Esther's Birth

God is so very Good.

My mom had a week. She got permission to come but in the whole course of the coming month and last month there was only one week when it was at all plausible for her to leave the mission and come here. When she told me that the first time I felt totally peaceful about it. Maybe like Peter walking on the water to the Lord I had total confidence that if she only had a week that God would help it to work out. But as I got closer to my due date I became kind of a crazy person. I wanted to baby to come right now even at 37 weeks. I thought I was totally ready and that Javier and I could handle it alone for a week and I got really depressed when she didn't come right away. Last Saturday I thought my water broke and we woke up all of our kids and took them to Seth's house and drove to the hospital only to find that through some insanely cruel trick of nature it was just lots or really watery fluid that wasn't my bag of waters. I cried for three hours straight which is so completely ridiculous but in my mind I was totally convinced that the baby would never come. I lost all my hope. The next day was Sunday and we'd been up all night so we missed church and watched conference talks instead. Javier turned on the Saturday afternoon session and there was a talk "Therefore they hushed their fears" by president Bednar. God knew I needed to hear it and I realized that I had been missing faith. I know that God will take care of us but I forgot it for that time. SO I repented and I think I handled the next couple days if a little impatiently with more grace than before. Tuesday night labor began with increasingly painful contractions but spaced pretty far apart. I got excited I labored all night and then finally at 7 just when I was starting to say it was probably time to go in I fell asleep for an hour and when I woke up they were gone. I was kind of disappointed but I remembered the lesson I had learned and I didn't give in. I was able to spend that whole day getting things done that needed to happen, last minute errands and taking care of the kids and I mowed the lawn. Then after picking the kids up from school I sat down on the couch and fell asleep for 10 minutes. When I woke up I was having the most painful contraction I'd ever felt and had to moan through it. The kids were super concerned. It was painful enough that it only took two contractions to convince me it was time to go and I moaned all through every contraction till we got to the hospital. I Was so worried they were going to turn me away but I progressed a centimeter in the first few minutes I was there from a 4 to a 5 so they got me back right away. Things were just getting more and more painful. I was making a lot of noise and it was starting to feel beyond bearable. The nurses taught me to "He He He" and that helped a little. I was group B positive so they had to get a bag of antibiotics in as quickly as possible and a bag of fluids before I could get an epidural. Everything went so fast. There was constantly something to do. I was probably in triage for close to an hour then it took awhile to get the IV in, then the medicine. I was pretty miserable by the time the epidural came and it did;t work on one side so almost as soon as I got some relief the pain started to intensify and pretty soon I wasn't able to He or moan or anything to cope with the contractions I just started bawling. Luckily by this time the nurse came in and shortly after the doctor and they said the baby was ready to come and out she came. They said she was sunny side up and that was why it hurt so badly, but out she came in just a couple pushes while I bawled and bawled and then when they put her on my tummy I just kept bawling. I'm crying now just thinking about it. 

I worried so much during this pregnancy. I never really let myself imagine it would all be okay, I was just overwhelmed not just with the pain but also with so much gratitude to have delivered her safely. She on the other hand hardly cried at all, sweet little dear. She was so so tiny. 6 lb 1.2 oz which made her our smallest baby by half a pound. My first thought was that she looked premature. I thought it might have been very foolish to mow the lawn after all. She was born Wednesday night at 9:02 the day before my mom was coming on a plane from Louisiana to help and oh how merciful the Lord's timing was. We thought we could handle this but there is just no way. IT has been so impossibly overwhelming and all the kids are so overwhelmed and I am. Without my mom here to help these last days I don;t know how we could have possibly managed.