Ashlee Nicole

Ashlee Nicole Martin was born on December 26, 2012. She was born in McKinney, TX at a birth center with a wonderful midwife, Kathleen Mayorga.
I had been having contractions on and off throughout the month of December. On December 23rd Lois Perks and her husband Steve, our good friends from DC came to spend Christmas with us. Lois was also here in hopes to help with the birth of Ashlee if she should decide to arrive during their visit. Lois had been our Doula during Samantha's birth and we were excited by the thought that she could be with us for Ashlee's birth as well.
On Christmas day we had a low pressure front come rattling through Dallas bringing with it a beautiful layer of snow, which Samantha loved playing in and eating. This also caused an exciting display of contractions, but no baby. However that night around 2am I woke up with some pretty good contractions that lasted for a couple of hours and then subsided, again.
I decided that I would wake up and cook a nice breakfast for everyone. Egg and ham bake with rolls and such. We got through with breakfast and Lois looked at me and said, "are you contracting?" to which I replied, "yes.". Apparently I had been making some interesting faces during the contractions. She recommended that I begin to track these to see how regular they were. About 1-1/2 hours later we were on our way to the birth center. And about 2-1/2 hours after that I was holding Ashlee in my arms.