It’s been on my heart lately to get some words on a page regarding the birth of our three children. We went from one to three kids in a flash. By the time our youngest was born, we had a 3 1/2 year old daughter and a just over 2 year old son, and it was like “What just happened?!” Naturally, journaling about their introductions into our lives was put on a backburner in favor of wiping their ‘you know whats’ and keeping them alive.
But now it’s time. Time to give each child a page of their own in my online story book so that I/they/we can look back and remember how it felt to welcome them to this world. Amazing. It was amazing.
For those of you who know us, you’ll know the name of our sweet oldest. She is currently 5 years and 9 months old, and is thriving in her kindergarten year. She’s silly; often singing at the top of her lungs and dancing around the kitchen to the Trolls 2 soundtrack. She has a sit still nature for most things like schoolwork, coloring, and puzzles. She can spend hours at the kitchen table if it’s for something she wants to tackle. Related to that, she has a knack for those same things. We’re so proud of how well she’s doing with reading (READING, you guys. I didn’t even remember they started doing that in kindergarten! I’m so happy), and how she gives attention to tasks in her care. She’s also the big sis in her outlook on life. She sees fit to correct and to care for those little sibs of hers, and I sometimes have to reign in the love. Haha. Kids.
I went into labor with her on a Saturday. April 11th of 2015. For those of you who are good with just those details, you’d better find a YouTube video or something because this is going to go on for a bit. My due date was April 15th. An ironic due date for an accountant mind you. I worked full time leading up to that time because there was such an urgency to get as much done as I could before she showed up.
She. Yes, we did find out the gender of our first. I remember being both thrilled because I knew all about girly things (3 girls in my family) and worried that I’d end up having all girls! Haha, so silly to think about those feelings now.
So April 10th, 2015. I leave work feeling very large and very, very swollen. My feet were stuffed into sandals from about January on. I do think looking back that I kind of knew I wouldn’t make it until the 15th. God gives us moms feelings about those sorts of things, you know. Saturday morning I had some contractions that I wasn’t sure were the real deal. Dan was outside working on backyard duties and didn’t pay much attention to me for the good part of the day, until I came waddling outside around 4 pm and said “They’re getting worse, Dan”. The details are fuzzy now so I’ll skip the boring parts in favor of the things I remember clearly. Vividly I remember our baby’s heart rate disappearing at the hospital after they hooked the heart rate monitor up to my belly. All at once there were 20 people in that little room. It’s really quite a tremendous thing that our medical professionals can react that quickly. Soon, her heart rate came back on the screen and we breathed again. I remember getting an epidural. I remember they gave me a BOOST on that epidural which made me so happy. I couldn’t feel a THING anymore. I remember spending many hours of that night having deep conversation: myself, Dan, and our doctor. That man was a quiet, gentle, experienced with 30 years as a L&D doc, man of God. I appreciated his care over that pregnancy and his role in delivering our sweet first.
I remember clearly the moment I began to push. As a first timer, you kind of have ideas in your head about how the ‘phases’ will go, especially if you take a birth class like we did. After a couple of pushes, it was clear that I was, well kind of sucking, at pushing. Is it possible to do this wrong?, I thought. One very sweet and well intentioned nurse kept trying to give me countdowns to push. Dan will tell you to this day that I was mean to her. Noooooo. Okay, maybe I was kind of mean. Its just that after a couple hours of pushing and getting nowhere, at something you’re pretty sure you should know how to do, you get….irritated.
I would push- see her little head for a second, and then it would be gone. 3 hours and 40 mins (or something like that) into all of that irritated, unproductive pushing and I clearly remember Doc saying: “5 more minutes and we’re going to call it”. Call it….um NOPE. I’m not a professional but I knew they were talking about taking my tired, frustrated self to a C-section room to get baby out. Dan told people after the fact that I turned into the hulk just then. Those 5 minutes were chewed up by my beet red face giving it one last bitter end try to get to the finish line.
Out she came at 9:30 AM. Our families were both in church thinking, as we found out later, that I must have been in the operating room since they hadn’t heard from us since the night before. Details again fuzzy on this part. Dan says she had an Apgar score that was 0 or 1 which is no good. I don’t remember that. They took her away; not to the nursery, just to the changing table to examine her. I remember emotions of relief. Indescribable joy. A haze: not really quite sure how we got to that moment but very, very thankful we did.
I remember our sweet little baby girl had a cone head. Turns out she was transverse or sideways (they think she flipped when her heart rate dropped), which is the explanation for that dreadful 3 plus hours of pushing. 5 years and 3 babies later, that was the worst labor indeed. And yet. To have that first child in your arms after expectation has been building for months and really years of anticipating it, it is the very best feeling there is. She was beautiful to me, lop sided head and all. We gave her a yellow duck beanie and she quickly became ours. She was an easy baby that slept a crazy amount. 8 lbs, 3 oz of brand new, God given life.
We have been stretched in many parental ways since that first moment. All of it, all of it, all of it has been bathed in God’s grace. I didn’t know what I was doing back then and I still don’t. One week after she was born, I ended up in the ER with basically an anxiety attack from sleeplessness. I look back now and I do have to chuckle that I couldn’t manage to sleep while she slept. Come on, Kaeli: First rule of parenting. Sleep when baby sleeps! But you know what, that night in the ER was itself a remembrance that is part of her/my story. I had the best hours of deep, heartfelt conversation with my mother in law there. I got to see a week old daddy care for his little peanut while I just ‘needed a minute’. God’s grace was there. I have never ever been more shaped than I have being a mom. I find in each new transition (one to two, two to three, nursing, working, training, making time for my hubby) growth in myself. God knew me when I was in my mother’s womb. He saw every single moment of my life before it came to be.
Sometimes I worry about how long I’ll live. Truth. I worry that I won’t get to see my kids do this or that; that I’ll be taken to glory before I get to experience all that I want to experience with my family. But friends, I know whom I have believed and He’s able to keep me until that day, whenever that day is. I come back to that today. To know Jesus Christ and the power of His gospel, it’s to know that tomorrow is in His hands. It’s to know that everything we are given is part of His work and His way for us. The beautiful time that He brought our oldest daughter into the world, sparing her heartbeat and giving her her first breath, was written into the fabric of our lives in His time. What more could I ever need than what He has provided me? He has never failed me yet; and so I pray for wholehearted trust.
Firstborn daughter: May you know this. That Christ died for you. That we love you always, no matter what. That our very greatest prayer is that you’d have the faith of Abraham. That no matter what comes, you would trust in your Savior and know nothing at all takes him by surprise. Love you incredibly, deeply, forever. -Your mama