It was Sunday morning at around 2am when Kaci woke me.

“I think something is happening.”

Kaci had been awake since 12:14am and felt like she was in the early stages of labour.

The first thing that came to my mind when she woke me was “surely not…”

I was dead-set certain that our baby wasn’t coming until later next week.

But after laying with Kaci and seeing what she was experiencing I knew this was it.

Our baby was determined to be an April baby!

For the next two hours I laid with Kaci in bed helping her focus on her breathing. The contractions were coming fast. We held out until 4am and then decided it was time to call the Midwife Group number.

They confirmed Kaci was definitely in the early stage of labour and suggested the best thing to do right now was to try and rest and get some sleep.

Sleep was definitely not happening…

We put on a pregnancy meditation track from our Hypno-birthing course. And we laid together for the next three hours. The contractions continued to be frequent, and as the early morning went on their intensity increased. I could feel Kaci’s whole body shake at times.

In between contractions we spooned, Kaci focused on her breath, and we both slipped back into this hypnotic dream-like state. It was quite a peaceful experience in between the contractions. 

Somehow Kaci managed to hold out until the morning.

At 7am we called the Midwife Group number again.

Kaci told the midwife she was starting to feel the need to ‘push’ when the contractions were coming. The mid-wife said she was coming straight over!

When she got to our house around 7:30 am and checked Kaci she found that Kaci was already fully dilated! This meant it was time to get straight to the hospital.

There was not much time to do anything. We grabbed our bags. Put Kaci in the car. Said good-bye to Cosby. And headed straight to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. 

Thankfully it was Sunday morning and the roads were quiet. I dropped Kaci at the front of the hospital and went and parked the car. Kaci told me not to take too long because she thought the baby could come at any moment!

I scoffed down the protein shake I had made, parked the car, and walked over to the hospital and up to the birthing suite, room number 18 (which was fitting because 18 was my footy number).

We both thought if we had stayed at home in our environment the birth would have happened quite quickly. Kaci had done an incredible job over night to get to where she was.

But the travel to the hospital, and then having Kaci and the babies heart rates monitored (because they heard they were an IVF baby) meant lots of interruptions, and distractions which put Kaci out of the state she was in. And this meant the frequency of contractions slowed down significantly making it challenging to deliver our baby.

For the next three hours what I witnessed was… I’m struggling to find the right word to describe this experience…

I witnessed what the human body can do. I witnessed what women are capable of. I witnessed how much of a superwoman Kaci is.

She was so determined and gave it her all. We had to try so many different positions to help bring the baby out. And we would get so close, then the baby would retreat. 

We got to the point where the doctor said we were going to have to use some kind of intervention to help the baby come out. 

But Kaci was determined she could do it. 

And she did.

The last five to ten minutes were intense. 

I couldn’t look any more. 

I had my eyes closed, grasping Kaci’s hand and telling her “You can do this! You’ve got this!”.

And next thing I open my eyes and see the midwife pass our baby to Kaci. I looked down. And I saw our baby was a boy. We never found out the sex of our baby so we had been anticipating this for a long time!

In that moment all the emotions hit me. 

The flood gates opened.

We did it.

On Sunday the 30th of April at 12:15pm, our baby boy Clifford Max Marshall entered this world. 

Words can’t describe how precious these past few days have been. 

Cliffy is a little ball of pure love and joy. 

You can’t wipe the smile off our faces.

I’m definitely a proud Dad already. 🥹