My story starts on January 12, 1999 when I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I told my husband, Luke, and he was so excited. We never found out the sex of the baby. We wanted it to be a surprise. Luke and I tried to come up with a name for the baby because we did not want to call the kid it all the time. Luke started calling the baby Lucky, so that stuck. I am still not sure where the name came from though.

By about the seventh month, Lucky was becoming a big baby! The doctor said that everything was fine but I felt as though I was carrying a basketball under my shirt all the time. Luke was great, telling me that I looked beautiful and all that. We painted the room and got everything ready. At the end of August, I went to the doctor and he said that all was on schedule and that he did not think I would deliver before my due date of September 12. I was glad because I was getting a little worried about having the baby.

On September 3, Luke and I decided to go to his parents' mountain house that was two hours away. We got there just fine. On the way, I started to have some cramping but it wasn't too bad and I thought it was just from being in the car. After we were done unloading the car, we went on a little walk. The cramping was totally gone but I had a pain in my back. Luke rubbed it and it went away. He told Lucky to quit bothering me and the baby listened to him. We went back to the house and everything was fine.

The next day, we went for another walk and this one was a pretty far walk. I started to have bad cramps so we stopped and sat down and had lunch and all. The cramps were still there so we decided to walk back to the house. On the way, I told Luke that we needed to sit because Lucky was making it hard to walk. When the cramping was over, I stood up and we walked the rest of the way to the house and sat on the porch steps. I was rubbing my belly trying to ease the pain and we were talking. I decided to stand up and as soon as I did, my water gushed out. Luke asked what he could do. I told him that Lucky was coming early!

Luke got me up on the porch. There was so much pressure down there that I felt like I was going to explode. Luke pulled my overalls off of me and I told him to look between my legs and tell me what he saw. He said that he could kinda see Lucky's head but not too well. I was just standing there on the porch and I told Luke to go get a blanket. He ran in the house. While he was gone, I felt the baby crown. I yelled for Luke to hurry and he came just as Lucky's head came into full view. There I was, standing on the porch with Lucky's head in between my legs. Luke held the head while I pushed out the rest of the body. Lucky was a boy! He was born at 4:43 p.m. on September 4, 1999.

We held him while I waited to deliver the placenta. That happened about 10 minutes later and then we wrapped Lucky (we still did not have a real name for him) in a blanket and went to the hospital. Everybody was fine and my son weighed 7 pounds, 8 ounces and then we went home. We decided to name our son Gavin Michael, but we still call him Lucky.

Gavin Micheal is going to be a big brother soon! I am 6 months pregnant with his brother who we will name Kyle Andrews.