The Arrival of Isaac Jacob

June 10, 2004

Written by his mother, Jen

Contractions started the evening before Isaac was to emerge from the warm waters at the Greenhouse Birth Center.  They were subtle, but I knew that they were doing more work than “toning” my muscles…that and the fact that I was 5 days past my due date.  We had dinner with my parents in Williamston, then went home to bed-I knew I had lots of work to do shortly.

During the night I had a few strong contractions that woke me and around 6 they started getting stronger and closer together (5 mins).  At this point we decided to call the midwives and meet at the birth center to see what was going on.  We met Kip at 7am.  She checked me and said I was 100% effaced, but still a long way to go.  Her voice was so soft and soothing and she gave me a few tips on how to handle the very painful contractions.  She instructed me to go home and rest.  That is exactly what I did.  I had a bad sinus infection, so I went home, took a Benedryl and went to bed.  I slept all day and aside from a strong contraction here and there, I was able to get some quality sleep. 

At 5pm, I called Kip just to let her know that nothing was going on and that the baby probably wasn’t coming tonight, but we’d keep her posted.  At 6pm, boy was I in for a surprise-they started up again FULL FORCE.  By 7:30pm, I told my husband we needed to go to the birth center.  We called Kip again and let her know we were on our way. 

At 8pm we arrived and Kip checked me.  I was dilated to 4cm.  At this point, I wasn’t quite sure how long it had taken to get to that point, nor was I sure of how close we actually were to meeting our new baby.  After 2 hours of pretty consistent hard contractions, I was at 8cm.  Wow, things were moving pretty fast!  The midwives started drawing a bath for me-I couldn’t wait to submerse myself in the warm water.  By the time the tub was ready, I was ready to get in and push.  I sat in the tub like a boxer in the ring and waited for my next contraction to come, my husband at ring-side with my water.  I was ready coach…bring it on!  It hit like a ton of bricks and I pushed HARD.  Something popped and I remember saying “something just popped, I think it was a hemorrhoid”.  Everyone laughed and Kip assured me it was just my water breaking.  The second one came and I pushed, again, as hard as I could-I wanted to meet my baby so bad.  We could see the head and that inspired me even more to try harder.  The third push came – the head moved even further down.  The fourth and final push came and our new baby had arrived (10:30pm).  Aaron and I were so amazed.  I had done it!  I remember holding him to my chest and just looking at everyone surrounding the tub smiling and oohhh-ing.  It was such an amazing feeling!  Then my husband looked at me and said: “flip him over, let’s see what we got!”  It was a boy and we were thinking of naming him Jacob – no significance, just liked the name.  That’s when Kip came into our room and said “Isaac means born in laughter and there was so much laughter going on, that would be a very appropriate name for this baby”.  Isaac was on our list-of-possible-names, and so his name quickly became “Isaac Jacob Preuss”.