Sunday, October 08, 2006

Birth days and babies

As I write this, I am most joyously not pregnant. Instead, I'm holding perhaps the most perfect baby boy ever to grace the planet. Yes, I am biased, but he is really cute.

The occasion of this little guy's arrival is most notably wonderful because of one thing; it finally happened! After failed and frustrating attempts to have a baby on my time, God blessed me with a safe and successful delivery not even a week past my due date. And, everyone joined in the celebration.

Struggling with exhaustion, my labor went in fits and starts for a while. Finally, the wonderful OB nurse caring for me arranged for pitocin and an epidural, in that order. The pitocin went to work immediately. The epidural took a little longer, since the anesthesiologist wasn't in house. Still, once he got things in place (after one failed attempt and my husband's near black-out), life was wonderful, for about two hours. Then two things happened in quick succession. First, the doctor checked to see what was happening, then very pleased with my progress, went to change into scrubs for delivery. Second, the contractions started hurting again; picture Marlin from Nemo, "Good feeling gone."

Not realizing how close I was to delivery, I asked for the epidural to be turned up. The doctor, who had just returned from changing his clothes, said "No. You need to push." Then he told the nurse to turn up the pitocin! I said, "I don't want to push. It hurts." But, next thing I knew, my body was doing exactly what God designed it to do; pushing! Someone told me they could see a head of dark hair, and I pushed really hard. Within minutes, I was holding my new son.

We're settling in at home, celebrating the birth of our baby with balloons and cards; celebrating the births of our oldest and youngest daughters with cakes and balloons and cards. In the end, we're celebrating the gift of life, and rejoicing that we have such a privilege.

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