Emmy's Birth That Woke the Earth

Emerson Alice Moody came into the world at 4:25 am on October 29, 2013, changing our hearts and lives forever.  She was seven pounds, one ounce, and 20 1/2 inches of a blessing!!!  And all three of us now have October Birthdays.

But the events that led up to her arrival were- of course! - a spectacle. I would like to report that rainbows, unicorns, and an explosion of glitter came through the room as Emmy arrived.

But I was quickly brought back to reality as the events unfolded.  Are you ready to re-live the chaos with me? This is the story of Emmy's birth.

I had been prepping myself for the labor process for weeks.  I reasoned that animals and women overseas give birth in bushes and fields, so certainly I would be capable of handling it with medical assistance...right?  On Sunday night, October 27th, I started having stomach pains.  I took a bath and didn't think much of it.  Overnight the pains started occurring every hour and then every fifteen minutes.  At 6:00 am I told Ryan to go to work that day, because I assumed it was a false alarm, as I was not curled in a fetal position just yet.  But that was then...

Fast forward to 9:00 am as I'm watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape on Netflix and pausing it frequently to drop to my knees and scream, "HELP ME, JESUS!!!"  My neighbors surely thought I was hosting a revival in here.

So I did what every girl does when she's in pain: call Mama.  My next doctor's appointment wasn't until Wednesday, and here it was Monday.  She told me to call the doctor immediately (which I already had- twice) but this time to ask if I could make my appointment sooner.  The nurse who answered the phone the first two times said that if the pain wasn't 5-8 minutes apart to stay at home.

Can you imagine a paramedic tending to a patient who has been hit by a bus and asking how far apart the pain is???  Pain is PAIN.  Who cares if it's spaced out or close together?!?

I called back one final time and spoke to Laura, my favorite nurse at the office.  I told her what I was experiencing, and she said that they'd work me in immediately and to come in as soon as I could.  Glorious day!

Faster than Lightning McQueen Ryan drove home as I hurriedly gathered our hospital bags just in case.

I don't have time for this I-20 construction.

By the time we got to the doctor's office I could barely walk.  Every step was agony, and as I sat on the examining table waiting for the doctor I looked around at the room decor and - no kidding- saw painful, screaming faces within each piece of art.  Whether it was my imagination or hallucination all I know is that pain was real.  And I couldn't go home that way.

Dr. Ridenhour- the only woman at the practice and the one I PRAYED was in- saw me and said that the pain/contractions weren't close enough to dilate me yet, but like the good, kind hearted woman she is she promised that they wouldn't send me home in misery.  My instructions were as follows:  go walk for one hour and come back.  If I dilated by then they'd admit me to the hospital, and we'd have the baby.  If not, they'd send me to Triage and give me pain medicine.  Both sounded like viable options to me, so as swiftly as Ichabod Crane I accompanied Ryan out to the parking garage where he drove me to the corner of Taylor Street.

"Alright, Katharine, let's get out and walk..." he instructed as I gripped the handle on top of the passenger's seat door for dear life.  Five minutes of bantering back and forth passed before I swiveled my legs like a lazy susan out of the car and onto the sidewalk.  It was indeed a Herculean effort.

The pain was coming in excruciating waves, and the best way I can describe it is something like this: Remember those horrid written math problems back in school?  The ridiculous ones about trains traveling at certain times?  Well, my contractions felt like two freight trains- on the same track- left South Carolina and California simultaneously and smashed in the middle of the US as I sat in a chair on their traveling path.

I made it onto the sidewalk for a brief moment before falling to my knees and wallowing in the bushes and pine straw beside the parking garage.  Mind you that we were in downtown Columbia on a fairly busy street during business hours.   I can hear the on-duty security camera monitors now:

"We've got a suspicious blonde rolling in the grass on Taylor.  Suspect appears to be mentally unstable.  Officers on standby, please."

"Katharine, you've got to get up and walk," Ryan said as he looked around, likely humiliated as he gave a brief glance and wave to any passers by while avoiding direct eye contact.  

"I CAN'T!!!" I screamed, as I crawled to the nearest tree and hugged it with every ounce of strength I could muster.  The businesses on that street were no doubt locking their doors at this point as I kept crawling past.  Nothing is as frustrating as your own body not letting you walk.  The pain was absolutely unbearable.  Four minutes later we were back in the car and on the way to tell the doctor that the walking situation didn't go so well.

 By then I was only dilated half a centimeter, but as promised, they came in with a wheel chair to take me to Triage and get pain medicine.  Had there been morphine laden Mountain Dew I would have chugged it.  It took me five excruciating minutes just to sit down in the chair before I was wheeled to the sanctuary of attempted relief, but not before the long ride ahead.  Every person we passed jabbed the arm of whoever was next to them, pointed to me, and made an "I'm-glad-it's-her-and-not-me" face.  There wasn't a soul in that hospital that wanted to trade places with me that day.  And what's the point of being asked how bad you feel on a scale of 1-10?  Would 10 mean that I'm in labor AND on fire?  Because I'm pretty sure I responded with twelve out of ten.

We finally made it to Triage where I was thoroughly interrogated prior to receiving the promised pain medication.

1) Do you have any religious preferences that will prevent you from treatment?

2) Do you have a written birth plan?  Sure, give me a napkin so I can scribble, "EPIDURAL" in all caps.

3) How do you feel about the color green?  By that point I have no clue what they asked, but I was getting very fussy and unhappy.

"Where is my medicine?!?"

I gasped through each wave of pain like someone drowning in a category five river.

"We've had a problem with our system, and the medicine has been ordered."

"ORDERED?!?!?  Is the medicine in this building???"

"Yes, honey, two floors up.  It will be here in just a few minutes."

Fast forward to when they FINALLY gave me the pain meds through an IV, and I immediately began going comatose.   One of the last things I remember was Dr. Ridenhour coming in and telling me I was two centimeters dilated, followed by her asking if I wanted an epidural.  

Ryan then made the calls to our family as the hospital staff wheeled me like a psychiatric patient into the birth room, the ride of which I have no recollection whatsoever.  Then they had the audacity to ask me to switch beds.  Are you kidding me??  I couldn't move two inches.  The top half of my body was that of the Road Runner, and the bottom half had the strength of a slug.  Translation: I was getting nowhere fast.

They finally used the sheet to lift me from one bed to the other and told me to hang onto the nearest nurse as they gave me the epidural.  Ryan looked on as I bobbed around and plopped my head smack into the bosom of this unfortunate lady who was surely looking at her cohorts, pointing to me, and making coo-coo circles around her head.  That's when the delusion began.  I'm fairly certain that I gave them a blank stare when asked what my name was.  

I was out almost immediately afterwards, and the next thing I knew all of our parents were in the room with us.  Jay later told me I'd never looked so innocent, peaceful, and dare I say...quiet.

This serenity will be short lived.

I always envisioned myself prancing into the hospital in high heels and full on glamour in the hours before meeting my first child.

...but in realty I more closely identified with the homeless guy in Dennis the Menace and this lady from PeopleofWalmart.com.

In my defense I had no idea we would be having a baby that day.

I was progressing very quickly, and by 10:00 I realized I was thirsty and starving.  I hit the button on my bed and requested some juice.  Big mistake.

"Honey, you can't have any juice."

"What?!  Ummm...HUH?  What is this no juice business?!"

"You can only have ice chips until the baby comes."

"ICE chips?!?  Not even a popsicle?"

I then began this mind game with the nurse whenever she came to check my vitals hoping to trick her.  "What about diet soda? Flavored water?  Gum?!???  GUM IS NOT A THING!  You just chew on it!"

Sadly, none of my ideas worked, and sure enough, a few minutes later I got extremely sick.  All I could think of was how exhausted and beaten I felt.  How in the world would I have any energy left to give birth?  At 2:30 am it was officially time to push.  I will never look at a door the same way again...

Our Moms looked on as Ryan and the nurses coached me.  Mama was yelling, "Think about juice, honey!  Juice!"  Finally at 4:15 the doctor was called in, and we found out that Emmy was face up, therefore answering our question of why it was taking so long.  We were also informed that she had a head full of hair.  The doctor then told me- as calmly as if we were discussing colors of socks- that I had two options: use a vacuum or do a C section.  We opted for the vacuum, and they had trouble attaching it because of her head full of hair.  Ten minutes later at 4:25 she arrived and was whisked to the side of the room to bring up her oxygen levels and stimulate her.  It took only a few minutes, but we were SO thankful to hear her precious cry.

As I was being reconstructed then came the fun of completing the cord blood banking.  Apparently all of the kits are a little bit different, and the nurses appeared to be reading board game instructions as I lay there like an invalid waiting to hold my child.  In the mean time we had a team of family waiting to meet Emmy (our mothers, however, were in the room while she was born).

This is the first time we held our baby girl:

And the two became three.

I spent the next three days holed up in the hospital, completely oblivious to the outside world.  I didn't so much as step out of my room or even into the hallway.

One would think that my lack of inactivity would be conducive to getting rest and recovering more quickly, but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Every five seconds there was a knock on the door by one of the hospital staff.  They must have had two hundred people manning our floor.  They interrupted my sad attempts at resting for every reason imaginable.  It was almost funny.

KNOCK KNOCK!!!

1. I'm here to check Mom and baby's vitals
2. Hi, I'm the lactation specialist.  Seriously???  Did Mary have one of those?
3. May I refill your water?  Fluff your pillow?  Count the number of threads in your sheets?
4. We need you to watch this parenting video in case you're incompetent
5. (As lunch is being served) Please describe in detail the color, consistency, and fragrance of your baby's most recent excrement
6. I'm selling snow cones and Bibles
7. HOUSEKEEPING!!!

However, one interruption I didn't mind was from a sweet young girl asking if she could take Emmy's hospital pictures.  I figured it was a "front, side, back" type deal for their records and said, "sure," as I imagined something like this:

I didn't realize that she was from a professional company, Bella Baby Photography.  She asked me for a blanket, opened the blinds by a chair in the corner of the room, and began her work.  We loved the pictures she took.  I had no idea that hospital photos would be this good, and with infants you want to remember every day- every second- of their stages, because they change SO quickly.  Hospital bracelet, diaper, foot alarms, and all, here are pictures of our precious baby girl at just two days old:

We were treated like royalty during our hospital stay, and even though there were nights when I got thirty minutes of sleep the luxury of having that "call nurse" button 24/7 is something I admittedly miss.

My husband:

I absolutely could not have done this without him.  He was my rock the entire time and made sure I had everything I needed.  His support was far more than the midnight Snickers bar run; he looked after both of his girls like you wouldn't believe.  We are blessed beyond measure to have him.

In the days that followed I found out that I had bronchitis, a bladder infection (as indicated by my 102 fever that lasted on and off for days), I tore all my stitches from coughing, resulting in a myriad of other issues, my white blood count was 21,000, and the list goes on.  In the past couple of weeks I have had almost as many doctor appointments as I did during my entire pregnancy.  And I was trying to take care of and enjoy life with my newborn baby girl in the process.  It was extremely challenging, and there were times where both the baby and I were screaming.   At one point I thought, "This isn't permanent.  She'll get older."

Wait, she'll grow up?!???  WAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

On Halloween day we were discharged from the hospital, only after my temperature went back down to 97.1.  I wasn't going to be thrilled if I had to stay longer.  As I was wheeled out of the building everyone we passed stopped to congratulate us- staff, other patients, visitors, you name it.  It was so special to me.

It reminded me of Dillon Christian School soccer when we would line up at the end of the day and high five each of the other team members..."Good game, good game, good game..." except this was on a much cooler scale.

So how was our first car ride home as a family?  Well, there was a lot of whimpering and crying in the back seat...but Emmy was great.  I was in SO much pain, and every movement and turn was excruciating.

My perspective of the journey home:

I asked Ryan to stop by the library on our way back so I could pick up the latest Karen Kingsbury book they reserved for me.  I hobbled in the building and had to use the bathroom first thing.  I was starting to shiver and get a fever.  Blessed day.  Useless Katharine trivia: when I'm cold I line the toilet seat with tissue to sit down.  I yanked at the toilet paper and got two lousy pieces.  I wasn't strong enough, I assumed, with all the medication, so I pulled at it again.  Two more measly pieces.  What the heck was going on???  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a LOCK on the toilet paper dispenser, preventing feverish me from grabbing more than two squares at a time.

I was so frustrated and in such misery that the entire stall looked like murdered post it notes after my visit.  I still had to use the bathroom badly and had yet to fully line the seat with paper.  Half of the sheets I pulled had either made their way onto the floor or into the water.  This miserable episode was responsible for at least eight minutes of my life that I'll never get back.  

Then the library had the audacity to tell me that I hadn't returned the previous book, which I had, and I assumed they misplaced it.  It was the last thing I wanted to deal with at the moment.  The name of the alleged missing book?  "Return."  I can't make this up.

I don't know what we would have done without our parents with us once we brought Emmy home.  Ryan's parents came the first few days, and my parents and Jay came afterwards.  They have waited on us hand and foot and cooked meals, helped us with the baby, tended to us, etc.  Ryan and I have been extremely blessed and humbled by the love and support we've gotten from our family and loved ones.  We knew everyone would be there for us, but we had no idea to what extent.  We are overcome with thankfulness, especially to our parents and brothers.

Despite my on and off misery we were thrilled to have so many visitors welcome our baby girl with gifts, sweets, meals, and LOTS of love!

Ryan had the awesome idea of turning the maternity photo album I made into a guest book for all to sign.  What a fabulous idea!

And now for the great debate of who Emerson resembles.  Few people know that I, too, had lots of dark hair as a baby.  I see both of us in our little girl, but I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Katharine:

Ryan:

It has been absolutely amazing to watch her every day as she changes.  I don't want to miss a moment with her, hence the reason why the camera roll on my iphone went from items in craft stores to nothing but Emmy.  And I'm not complaining.

My Mom has nicknamed her "Shutterbug" because of all the pictures.  We absolutely adore her.

And now to you, Miss Emerson, the one I just met two weeks ago but love more than life itself: I love you so much my heart hurts.  Do you know that? It actually hurts, because I love you as much as is humanly possible.  I've known you for fourteen days, and I couldn't live without you.  Couldn't breathe without you.  I can't count how many times I have wept while looking into your eyes out of sheer gratitude that you are ours.  This is more than love at first sight; it's love at first life.  Every time you squeeze my hand and pull me close, every time you reach for me or turn towards me, or every time I rock you to sleep on my chest I fall in love all over again- an indescribable kind of love that I've never felt before.  When you cry I cry.  When you smile I smile.  It is a connection that could only have come from the Creator Himself.  I don't ever want to leave your side. I would do anything for you; I would die for you.  There will never be a time in your life when you can question my love for you, because I will be right there for anything you need as long as I live.  Anything.  Please don't ever leave me.  I will stuff myself in the trunk of your "just married" car as you drive away from the church one day.  I cannot let you go.  Ever.  And if I love you this much- so much that my every heartbeat is for you- I can only imagine the depths of God's love for us.

I look in your eyes and wonder what you'll see in your lifetime.  I hold your hands and fingers and wonder if you'll play the piano with me someday.  When you scream I wonder if we'll sing a duet together- minus the blood curdling wails.  I see your tiny feet- feet that at this point have yet to take you anywhere.  Feet that have never taken you somewhere you shouldn't be...feet that can be used as an instrument to carry out His will.  It may seem strange, but I am praying that you will use your feet to take you where He wants you to go so that you will be a witness for Him all the days of your life.  Everything about you is an opportunity for prayer...an opportunity for me to give thanks...and an opportunity for me to reflect on His love for you, me, and all of us.

You have been brought into a family that loves you with everything they have.  I don't know how I could ever thank God enough for you.  Not just that you are perfect with ten fingers, ten toes, and everything else, but because He used us to give you life.  And the Heaven sent gift I carried in my womb I now hold in my arms.  I won't be able to comprehend that until I'm face to face with Him one day.

One of the cutest things you do is sneeze.  And you do it a lot.  The other night you sneezed several times in a row, and I looked in your eyes and exclaimed, "God bless you, Emerson!"

And then it hit me.  He already has.