We, of course, left you in suspense the last post. We must then complete, as what Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story”. Monday, March 7 started with a visit from the midwife. In New Zealand for you international followers, the midwife comes to your home for a few weeks before the baby is due. Now Audra has had many “scares” where labour seemed to be progressing but then ends after a couple of hours. But when the midwife checked, there was not much by way of progress. Audra is now 5 days overdue. She has gone early every other time, but sometimes with some help from modern medicine. In New Zealand, if you are not 8 days over due they do not consider taking any other sorts of measures.
After meeting with the midwife, we were slightly disheartened. We could do nothing but wait. So we figured we might as well go out for the day. Mondays are my day off so we packed up some food and headed out to the zoo for the afternoon.
We spent time visiting our favourite areas like emus, lions, and tigers. The kids wanted to feed the giraffes. Eventually, as a good husband should, I noticed that Audra was lagging behind a wee bit more than normal. When I asked her about it, she told me she was labouring a little. When we got in the car to head home, it was clear she was quite uncomfortable. Then by the time we got home, the typical threat about never having another child was uttered. Soon I was commanded to call the midwife. Audra between the contractions talked to the midwife trying to pretend everything was alright. The midwife asked us to wait a half an hour and call back. We took the time to pack the overnight bag and some clothes for the hopefully newest addition to our family. I called someone to watch the kids, who were now happily seated in front of the TV to make sure they did not manifest themselves before their now screaming mother.
Needless to say, we made it to the hospital with only 40 minutes to spare. Corban Stuart was born about 7:40 pm Auckland standard time. Another interesting thing about giving birth here is that after you give birth, you are basically shoved out the door within 3 hours (if you chose to go the hospital). You get a little to eat, a shower, and you are placed in the car to go home or go to an outside birthing centre. If you go to any other place than the hospital, you would need to be shipped to the hospital if there were any complications. This made the choice easy for us since with two of our children there were minor complications. But everything went well, and we were on our way to a birthing centre at 11:00 pm. We are once again thankful to God for another healthy child.
This Kiwi Life 