Well, it took me a while to get to this. Clare was born on June 22, 2006 at 6:15 PM. She was 7lbs. 7oz. and 20.5 inches. Here is her birth story.

Since June 21 was the original “due” date and there didn’t seem to be any real signs of labor, Amy decided to take a long walk around the neighborhood. That may have done something.

On Thursday, June 22 when I woke up at 5:30 to go to work, Amy said she had some “feelings” like it might be soon, but to go ahead and go to work, since I’d be able to get home in plenty of time. Well, when I got to work (an hour away on the train), my boss said Amy called and to go home. I called her and she indeed was in labor.

When I got home I immediately gave Amy a hug and proceeded to inflate and fill the pool($25 at Kmart) in the middle of our kitchen. This of course thrilled Courtney and she wanted to get in right away. Amy labored in the pool for quite a while as I kept adding hot water to keep the temperature warm enough. After a while she got out. Then later she decided to try our bath tub.

As the day wore on and Courtney was getting a bit distracting to Amy, I had to take her off to her day care. By around sometime after 2PM, Amy started saying it might be a good idea to go to the hospital due to the pain she was having. It was a kind of pain she had not heard of or read about in all her reading and studying about childbirth.

I reminded her that going to the hospital might mean all kinds of interventions, monitors etc that we wanted to avoid. So she stuck it out for over another hour or so. Finally she said this just doesn’t feel right, so by 3:40 we were on the way to Kaiser. One of the things about unassisted birth is to listen to your body. If you feel something is not right then you go in if you feel the need to.

To be continued.