The Blessed Event

"A hope deffered makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." (proverbs something I can't remember)


It was October 3, 2006 - the day we had been waiting for was finally here. This is the day that my daughter Sydney would finally come into the world. This is the day that I would finally get to see what she looked like. This is the day I would finally get to hold her.


For Chip and I, this day represented a year of waiting, wondering and worrying for our baby's health. A year earlier I had become pregnant for the first time and lost the baby at almost 3 months gestation (wow that word sounds so clinical doesn't it!). But the pregnancy was anything but "clinical", it was real. For almost 12 weeks we dreamed and prepared for our first child to be born. We even saw the heart beat at the ultra sound and walked away with pictures. When I started bleeding and cramping and ultimatly ended up with a DNC, it was devistating. How could this be...we saw the heart beat, we had made plans, we loved this baby? It seemed like a cruel joke, how could God let this happen? There are mothers out there on drugs, why did their babies' live? There were parents who abuse children, neglect them, even murder them, why do they get to even bring children into this world? We will talk more about the fact that Sydney was my second pregnancy...it played a part (big or small we don't know) in the severity of my symptoms and our ability to look back and see a pattern. But more on that later!

For now, it was time to move on! Our tree of life was here! We had wept, begged, pleaded, remained "faithful" , stayed hopeful and you wanna know something...it worked! God came through and delivered this time. He made up for the sorrow we experienced. Everything would be ok now. We payed our dues (or so I thought). At this point in my thinking life was still relatively fair. God would make up for when you were wronged, it would be made right somehow.

Sydney was born after an easy labor with relativly no pain...I was adament about having that epidural before I even felt one contraction (I got nothin' to prove ladies, give me the drugs). I pushed for less than 20 minutes and she was here. What a moment! Not only was our sweet girl here, but we were the talk of the maternity floor. Syd was 9lbs 9oz and I didn't need a c-section. In fact my doctor kept asking all of the nurses if they thought I had looked "big" when I came in to the hospital that morning. He kept saying that he never would have thought my baby would be that big. Of course the nurses and Chip all looked at him with eyes that said "seriously, how could you not notice? She was as a big as a house!" Chip even got stopped in the elevator by another doctor asking if he was the father of the almost 10 pounder born without a c-section. Word spread so fast that the cleaning lady came to our room, not to clean but to see the baby she had already heard so much about.

What a great day. My parents were there, we took pictures, friends came to visit and we were even able to send Sydney to the nursury at night so that we could get a good night sleep. Life was good!

Little did I know that would be one of the last "normal" days I would have in a long time. Little did I know that it would take over 2 years for me to be able to think back to that day without crying tears of sorrow, anger or confusion.

I am still working on reconciling it all in my head. It is still hard for me to look at pictures from that day. I still would prefer not to look at them. Even a year later, I had to have my sister finish Sydney's baby book for me, it was just too painful.