A Birth Story

As I am making use of Gaby’s helpful presence here, I have a quiet moment now so I thought I’d write out a bit of Evangeline’s birth story.

I had been having contractions on and off all Tuesday afternoon. By dinnertime they were uncomfortable enough to be a hindrance to my singing during family worship, but I still wasn’t convinced that we’d be seeing any serious action that night. Well, the contractions kept getting worse and I tried to go to bed to rest, but by then I knew something big was happening. Every medical-type person that I’d recently seen had always repeated the mantra: “When your contractions are consistently five minutes apart then it’s time to go to the hospital.” Joshua started timing my contractions and we settled in for the long haul. There was just one problem- they never got consistent. I’d have a space of six minutes between contractions and then one of eleven minutes. I called the midwife to let her know what was happening and she didn’t seem too concerned and thought that I was still in pretty early labor. That was okay because we had wanted to stay home as long as possible before we subjected ourselves to the mercy of the hospital. But shortly after that phone call we knew that it was time to go.

Now comes the interesting part. We had just gotten hit with a good amount of snow and seeing as it was about one o’clock in the morning the snowplows had not yet been out and about. So there we were driving through several inches of snow with only a few tire tracks to guide us, I was in pretty serious labor and Joshua was trying to stay calm and keep the van from getting stuck.

When we finally got to hospital Joshua parked out front where the guard told him the van could stay for about fifteen minutes. I got wheeled up to my room where I asked the nurse (as politely as possible for someone in my state of extreme discomfort) for a basin into which I promptly puked. That convinced the midwife and nurse that I was in transition. Joshua left to park our car, but was chased down by a nurse telling him that if he left now he might miss the birth. One mere hour (and lots of pain and pushing) later, Evangeline was born.

As I look back over the experience I find that I am very grateful for many things. I really appreciated Bonnie, the midwife. Despite her being wrong about the timing of contractions, I was really very pleased with how she walked me through labor (at least the hour of it that she was there for.) I had some very pleasant nurses which made such a huge difference from the other times when I had terrible nurses. Most of all, I’m so grateful that Joshua was with me through it all. He is the greatest labor partner I could wish for. He kept me focused and encouraged me and was always ready with a glass of ice water after each contraction. Even Bonnie commented on how we made a great team.

So, yeah, there were some parts of that labor that weren’t so great. For example, I wouldn’t want take a car ride like that ever again. But through it all my God was faithful. Many times during a painful contraction I would cry out to Him to give me strength to endure and He always did. It’s because of Him that little Evangeline is here safe and sound. And it’s to Him that we give all the glory.