Happy Birthday, Sweet P

One year ago, I had my third baby.

Things did NOT go as planned. But, they ended up sweeter than I could have ever imagined.

I spent my whole third pregnancy driving an hour away to meet with a midwife for treatment. The plan was to have the baby at her birthing center so that we could come home within four hours of the baby's birth.

Well, the midwife was apparently not a very good one. She was checked out, ready to retire, and really didn't want to deal with the actual job we hired her to do--deliver our baby.

We were sent home when we should not have been, and ignored when we should have had responses via text and phone call.

The evening she was born, I was trying to carve pumpkins with my big girls in between pretty intense contractions. I wasn't able to successfully get anything done, but thankfully my mom was there to step in and help. The midwife only replied to the notice of intense contractions with, "okay thanks," via text.

We had been up all night before, thinking we were in active labor, so I sent Shawn to bed early so that he could rest, pretty confident we would be making the drive BACK to the birthing center that evening to have the baby.

Well, about an hour after he went to sleep, and maybe within 2 hours of the text to the midwife, my contractions were closer and more intense than ever, and my water broke. I was ready to push.

I was finally able to get the midwife on the phone and as she heard a contraction, her response was, "Well, if I were you, I'd head to your local ER because you won't make it here."

I was pretty livid. With the 20+ years of experience she had, along with the fact that third babies are notoriously unpredictable, she should have had us come back sooner, or never even had us leave. We were done.

I woke up Shawn, told him we needed to go to the local hospital, and tried my best not to melt down. Again, I was ready to push.

It felt like he drove slower than ever down the mountain to the ER, and when we finally arrived, I got out and waddled in essentially yelling I was ready to have the baby, NOW--that it was my third, and I knew I was ready to push.

Bless the nurse who believed me and skipped a handful of steps to get my in a chair and into a trauma bay ASAP. (We happened to run into her again two weeks later when our oldest cut her foot open, and she said one of her colleagues got real mad at her for skipping procedure but she could tell that I wasn't messing around and that I would be delivering on the waiting room floor if they didn't hurry).

Once they got us into the room, things moved FAST. I'm still not positive WHO delivered my baby, but I'm pretty confident it was the OB nurse-- the OB doctor was still at home, and the ER doctor kept saying, "remind me.." to the nurse.

Little Miss P was my fasted pushing ever--first push at 10:22, with her entering the world at 10:25.

We were not able to go home within four hours because we were at the hospital, but we did break out of there fairly quickly the next day and were home in time for lunch.

The experience wasn't what I wanted. But, thankfully, the doctors and nurses at our local hospital heard us when we rejected the various items we wanted to skip, and didn't give us (too much of) a hard time when we signed ourselves out a whole day and a half earlier than they would have preferred.

One year later, this girl still keeps us on our toes. She more wild than our older two, more daring, and full of more surprises we could ever have imagined.

Our plan didn't go the way we wanted it to, but the end goal was the same--deliver and bring home a healthy baby girl. And the last year with that baby girl was pretty special. I'm excited to see how God moves in her life, and am grateful to see how He has already used her to teach me so much.

My plan was limited, but His plan reigned.

Happy Birthday, Sweet P. Thanks for the last year of wild and sweet fun!