Labor Started!!!!

Labor started last night about 9-10pm. Annette started to have more regular contractions when we were out walking the dogs at Pinery Provincial Park, and after we got home they got more intense and more frequent. We asked the mid-wife to come to see how things were going, still not sure if Annette was starting into labor or not. When the mid-wife arrived at 9:30 or so, she found Annette was having good contractions and was 3cm dilated and the baby's head was fully engaged. Since it would take all night for her to fully dilate, (increase of 1cm/hr would be very fast, .5cm/hr would be more usual) she told us to sleep as much as we could. Needless to say Annette did not sleep much what with the hard contractions, and I didn't sleep much because, well, this is exciting and my mind keeps running over what is happening. Things are continuing, and we will phone our parents soon so they can come down. Going into labor was an answer to the prayers of many people. If she had not, we would have had to seen an Ob for a consult and could have ended up having to have the baby in hospital if they said we had to induce, which is not what we desired. But thanks be to God, everything is going naturally!