3 years ago

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On this date in 2007, we brought forth upon this land a precious baby girl. Happy third birthday, Elizabeth!

We had a party and invited some family and friends over. There was much eating of pink princess cake. And then waving of "wandza," Sleeping Beauty (in a variety of formats), a pink tea set, markers, and puzzles, and fun stuff, oh my!

There are several stories that I have to convey about Elizabeth, but I think those shall wait for another post.

Instead:

As I have approached the date of Elizabeth's birth, I can't help but think about the circumstances of her birth. I don't think I ever posted about her birth. Looking back at my posts from around then, I found that this was the first post after her birth. She was almost 4 months old.

I sometimes struggle with how Elizabeth's birth went down. We had planned a homebirth. We had two experienced midwives, my mom (a nurse, mother of 4) was there, my mother-in-law, mother of 11 homebirthed kids was there, and Jude, who had seen more birth than most men ever do. After laboring at home for several days, we decided to transfer to a local hospital for "augmentation" AKA Hello, Pitocin! Elizabeth was born about 8 hours later, caught by a doctor who, when he went to work that day, probably didn't expect a lady, her husband, 4 women and another man (my dad) to walk into hospital seeking help for a slow labor.

Ultimately, I had a healthy baby, and a healthy self. I didn't end up with a C-section, which we knew was a distinct possibility. I kept my humor throughout, and pushed that baby out without a hint of pain meds. I still sometimes feel that I gave up a homebirth too soon, or that I could have had that baby at home if we had just done something different. I'm grateful that in spite of things going differently than we had hoped we still had a positive experience. We feel like we were able to offer a positive testimony to the nurses and doctor at the hospital. But still... Sometimes I wish things could have been different.

I wrote the birth story afterwards, and it's pretty long and pretty amazing how everything came together in just the right way. It would require some editing before posting, but perhaps that's something I'll get to eventually.

I'm glad I get to celebrate my little girl. She's precious!