Welcome Aubree Cheyenne!!

Aubree Cheyenne joined our family at 2:40 AM on Thursday, March 12. She was a little impatient, making her grand entrance in the back of an Unified Fire Authority Ambulance. It's quite a story, so we'll start at the beginning...

We had our 39 week check up Wednesday morning, all looked great. Donovan and I had discussed setting an induction appointment with our Doctor. We had an appointment scheduled for Sunday morning, and jokingly the Doctor commented that nothing seems to encourage natural labor, like scheduling an induction. How right she was. :) I had random and sporadic contractions all day long, but nothing to write home about. Late in the afternoon I had contractions about every 7 minutes for about an hour, but nothing good, and they tapered off during the drive home.

Dinner, bed time, and an otherwise normal evening. I woke up at 1:00 AM having some good contractions. I timed a few contractions, and woke Donovan up. Nothing too exciting yet, we got dressed, got the girls in the car, and headed to Grandma & Grandpa Jones house. My contractions increased in strength as we drove, but still nothing to be too excited about, and then "the shakes" started. This for me is what fills the 1-2 minutes between contractions, where my whole body shakes uncontrollably, which also indicates delivery is isn't too far away.

I called Labor & Delivery at the hospital, so they could notify our Doctor of our arrival. Almost immediately after hanging up the phone, my water broke. Now for most people this is no big news, but in my family, this means you have approximately 20 minutes before the baby is born. Since we were still about 10 minutes away from the hospital, and only about 2 minutes away from my parents house, we called my Dad. (White family trivia - Dad used to keep an OB kit as part of the family first aid kit, "'cause you never know when you might need one.") As Dad had previously delivered 12 babies, Donovan and I felt like we could use his experience, as we were running short on time. After hanging up with Dad, I immediately called 911, to have paramedics dispatched to my parents home.

Dad thought he could get us to the hospital quickly, so we loaded into his car, and began backing out of the driveway. We didn't hit the curb, before I had another contraction, and knew we weren't getting very far. We unloaded, and headed back into the house, where we were joined very shortly by the United Fire Authority paramedics.

We were loaded into the ambulance, and headed for the hospital. The two attending paramedics were both fairly inexperienced (one had delivered 2 babies, the other had never delivered a baby)so my Dad jumped into the back of the ambulance with them, to provide some coaching, and guidance to the young paramedics. Aubree was born as we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Donovan cut the umbilical cord with a surgical scalpel in the back of the ambulance.

After only an hour and 40 minutes of labor, and no drugs, Aubree joined our family. Aside from Aubree spending a few hours in the nursery under the warming lights, to help her get her body temperature up, she was perfectly healthy, and beautiful as can be!

We are very grateful to have her officially here. She is a beautiful addition to our family!