Yes, she is beautiful. I mean, I'll be honest in that I was a little nervous that our second baby wouldn't be as cute as our first. Graeme was clearly adorable...
I had nothing to worry about though. God gave us two beautiful, healthy children. We are so very thankful for both of them!
I guess I'll backtrack a bit before I get into the birth story...
The end of my second pregnancy got fairly miserable. I know I didn't have it nearly as bad as some people, but I was done being pregnant. My feet were so swollen and sore, and I was running out of shoes that fit. My back hurt. My heartburn was bad. I was so tired all the time. And uncomfortable. Among other things that weren't fun. Oh, and I still had to wrangle a heavy toddler every day...
Sorry. After-the-fact, not-necessary complaining is over.
And I knew that any day none of that would matter anymore and of course it would all be worth it. And I knew I shouldn't complain because I was blessed to be pregnant with a healthy baby. But, truthfully, when that "due date" is still a mystery and days keep going by with no baby, it gets a bit frustrating. I wasn't really counting on Maisy coming early, but I hoped that she did.
She did not.
January 1st. New Year's Day. Due Date.
It came. And it went.
I had an appointment on New Year's Eve (Thursday) and my doctor said I was half a centimeter dilated. I was pretty sure he just said that to try to make me feel a little better. My only solace was that I had an appointment Monday morning and I could schedule an induction from there. I was nervous about going too late because Graeme was a pretty big baby and Maisy had been measuring big too.
I tried to keep my hopes up and pray a lot. I knew that God knew exactly when Maisy would come and all I really cared about was that she was safe and healthy. We enjoyed a fun weekend with Graeme.
On Sunday, all was normal. No signs of baby Maisy. Graeme and I went to church. I sat in our first service with Aaron. I had steady contractions all through the service, which was really nothing new. They were hardly painful. And when I stood up afterwards and moved around, they stopped.
I lead worship for our preschoolers during the second hour. One of the songs was a bit lively and required some jumping. I told the kids that it had better help me have a baby.
Little did I know, it just might have...
Graeme took a great nap that afternoon. I had considered a nap, and was tired, but at that point it was a lot harder for me to sleep at night if I slept during the day. (But I really should have taken a nap!)
It was slow going, but we made a lot of good progress. We would be able to finish quickly once Graeme was in bed and we could both work at the same time. Around 5:30, we did one final switch before we would take a break to do Graeme's bath/book/bedtime routine. I came upstairs to play with Graeme while Aaron went down to mop all of the hardwood floors.
Graeme and I were in the playroom and I had painstakingly lowered myself down to sit on the floor for the thousandth time that day. Even though I was trying to take it easy with the cleaning, I had still been working pretty hard and had been on my feet a lot all day. Graeme got up from where we were playing with his kitchen and ran into his room.
"What are you doing, buddy?"
No answer.
"Hey, Graeme, come back out here please..."
Silence.
Not that there is anything in his room that could hurt him. But, he's a toddler. We are constantly only seconds away from some sort of giant mess. And it was really close to bed time. I looked down at my watch. It was 5:44pm. The time for giant messes had passed.
The thought of getting up from the floor to stand and walk the 10 feet to his room sounded nearly impossible at that time. My brain couldn't get my legs to stand. But, crawling didn't sound so bad. My legs didn't mind that so much.
I began crawling to Graeme's room. And all of a sudden, I felt a very slight and strange twinge-y thing in my stomach. And then my legs were very warm. And very wet. And I quickly deduced that it was impossible that I was peeing my pants.
And remembering it now seems like it all happened slowly. But no, it was very fast. I suddenly had no trouble at all bolting to my feet and running quickly to the bathroom that was thankfully right next to me. All the while yelling "IT'S HAPPENING! IT'S HAPPENING!"
"What?! What's happening?!" Aaron yelled from downstairs. "What's wrong?! What is it?"
"MY WATER JUST BROKE!"
I was in quite a bit of shock. My water did not break when I had Graeme and I was not expecting it to this time. It was quite the strange feeling.
Aaron ran up the steps freaking out and brought me towels.
I called the on-call doctor while I stood in the bathroom on towels. I had to leave a message.
While I was on hold to leave a message, Aaron quickly called my parents to try to figure out what to do with Graeme since it was almost time for him to go to bed. I asked if they would mind coming up here so he could just sleep in his own bed for that night. They agreed that would be easiest.
Graeme thankfully ran around clueless to everything but probably thought we were being quite crazy.
Thankfully, the doctor called right back. It wasn't a doctor from my practice, but he was nice. It's funny to me that the first question is "Is this your first baby?" I feel like when I say it's my second I earn a few points and they trust me a bit more to know what's going on. The doctor said that since I hadn't been having any contractions, there was really no rush to get to the hospital. As long as I was comfortable at home, we didn't need to head that way for a few hours.
This made me feel much better and then I was able to be quite calm. I loved that I could now put Graeme to bed like normal, finish cleaning the house, finish packing the hospital bag, and take a shower. As long as I did all of those things with towels in between my legs, of course. Ha.
Aaron, on the other hand, thought I was insane when I spouted off all the things I wanted to do. He might be right, but coming home with a baby to a clean house was definitely something we were doing. No question.
My parents arrived not long after we called them as we set them into panic mode as well. But, it was good that my mom was there to help Aaron finish cleaning. The plan was for my dad to spend the night at our house with Graeme and for my mom to come to the hospital with us.
Aaron's parents joined us shortly thereafter and his mom was going to come to the hospital with us too while his dad kept my dad company and watched the football game before he would come.
Around 8:30pm I finally decided that I should probably drink some water and actually rest for awhile.
As soon as I laid down on the couch, I noticed that I was having contractions. And they were a bit painful. I started watching the clock and realized they were only two-three minutes apart.
Thirty minutes later, I went upstairs where Aaron was shaving and finishing getting ready to go.
"Hey...so, no big rush, but I think we should probably leave pretty soon. My contractions are starting to hurt pretty bad and they are about three minutes a part..."
At that, he accidentally cut his face in his rush to finish shaving. I reminded him that I had said "no big rush..." We quickly threw the last couple of things in the bag, peaked in on Graeme one last time, and said goodbyes to our dads.
Our moms got in Aaron's car while we got in our van. And off we went to the hospital. Maisy was for sure on her way!'
To be continued...
I just love to read your blog! Such love and joy is conveyed through your words...yes, even this story of being uncomfortably pregnant.
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