I had a doctors appointment early the morning of September 8th. Moving along fine in pregnancy terms, but no "real" sign of labor in my immediate future. (My due date was the 18th). Then, later that day as Branson was taking a nap I decided to lay down myself for a few minutes- a regular occurrence at this point. I started feeling, crampy-ish, I suppose. I just couldn't fall asleep because I was having some pains. After a little while of this I decided maybe I should be timing this pain? (With Branson, my water broke so the whole labor bit was kind of a no-brainer) I began timing and interestingly enough I was having some pretty consistent pain, about 8-10 minutes apart. I decided to take a shower just incase. They were getting closer together and more painful with the passing time so I called Chris to let him know. I started to make some dinner and was getting ready for My brother Tavis and his wife Cindy to come visit. It was her birthday so I was planning a little party for later that night. The contactions were getting stronger. I called Chris to ask where he was and why he wasn't home yet. Apparently my call earlier wasn't clear enough because he was just working away, and kind of oblivious to the fact that I might actually be in labor. I'm pretty sure when he got home he found me lying in bed curled into a ball holding my breath- I think he started to realize maybe this was it. I was in pain, but the contractions were still about 5 minutes apart so I was doing what I could to finish dinner, not wanting to rush to the hospital if this was just a false alarm. Finally, we called the hospital and the nurse told me to come in once they were closer together and the pain was to the point I couldn't talk through it- yay! We had Christopher's sister on stand by so we called her and caught her right before a nice date out with her hubby, sorry Annick! Chrisopher decided we should head to the hospital so we did, and by the time we were at his sisters house dropping off Branson, I was SO GLAD we were on our way. Contactions were only 1-2 minutes apart and I was in quite a bit of pain! When we got to the hospital I knew they were going to admit be, or I decided I would stand in the waiting room screaming until they did. They admitted me and we were in a room with an epidural around 11pm. The epidural worked MUCH better this time around and I could barely feel the catheter, THANK GOD!! Annick ended up coming to visit after Branson fell asleep at her house with Uncle Jared and we called our photographer friend, Jess. She made it just in time, along with my friend Alexis. Annick and Jess were in the room during the delivery, snapping shots and capturing video footage- I was fully on display! :) The delivery went pretty quickly and although I still felt more than I wish I could have (Why epidurals don't work as intended on me, I have NO idea) It was so much better than my first delivery! We did not know what the gender was and decided to let the doctor tell us both. I couldn't risk Christopher mistaking parts, sorry babe! Out came the baby and the doctor exclaimed, "It's....a....BOY!" Ok, I was sort of hoping for a girl, but when he said BOY, it was as if I already knew. I just kind of said, of course it is!! And when I held him in my arms for the first time I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Boys, Sons, Brothers... and most importantly, A Healthy Baby!! What a blessing. And so we named him Asher Scot Liles. "Asher" comes from the Bible, meaning HAPPY, and "Scot" after his daddy's middle name, spelled wrong and everything. We had a great experience aside from Asher doing a bit of coughing up/choking and leaving us to call the nurses in a couple times. They had to clean out his lungs a bit and we were definitely on edge, but by the time we left the hospital he was doing well and seemed to be living up to his name. We couldn't love him more!
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