I shared Thad’s birth story in installments on social media. Since not everyone is on social media, I wanted to also share the story of his birth here on my blog. This version is the narrative form version, which I wrote initially for family and friends. Part One is also here on the blog. If you want to, you can also read the big picture overview of my pregnancy and birth with Thad.
Sunday night saw two separate rounds of those mild, early labour type contractions, and Monday seemed like the day! Until the sun came up and the older three kids woke up. 41 weeks and no idea if this baby is coming today – just “soon.” Time to throw out normal and focus on two things: having fun with the kids and resting as much as possible!
For school on Monday, we built a terrarium (Mara’s Christmas gift from dear friend that we’d been saving for a fun science activity). We abandoned school after that and made our plans mostly based on what sounded like enjoyable to Mama!
We went for walks, browsed a couple Op Shops, went to the chiropractor, ran to the grocery store, made pancakes, and had a non stress test over the next few days. And took naps. As many as I could manage. All was well. Baby was happy and wriggly. Contractions continued regularly (day and night), but without settling into a progressive pattern.
I kept telling myself: “It’ll happen when it happens. My body knows how to do this. This baby can have its own birth story. This labour can be different from the others – this is well within the range of normal.” But I wondered if I had eaten more dates, swallowed more evening primrose oil, drunk more red raspberry leaf tea, or done spinning babies more regularly if my body would have been able to actually tip into labour already! It felt like I had been teetering on the edge of it for days, but despite feeling calm, peaceful, ready, fully nested, and unstressed, it just wasn’t happening!!
I have never been so thankful that I hadn’t told hardly anyone what my actual due date was. I’d vaguely answered “The end of April” or “We should have a baby by the first week or so of May.” We all know that due dates are very poor predictors for a date the baby will actually come, but there is something that happens when we have that date in mind that kind of makes us go a little crazy. And for me, as I am trying my hardest to yield to the process and surrender to letting everything unfold in its God-appointed timing, the last thing that is helpful is constant reminding that I’m approaching the due date, at the due date, or passed the due date by X number of days. Or hearing stories of other people’s labours or pregnancy durations.
I was really trying not to notice just how long I’d been pregnant! God was the only one who knew when the baby would come, and getting impatient about it wasn’t worth my energy.
So I tried to stay present in the moments I was living and soak up everything worth savouring in each passing hour. Then, no matter how long this process took, I would know I hadn’t wasted the time I’d been given.
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