the valley had been covered in a heavy blanket of fresh white snow that was now glistening in the afternoon sunlight.

They say stormy weather can bring on labor but in my case it was a blizzard that really stirred things up. It all started the night before when the snowy storm blew into town. As I sat down to put Karli's snow boots on so she could run outside with Justin and Ashley to play in the Winter Wonderland that was beginning to swirl in our backyard, something unexpected happened.... my water broke!

I called Pat at work and he started his slow drive home on the snow covered roads. As soon as he walked in the door we walked right back out and drove straight to the hospital. The doctors wanted to send me downtown by ambulance to a bigger hospital which was better equipped to handle a premature baby, but at the last minute decided the roads were just too dangerous. The new plan was to keep me, but life flight my baby if it was born with complications. After a really long labor but very quick delivery my last baby was born. We were happy that he was healthy and strong enough to go home with me a few days later.

I never planned on having a December baby, but over the years have learned that we don't get to plan everything in life, sometimes life gets to plan things for us. Jake loves his December birthday, and I do too! I can't think of a happier time of year than Christmas time to have given birth to such a sweet baby boy.