Week 48 -- MEET CHARLOTTE!

Here's what we did in our everyday lives this week:
We had a pretty unbeatable week! Our baby came! Be prepared to be inundated with baby pictures.


But first, our little preacher man bringing the Word.


Our neighbors have a giant Mickey Mouse inflatable that we can see from our bedroom window. Samuel is so intrigued, but he doesn't understand why Mickey is always taking naps. ;-)


My little helpers, "grinding" Daddy's coffee.


Here he is doing some pre-natal yoga. His serious stretching face makes me smile.


Some pretend play: The Horatio in real life is my mom's dog. The Horatio in this photo is a step stool. He is a little desperate for playmates.


Hide-and-go-seek


Welcome, baby sister! Charlotte (although we didn't have a name for her for a few days) came into the world on Thursday, 11/29, at 3:33AM. She is so adored. Her birth story was quite a wild one, but more on that in a minute.


I never want to forget those first day snuggles. All of the challenge of the pregnancy and the delivery and the tiredness just seem to fade. For a few moments, at least. ;-)


As you can see, from my phone calls, things were rolling along pretty uneventfully -- until all the sudden they became very eventful, very quickly. At 2:55AM I called our doula and told her it was time. I figured she would be able to help me make the decision about when to call our midwives. Brent started to fill the birthing pool. I started to text family and friends to pray for us.

Well, a few contractions later, I was not feeling so great about things being under control. I called our midwife and asked her to come. Brent called her back a few minutes later when I started to have the urge to push. He was on the phone when my water broke. Uh oh!

Nothing was going according to plan! The birthing pool was only half full. There was no music, no candles, no soothing coaches. The kids were still at home -- and were waking up and screaming from behind the closed bedroom door! Brent's phone was doing an automatic update at the most inconvenient time possible. Instead of being in the warm, relaxing pool, I was shivering from cold and adrenaline, side-lying on the floor under a glaring light in the middle of the dining room. Thankfully we had a tarp down, but it wasn't exactly comfy. Worst of all, the midwives weren't here! Brent called our midwife back, and she helped coach him through a few steps should the baby arrive before she got there. Then at 3:31 he called our dear friend, Mary Glenn, and asked her to come get the kids instead of dropping the kids off at her house. She got in the car right away and started driving the two miles to our house. By the time Brent called the midwife back, at 3:34AM, he had a baby in his hands! Charlotte was born! When Mary Glenn knocked at the door at 3:35AM, Brent was able to announce, "We have a baby!". We were all shocked. But here she was . . .



With my other births, I was in a "zone" -- just my body, my breath, and the rhythm of contractions. I was aware of the world outside, but it felt far away and unimportant. With Charlotte, I was still very present. I was talking calmly and completely normally between contractions. And speaking of contractions, until the very end, they were only a minute long (or less than a minute!) and only coming every two to three minutes. I was still timing them until Brent took the phone away to call the midwife, just moments before Charlotte was born. Clearly, I was not thinking this baby was going to come so quickly.


But she came and she is perfect, and we cannot get enough of her.


It's been fun to dress her in the same clothes her siblings wore and to see the names written on the tags of the dear friends who gave them to us.


The look of pure joy on his face still gets me. He is just beaming.


Brent did an incredible job "catching" Charlotte and juggling all of the other things going on before and after 3:33AM. Neither of us saw this coming (and neither of us want to repeat the experience!) but he was amazing. I'm so thankful for him.

God was so gracious to us. Many things could have gone wrong, but He allowed our perfect little girl to be born in her own way, on her own time. We are forever grateful!


Love, Molly