"I am a Mom"

As my previous entry said, I was induced on Thursday morning, Nov. 6 at 5:30am.  Jay and I arrived at the hospital so excited to finally meet our son.  We were expecting him to make his grand debut by that afternoon or early evening.  However, things did not go according to our plan.  I was having contractions every 2-3 minutes all day long, however I was not progressing like we had hoped.  Finally at 5:00 that evening, the doctor told me that our son would probably not be born until the next day.  I was devastated, frustrated, disappointed, and exhausted.  I had labored all day long hoping that it was going to get me one step closer to meeting my son.  As the Bible reminds me, "man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps".  This verse has never been more clear to me until now.  I continued contracting through the night, but the Lord was gracious and allowed both me and the baby somewhat of a break as the contractions slowed down enough that we could both rest.  The next morning, Friday Nov. 7, my doctor, (who is WONDERFUL), broke my water at 6:00am.   Within minutes, I was in hard, active labor.  I labored hard for another 5 hours.  There were 6 people ahead of me to get their epidural so I just had to breathe through it all and wait patiently.  Jay was an amazing birth coach.  The  nurses later told us that they wanted to hire him at the hospital because he was so good!  He breathed with me on every contraction and rubbed my back until I thought his hand was going to fall off.   Finally about 10:45, the anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural.  I was thrilled to see him!!  Unfortunately, the epidural didn't take the first time and I was having terrible back labor.  I don't remember much, but I do remember looking up at Jay and I just said, "pray".  The doctor said, "back labor is hard to get rid of".  I thought to myself, he just can't leave me like this.  We were both praying and all of a sudden, the doctor pulled out my epidural and put in a 2nd one.  Within minutes, I had relief..., sweet relief!  I continued to labor for 6 more hours until 5:30pm when it was time to push.  I pushed for well over an hour, but the baby's head didn't want to budge. We could see his head, but it just seemed stuck.  My contractions were doubling so instead of pushing 3 times and resting, I was pushing 6 times..., one right after the other.  There was no time to rest.  They put an oxygen mask on me and I remember trying to take it off because I felt smothered.  At that point, Jay heard the doctor say, "we will give her 20 more minutes and then we'll have to do a C-section".  I don't remember hearing that, but I must have heard it sub-consciously because everyone in the room marveled at the intensity with which I started pushing.  I didn't think I could physically handle a C-section after everything else I had already been through. Jay had texted our family in the waiting room to tell them to pray like they have never prayed before over the next 20 minutes.  Later I found out that my whole family stopped everything that they were doing and prayed in the waiting room.  During those 20 minutes,  our sweet son was ushered safely into our arms after 36 hours of labor.   I remembered asking the doctor, "is he okay, is he okay", and after that, I must have passed out from exhaustion because I do not remember anything else.   I have no doubt that God heard the prayers of His saints and guided our baby boy safely to our arms.  Jay and I wept and praised God aloud as we marveled at our beautiful son, Elijah Brooks Joye.