dear Jessica and all the "delicious" moms to be,

so finally i found the time to sit down and write you about our beautiful experience that seems to be decades ago with our new life.

on oct 31, halloween night, my brother, my husband and i where on our way back home from the movie "ray".

i thought that its a great idea to continue our night at the parade that was taken place in Santa Monica, thanks to my husband aki we stayed home.

for a month i had a strong feeling that our son will arrive on nov 2, but as my mom told me "they are always arrive when you totally don't expect them to come, suddenly with no warnings they knock on the door."

so.. we were all going to sleep around 12 am, at 1 o'clock i found myself going back and forth to the restrooms too many times each time getting harder for me to do this way, finally i tapped on my husband shoulder saying "he's coming", he continued to sleep, i tapped again "he's coming", he jumped up realizing the news while I'm doing the same thing.

i stayed in bed concentrating on the contractions while aki started timing, waiting for the 4:1:1 to call our midwife, Leslie. after an hour we thought it was the time to call her.

i totally lost the sense of timing, sinking deeper and deeper into the contractions.

soon Leslie arrived to check me "usually for the first labor you tend to think you already 8 centimeters dilated but you'll be just one or two...yeah between one to two centimeters dilated" ?? that's it? "I'm going back home call me when the contractions will get stronger" how much stronger? "much much stronger". the next six-seven hours aki and i spend in our bedroom, all I'm doing is laying down in bed, taking every second for itself, no past no future just the new moment, breathing into the "pain ", allowing my body to open and defiantly using the breaks for relaxing my body and saving power for later on.

around 8 o'clock i felt it was the time to call Leslie back, when she arrived i was 5 centimeter dilated, she asked me if i want her to bring the tub that was near by i said that we'll manage without, she checked our bath-tub at home "you're small, do you want to get into your bath-tub?" "anything that will get me out of the bed" so there we are in our small tub at home taking our last steps toward our meeting with our son.

for the next two hours things got pretty fast and intense, aki was incredible supporting my back by holding my shoulders, watering me and cooling my face exactly when i needed, Leslie was amazing, she gave us all the space to do most of the work alone, showing up every few minutes to check our progress, showing me exactly where to point my intention to.

when finally it was the right time to push, specially now, i gave every inch of myself to each contraction as it was the last moment in my life, nothing was holding me back, i was stepping into the unknown, into this "pain" that gets us closer and closer to meet our son.

in these last moments patient was really important, no pushing until the next contraction, and these small breaks were exactly the time to align myself back saving all my strength for the next pushing. soon the head was out, i waited for the next contraction to push his body out ,few moments past, i was pushing again while Leslie said "pull him out, pull him out" i reached out to grab him and pull him toward my chest, it was the most overwhelming, rewarding feeling that i ever felt, "Liam" was in my hands crying his first cry with his new partners for life.