I cannot believe I am the mother of an eight-year old! Time has literally flown, and I certainly wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything. The day Abigail was born completely changed our lives for the good, and every day we marvel at how she manages to grow just a little bit more.
The day she was born was a little unexpected. I’d been “ready” for several weeks according to my doctor, but I hadn’t had any real signs of her impending birth- no contractions, no discomfort, nothing. That morning I woke up, disappointed that I’d made it through another night without a hospital run. I spent that morning cleaning the apartment, followed by a nice long walk to the store to get the ingredients for a pie. I was keeping myself busy, and with each step I took, I wished that would be the one to jiggle my child loose. I was anxious to meet my little boy! (Or so I thought!) I baked up a delicious pear pie and made a nice dinner for Andy and I. We ate together, watched a little TV, and just as we were about to head to bed, we saw there were fireworks out our patio door. We lived in an apartment that backed up to a dirt race track, and that night they concluded the races with some fireworks. We stepped out onto the patio and as we watched them we both lamented the lack of birth signs and the end of another day without any sign of an impending arrival.
Once the fireworks were over, we both got ready for bed, and Andy crawled in before I did. I took a little longer, but by the time I headed for bed, I was ready for sleep. I was tired from a busy day! No lie. The second my head hit the pillow I felt my entire body go “SSSSNAP”. I can’t explain how it felt, other than odd- like a giant rubber band had snapped somewhere inside me. I immediately got up, went to the bathroom, because something felt funny, found nothing awry and headed back to bed. As soon as I tried to lie back down, “woosh” the water flowed and labor quickly set in. I went from no labor to hard labor in seconds, and in the 10 minutes it took to call the doctor, my mom, our closest friends, and make sure we had everything, I was contracting every 2 or 3 minutes. Andy had the drive of his life in front of him.
You know how there’s never a cop around when you need one? Seriously! He was going like 95 miles an hour down country roads because our hospital was a full 25 minutes away, and my contractions were on top of each other. Visions of those Reader’s Digest stories of babies born in cars flashed through both our minds. Thankfully, baby waited just long enough. We weren’t at the hospital even 30 minutes before our beautiful daughter Abigail came into the world. I think both of us were shocked! We’d both had that “feeling” that we were having a boy! She was born at 12:16 am, meaning that her birthday was actually on the 20th instead of the 19th, although to me, and in my mind, her birthday will always be the 19th, because we hadn’t closed the book on that day yet. And thus began the whirlwind of being parents and learning everything that goes along with it. The ride has been wonderful, and every day I count my blessings as I see the world through my little girl’s eyes. She finds such joy in the simplest things, and I am so grateful that I get to experience that joy through her.
So Happy Birthday Abigail! May this next year be the best one ever!
