I suppose we should have seen it coming...

Elijah is here and I suppose we should have seen it coming. For the past few weeks I've been getting excited about the baby coming, but also about our car. Gary (that's the car's name) has been fast approaching the 100,000 mile mark on the odometer. Turns out that this was also a countdown timer. By Friday it was evident that it was going to hit the mark over the weekend as there were only 50 miles left, and it is 30 miles to and from church. We got to church on Sunday with only 19 miles to go, and Melissa was having contractions that were about 40 minutes apart. We got through 3/4 of Pastor Jim's sermon when Melissa dashed off to the bathroom. This was not unusual, and I did not suspect anything was going on until she returned and told me that we had to go. Turns out her water had broken. Her contractions were then up to 15 minutes apart and we packed up, dropped off a few things with friends at church and started heading back home. We paged Melissa's doctor and she told us to go to the hospital. This was pretty obvious already as once the water breaks it's time to go, but we had a few things to take care of before we left. We dropped off some stuff at Goodwill that we had planned to take in after church, and then it was back home to get the bags. 4 miles to go at this point. We had something to eat, Melissa something small, I had something larger, and we put together everything we needed. We didn't feel like we really had to rush as Melissa's contractions were still 15 minutes apart, so we called the parents to let them know we were heading in. Then we were off. I watched as we drove up Colorado Blvd, Alameda, 2 miles to go, 6th ave 1 mile to go. Finally we pulled into the parking garage and found a spot...the odometer read 100000. It was time. 6 and a half short and painful hours later, Elijah made his entrance. I'll let Melissa fill you in on the details of the labor, she has mostly forgotten the pain. I on the other hand have not.