Welcome To the World, Vayla

Little Vayla Lydia joined our family just a little over two weeks ago on March 14th.  Why we women care to share, and hear, each other's birth giving traumas, I don't know.  But I find others' stories fascinating and I like telling a story, so I write the story of Vayla and my life together so far.

She made her appearance into my life with a little pink line on a pregnancy test sometime in the middle of July, two weeks after a garage sale where I sold ALL my baby stuff.  I had finally been convinced that we were going to pull off the whole birth control thing and were done with these surprise pregnancies of our earlier married years.  It was a relief to clear everything out and be done with the pregnancy and infancy years.  Or so I thought.

We had a rocky start, Vayla and I.  I never set out to be a mom and I was brought into the job kicking and screaming.  Now I love it.  I love the days spent with my children, watching them grow and learn and play.  But I really did NOT want to start all over again.  I felt like I had put much of the hard work behind me, and that now I could enjoy the fun of parenting. 

My nine months of pregnancy were spent waiting for that magic moment - the one where you fall totally and completely in love with that new little miracle.  Instead I found myself gritting my teeth through the prenatal visits and discomforts of pregnancy. I tried to imagine life with a new little one and she just didn't fit into my schedule or the well-laid plans I had for the next couple of years.  It wasn't until our actual, face-to-face meeting that I found that feeling.  The one where you would gladly die for the little being that has been entrusted into your care.

My water broke on Saturday evening, the 13th at 10 pm.  The timing was perfect.  My husband was at work, on his way to a cell tower site an hour from home.  My call, however, came just in time and he pulled into the driveway 20 minutes later.  We were also able to leave the two older children with my pastor's family, my kids' first choice of a place to stay...and the only one that didn't bring them to tears over the idea that I was going to "abandon" them for a day or two.  Two days later and my pastor's wife would have been on her way out of town.

After my water broke, I had sporadic contractions throughout the night, but nothing to get labor really going.  I had so hoped to share the luck of my sister, who had give birth to her third child just three weeks earlier.  After two hours of labor and only 30 minutes in the hospital she had her little girl. But by 7 am I was no further along than the night before, and had to be induced.  For some reason I felt heroic and tough and declined any medication.  Five hours into the intense pain of contractions that seemed to leave no time to breath in between them,  I hated myself for the decision but still had enough pride in me to insist on toughing it out.  At 1:00 in the afternoon I was still only dialated to a 6 and I had come to the conclusion that maybe I would never give birth.  Maybe this was God's way of punishing me for my reluctance to consider this new child a blessing. You start thinking all sorts of strange things after that much intense pain.

Twenty minutes later, however, things started happening.  I tried to convince the nurse to check and see if I was dialated any further, but she talked me out of it by telling me that, with my water having broke, I was at a higher risk of introducing an infection into the womb.  "I'll come back and check at two o' clock,"  she promised.  Ten minutes later I asked Jerry to go see if he could find some ice for my back.  By the time he got to the door, I yelled, "Tell the nurse to get in here!"  My husband is usually a calm man, but even in the midst of my misery I was mildly amused to hear him yelling down the hall. 

The nurse reluctantly agreed to see if I had dialated any further.  Then I vaguely remember her saying, "Oh!  Don't push!" and the room was suddenly full of scurry and action.  Twenty minutes later and I heard the nurse say, "There she is" and  "Look, she is early."  And they laid this discolored, disformed little figure on my stomach.  She was covered in a strange white film and looked like a being from another planet.  The doctor was instructing the intern on how to put in stiches; the nurse was practicing some strange form of torture and pushing on my stomach with all her strength; Jerry was cutting the cord and showing off his battle scars where I had left five inch long scratch marks on his stomach.  And in the midst of all that, I fell totally and completely in love with that strange little being on my stomach.  She had stopped crying and seemed to be looking at me.  It was magical and miraculous. 

And there she was.  A part of our family.  All six pounds, six ounces, and nineteen inches of her.  When Logan and Sierra arrived at the hospital to meet their littlest sibling, they too were smitten.  Neither of them have ever shown any interest in babies at all and I assumed I would have an easy time keeping their hands off little Vayla.  Not to be!  They decended on her with exclamations of "My baby!", "She's so cute!" and "I love our little baby!"  The poor little babe would be constantly smothered with kisses, toys, blankets, and hugs if I didn't set strict rules about proper baby loving.

As I hold this newest gift from God in my arms, I am once again reminded of His love for me and His perfect will being worked in my life.  So many times in my life I have scowled and kicked and wondered why, for once, couldn't He come to see the wisdom of MY well-laid plans.  And, time after time, I stand in awe of His plan.  Of how much better He knows the desires of my heart.  Much better than even I do.