On the evening of Monday, October 6th my wife and I began talking about when we were going to have the baby. Due to my sister-in-law's wedding coming up on Saturday, we were hoping that our baby would either come before Wednesday or wait until after the wedding, even if it meant that we would miss the reception. As the night went on, my wife began nesting more than she had before. Around 11:00 pm we went to bed to try to get some things moving so maybe we would have the baby before the wedding day. We fell asleep around midnight, and sure enough around 2:30 am my wife awoke having contractions, but I did not wake up until around 4:30am when our older son woke up. I did not know that anything was going on. Later Rebecca came to bed and told me she was having contractions. We called to alert Damaris and then I went to a meeting at work. A few hours later I came home to a very angry, tired wife ready to give our children away so that we could get to work. I took the children to my mother's house then came back home to help Rebecca get things ready for the birth. We cleaned and moved all our supplies into our bedroom.

Things did not seem to be progressing any faster so we again called Damaris with an update and then decided we wanted her to come and check things out. While waiting for her to get here, we went for a walk. When Damaris arrived we talked about things and decided to check Rebecca's dilation. She was only 3 centimeters, and by this point Rebecca had been having contractions on and off for 10 hours. We decided to get some sleep because we knew it could be a long night. Later that evening the contractions finally started getting closer, they were about 5 to 7 minutes apart, so we called Damaris to come back. She arrived about 7:00 pm and was here to stay. By the time she got there the contractions had gone back to the earlier pattern of 10 to 15 minutes apart. So we sat down to watch a movie (First Knight) and eat some popcorn while Rebecca took a nap. Around 11:00 pm I decided to get some sleep and Damaris laid down in the kid's room. About 1:30am Rebecca woke up with some hard contractions. So we woke up Damaris and she called Deb Sue who arrived around 2:00 am. At about 2:30 am Rebecca said she was hungry and we all wanted to eat. I went to the barn to get some fresh eggs and cooked them and some pigs-in-a-blanket for everyone. After eating we filled the pool and Rebecca got in the warm water. She had some hard contractions and then they stopped. She got out of the pool around 5:00 am, now 26 hours after it all started. We were all very tired so we went back to bed. We woke up with Rebecca having more strong contractions but still no closer than ten minutes apart. Another dilation check showed she was 7 centimeters. Damaris and Deb Sue asked if we would mind if they left for a short while to give us some privacy so that we could maybe get things moving again. They went to a coffee shop close by.

We later called their cell phone and asked them to come back; things seemed to be moving a little faster now. Before they arrived back Rebecca and I fell asleep. We woke up with contractions harder and harder. It seemed we were finally getting somewhere but contractions were still ten minutes apart. As they were getting harder, I prayed to God to please be with us because we were all tired and Rebecca was hurting so bad that I could see the pain in her eyes. I feel like He carried us through it. I believe that He was present that day in my home because I asked Him to be there. It was a true miracle. But back to the birth, Rebecca later had to go to the bathroom and realized that she was ready to push. She pushed a couple of times on the potty then we moved to the bed where Nathanael Joseph was born at 2:41 pm. He joined us, 3 days later, with our two older sons, at my sister-in-laws wedding where Rebecca even felt well enough to fulfill her role as a bride's maid!