waiting on an angel

each of my babies has their own special 'lullaby' song that we sing to them right before they go to bed every night... this is luci's song.

each year i tell the kids their birth story on their birthdays and they love it... arianna has gotten to the point where she asks me 'tell me how i was born again?' and i say she has to wait till her birthday...

so my sweet lucienne...
i waited and waited for that baby. her pre-birth is pretty well recorded here-- the few days before her arrival i was having hard labor each night. hard enough that i was getting next to no sleep.. i kept thinking we would leave for lincoln and then the contractions would just disapear. it was easter weekend so we had an easter egg hunt at the church.... me being the shape of an easter egg it was very appropriate...

5 days overdue... i was exhausted and feeling like i was teetering on the edge of how much i could really take. i had tried everything short of grabbing that bottle of castor oil....
i had  bounced on an exercise ball for almost 3 hours, i had climbed yanney tower like 4 times....

grayson, being the compassionate soul that he is, offered his services and gave it his best shot....but NOTHING seemed to work.....

so by easter morning i was 6 days overdue and after another night of hard labor with no baby i really felt like i had been brought to the end of myself. i had never done a labor like this. the other two had both started in the morning when i woke up and i had had a babe in my arms by my regular bedtime. 

where was my baby??

 

of course everyone we saw at church on

maundy thursday, good friday, the easter egg hunt on saturday, and easter sunday

asked me

"still no baby?"

nope..thanks for asking.

i called my midwife karen that afternoon. i was weepy and tired and getting kind of needy... i remember saying a lot of 'i just don't know if i can do another night of this...'

she said if i started in again with the contractions just come in and i would for sure leave with a baby... i was so worried because i never have ANY interventions.... not even an IV.. and i really didn't want any this time either. she reminded me though that i wouldn't be able to do much if i was out of my mind exhausted. she thought if she had to break my water the baby would come really quickly since all we were waiting on was for her to engage.

so 9 pm rolls  around and here they come... i time for awhile and we are in the same boat as the nights before.. anywhere from 8 -12 minutes apart. by 10 pm i tell nate lets just go... if she has to break my water so be it because i just can't do this again...so we pack up the kids and start driving to lincoln. 

the contractions were hard enough that i had to be quiet and concentrate through them.

about an hour into the drive i looked over at nate and said

'just so you know, these are coming about 4 minutes apart now.' 

he said, 'uuuhh..ok.' and started driving faster.  :)

when we get to lincoln we dropped grayson off at a friends house to sleep for the night (thanks darcy!) and then drove on to the hospital. arianna had decided that she would like to be at the birth and so grammy was meeting us there. we check in around 1 am and i am just sure they will check me and i will be at 7 or 8 cm.

ummm. no. a four. a four!! are you kidding me!? a four?? 

oh for pete's sake. i remember getting all weepy to nate saying i don't have 12 hours in me... i don't know what i'm going to do...the nurse was saying this was only pre labor and wanted to give me morphine to sleep... i looked at her and said ' i have done this twice.. i know what REAL contractions feel like.. 

I AM IN LABOR! 

thankfully we called karen and she said she believed this was it and said to just hang in there... go for a walk, get in the bath then we would recheck... she said she thought it would happen fast.

so we went on a little stroll to the cafeteria... and by stroll i mean long empty hallways with me stopping every 3 minutes and breathing through a contraction. the funny thing about that is my mom always told us the story about her third birth, my brother... they sent her on a long walk around the floor in the middle of the night and she ended up not being able to make it back... the baby came so fast the doctor barely made it there to catch him. so on my walk i kept saying--- i don't know about this-- my mom warned me about heading down these deserted hospital hallways in the middle of the night....

when we got back to the room i got in the whirlpool tub. at 2:30 a.m. i was at a 6.... by 4:30 a.m. a 9... the strange thing was i had had so much pre labor it really messed with my head and i had a hard time believing this was really it. i kept asking karen

'are you sure "i'm in labor?'" she would just laugh and say "yeah, i'm sure."

 arianna had been hanging out with grammy and coming in and out of the room while i labored. she was so calm and even held my hand through a few contractions while i 'counted down'... which was what seemed to really click for this labor. i just wanted absolute silence, with nate right next to me but not doing anything but sitting there.. and then i would count and rock during contractions,

"one baby, two baby, three baby"

when i got in the tub to deliver ari crawled right up on the ledge beside me.

at 4:55 am after about 3 pushes we got to meet our little one. ari said 'happy birthday baby! i just like the baby to know it's their birthday..." she also told me that the baby didn't look exactly like i had described...there was way more 'white stuff' than she thought there should be.. i thought she looked perfect.

at this point i actually didn't even know if it was a boy or girl... she had the cord wrapped around her neck twice and after karen undid that she said, "alright mommy... pull your baby up!" i scooped her out of the water and put her on my chest... and i was so happy and relieved i didn't want to even move to check to see if she was a girl/boy for about 3 minutes. ari kept asking "what is it?" so we looked and i said "i just KNEW you were a girl!!" we stayed in the tub about 10 minutes and oh the relief of getting to hold that baby after all that WAITING!!!

after we got out we went and snuggled in the bed for awhile... clearly it's exhausting being born.:)

that was one of the best things about this birth... our midwife, our nurses,...no one felt the need to be a baby snatcher. she didn't even get cleaned up for a good hour afterwards. i loved that.

ari got to hold her before her and grammy headed home for some sleep. (thanks grammy! :))

so that is how we met our precious little lucienne brooke.  we were going back and forth between two names... but just as the sun was rising we decided her name was lucienne brooke...

'bringer of light and water' is the meaning... it seemed just right.

looking back at her birth i am so grateful for the journey God gave me. i could feel His leading to let the process go and abandon myself in trust... and i did. and then even at that last minute i had to release my last straw.. my determination to do it completely on my own, without any interventions. then in perfect grace He gave me real labor, and i was able to have the birth i had planned for. oh the lessons that are waiting when we abandon ourselves to trust. 

we love you luci! welcome to the world sweet girl!