Birth Story Part 1 (because my labor was so long the story needs to be told in chapters)

Last year on this exact same day I woke up feeling a little yucky. Throughout the morning I felt these little pains in my stomach, but assumed they were just pre-labor pains (aka Braxton Hicks). They didn't hurt and I barely noticed them. David and I wanted to go on a "last date" before baby Kemple made his/her appearance (that's right people, we like to do things the way God intended and wait for the baby to be born to find out the gender. Ha!). I really wanted Italian food, but if you recall, last year at this time we were blanketed in 1 1/2 feet of snow. And since Oregonians can barely handle driving in the rain, let alone the snow, our entire city was pretty much shut down.



















David, the super snow shoveler. Before this storm, I had never been around snow where you actually needed to shovel it. Snow shovel? What's that?

David had the driveway shoveled in case we needed to make a quick exit from our house, because the baby's due date was 12/24. I was hoping for a 12/28 or 29 birthday so I really wasn't too concerned about it. Around noon on the 22nd we headed out to find a restaurant that might be open. Thanks to all the snow, driving was very slow, so I had time to sit and watch the clock. I realized these small and not painful pains were coming every 7 minutes. Interesting.

The only open restaurant we could find was Izzy's. I'm not a big fan of Izzy's and it wasn't exactly where I envisioned our last dinner as two people. But what can you do? So while having these crazy every 7 minute pains, we went to Izzy's.














Driving home from Izzy's and looking down our street; this is the last picture I took before Daphne was born.

David has been waiting all year for December 22nd to role back around so that we could go to Izzy's again. He thinks this needs to be a yearly tradition.













Daphne and David enjoying Izzy's pizza and a whole lot more. Do they still sing that song? I haven't heard it in awhile.

We got home where I continued having these pains all afternoon and into the evening. David went to bed because I was sure it wasn't real labor, as I had read somewhere that a real contraction will be felt over your entire stomach, while my pains were just on the lower half and around to my back a little. Plus they didn't really hurt that badly, and in between pains I felt totally fine.

OK, we'll save the next installment of this thrilling story for tomorrow. I'm sure that will keep you on the edge of your seat. You're wondering if we had a boy or a girl, huh?