Silas James

On May 5, 2015, around three o’clock in the afternoon (2 days after my due date), I started feeling some contractions. I didn’t think much of it because I'd been having false labor regularly for weeks. The contractions continued sporadically into the evening. Around seven o’clock they became more regular and intense (again, something that’s been routinely happening).

Zach had a council meeting to go to so my mom graciously came to help put the girls to bed and stay with me. As the night progressed the contractions became closer and more painful, but I still didn’t think it was the real deal. My mom and I distracted ourselves by watching a t.v. Duggar special on births (very fitting).

Zach came home around 10:45 p.m. (late council meeting!) and as soon as he got into the house, I suddenly had a contraction much more painful that brought me to tears. Even still, I didn’t believe it was the real thing, so we said “goodbye” to my mom and started to head upstairs to try to get some sleep. Only five minutes later I had another incredibly strong contractions that brought me to my knees.

Just then, we saw the headlights of my mom’s car coming back up our driveway. She had gone only five minutes down the road and instinctively turned around and came back to our house. When we opened the door to greet her, she told us that she really thought this was it and that we needed to go to the hospital. At that point, I began to feel another intense contraction so we agreed! We grabbed our hospital bags and headed out.

We arrived and Zach dropped me off and I walked to triage while Zach parked the car. When they checked me, they found I was eight centimeters dilated – yikes! The contractions continued to come about every 3-4 minutes and they quickly moved me upstairs to delivery. We got into the room and started praying that we would have time to get an epidural. It felt like the contractions were coming right on top of each other at this point. Thankfully, only a few minutes later we heard a friendly knock at the door and I was thrilled to see it was the anesthesiologist. She quickly gave me an epidural and…bliss, sweet relief!

At that point, we could have tried to have the baby, but Zach and I asked if we could rest a bit and just enjoy the relief the epidural gave. The doctor said that was fine, so we did. After a bit of rest I realized I couldn’t hold off pushing anymore, so we called the nurses who called the doctor- it was time!

We said a prayer with our delivery team and after about seven minutes of pushing, out came our beautiful baby boy, Silas James! He came into the world at 3:44 am, weighing 8 lbs. 6 oz. and was 21 inches long. I got some skin-to-skin time with him and we said a prayer of thanksgiving with our delivery team. We were (and are!) exhausted, but overwhelmingly thankful to God for the gift of this precious baby boy!

Skin to skin...

Here we are with our awesome delivery team. Blast from the past: I coached the nurse standing in front 10 years ago in softball.

 Daddy and son...

 First family shot!

 Si's older sisters looking after him.