I (Jen) was 41 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I wasn’t tired of being pregnant, but I was so ready to meetour sweet girl and waiting is very hard. I felt as if I tried everything on my part up until her debut. I went for long walks, rolled around and bounced on my yoga ball, ate an entire pineapple, tried accupressure….nada. Nothing was happening. Until the night of April 30th, when David suggested that I go have some “God time”, I locked myself in our room and put in headphones, blasted some Bethel tunes into my ears and danced around in worship. I hadn’t done that in a long time.

Well, God and I enjoyed worship together that night so much that I woke up May 1st at 2AM with contractions that I finally thought were “real”. I didn’t wake David up until 6AM to tell him. Our doctor’s appointment that day was at 8AM so we thought we would wait until then to find out for sure. I went in for Miriam’s stress test and once the doc checked me out she said, “Yep, it’s the real thing. You are at 4 cm. Go to the hospital.” So we checked into the hospital around 10AM.

Once at the hospital, we were given a rockstar of a nurse, Mandy. She made me feel as if we were in control of whatever we wanted to do. When she said that I was “the only one on the floor listed as wanted a natural birth” I told her that we were going to “wing it and see”. While worship music was playing, we carried on. She checked me out and said I was at 5 cm. Five hours go by and after doing everything I felt like I could handle, I asked to be checked again. …no change, still a 5. At this point, I was thinking “I’ve tried for 12 hours by myself…yep, that’s a good attempt.” I didn’t feel guilty at all for asking and thanked God for the person who created epidurals.

At 3:30PM, I got the epidural and didn’t feel anything anymore. So we waited. My water was broken for me which didn’t speed things up. Around 6PM or so we kicked in some Pitocin (which at this point, my thoughts are “Great. I can’t feel a thing. You might as well.”) Other than uncontrollable shaking like I had seizures, I was able to rest for a bit, talk to our other wonderful nurses (thanks Lisa and Pam) and joke around with David. Finally around 8:30PM or so they announce that I can start pushing.  So I pushed, for an hour and even with 2 assists from the vaccum, she wasn’t coming out. Miriam was fine, of course. Her heartbeat only dipped once and our other nurses couldn’t believe “what a happy baby we had, who was just too stubborn to come out.” I also wasn’t feeling any pain at all and the doctor and I were chatting about him planning a trip to Machu Picchu in between contractions.

When the words “I think we should do a C-section” came out of my doctor’s mouth, I started to cry (mostly due to being so tired, mostly due to crazy preggo hormones, mostly due to feeling scared). But David and I had already talked about that the only thing we wanted was a healthy and safe delivery of our baby girl. God was reassuring me throughout the 20ish hours of labor that “the end result would be joy” and that He was with us every step of the way. So we opted that she did come out, by C-section. The last thing I remember David saying to me before I was wheeled into the OR was “Jen, I think I lost the car keys.” (Don’t worry, we found them 2 days later).

Within 15 minutes, Miriam was born. She was perfect. We also found out (from David watching the last little bit) that my uterus is apparently heart-shaped, exactly like that of a Valentine’s card. The doctor said in his 15-something years of practice that he’s never seen that before. (We think that it’s God’s humor that he would surround her with love in every way…we just had no idea that meant literally). David got to cut her cord and once she was cleaned up and put on my chest, she smiled. They say babies can’t smile yet, but I know she smiled. She was and is so beautiful!

Today, Miriam is 3 weeks old and I’m tearing up as I think of all that went into bringing her into the world. I know that I couldn’t have done it without David by my side. He was amazing support through everything! He loves “his ladies” so well!!

We are also very thankful for all of the well-wishes and prayers that covered us before, during and after her birth. When asked, “would you do it again?” Absolutely, 1000%. We felt God’s presence in our labor and delivery room and there was so much peace around everything that had happened. God really took care of us with an amazing staff of doctor’s and nurses. I felt so much grace was extended to me, to us. God is so good and so faithful to entrust a daughter like her to us! We love you Miri-Bear so much!! You teach us so much about the unconditional love of the Father. Love, Mommy and Daddy.