Birth Story :: Part I

Where to begin?  Maybe I should begin with the most obvious (to me and to david at least), we have a BEAUTIFUL baby girl.  We just can't believe it.  I myself cannot believe that this beautiful (rather large) baby came out of me.   Out of my body.  That I did it.  I don't feel boastful to say to that I am quite proud of myself and so in awe of my body -- although, I guess its not really awe of myself, but truly is awe of the way God created me and the great gift I was given to be able to grow her inside of me and have such a great delivery.  Among all of my ever changing emotions, I am most of all humbled.  The beautiful weight of God's glory is upon me and all I can do is praise Him.  One of the concentration verses I brought with me to read during labor was from psalm 139, "I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."  I picked this verse to remind me that my child was safe and healthy and not outside of God's good hand, and while it did do that, this verse more served as a reminder that I am a child of the King, that I am not outside of God's good hand, that I am loved beyond measure.  I struggle to believe how strongly Christ's love is manifest through this little child.  But then I think to myself, "Why should you be shocked?  You know this is who God is and that this is what he delights to do!"   

Labor

David and I had planned to do things as naturally as possible.  That is not to say that we were against drugs or interventions, but that we wanted to do whatever felt natural to us and to make decisions based on our needs and desires when we felt they needed to be made.  We did end up having to be induced.  We arrived at Baptist Hospital at 7:30 Monday morning.  By 8:00 I was in bed and hooked up to pitocin and all sorts of monitors and IVs.  Not exactly what I had hoped for, but I was doing fine.  What we were not prepared for was how quickly the pitocin would kick in and how strong and how close together the contractions would be.  By noon things were getting pretty hard.  Breathing was taking more concentration.  They kept turning up my pit-drip and of course with that, things quickly elevated (they told me later that because of the pitocin I was having contractions at the same level of a woman already in the transition stage of labor).  People have asked me what it felt like, and I already almost can't remember.  What I do remember is how precious that time was -- struggling against my body and feeling it's strength, locking my eyes with David to make it through each contraction & following his lead to breath, tears rolling down my face (and David's), attempting to sing the hymns that we had playing on the cd player but face and chin quivering and shaking wouldn't allow it.  I don't remember the pain, but I do remember what it felt like to look into David's eyes.  That I will never forget -- all the love, trust, and adoration.  My cup was overflowing.  What a humbling experience.  

All this time, as contractions were lasting about 30seconds and were a minute & a half apart, I was still only at 2cm (which is what I was a week prior).  We knew we had a long way to go and knew how tired my body already was.  We made the hard decision to go ahead and get an epidural.  And although that is not "natural," making that decision together was very natural to us.

To make a long story short, things from there went well.  We had a really good time enjoying our family and watching them enjoy each other.  Not long after the epidural they started turning down my pit-drip and I actually started having some pretty decent sized contractions on my own.  It took a while, but I finally got to 4cm - which we all celebrated.  From there things progressed more steadily.  By 10pm I was at 7cm and our families left shortly after that to go rest up for delivery.  We figured they probably had a good 4 hours or so before anything really exciting started happening...

Part II tomorrow...