Six months ago…

**{Please understand before reading this that my opinion of homebirth (especially in Maryland) has greatly changed since the loss of Miranda, when my eyes were opened to the great danger that we faced by being out of the hospital. Our nearest hospital is 5 miles from our house, but it was not close enough when Miranda was in respiratory distress. Even with my three “successful” homebirths (2 of those being unintentionally unassisted) I would not willingly choose homebirth again, and would not recommend it to my closest friends and sisters. While the risk of death in an uncomplicated pregnancy may be small, I learned that the cost was more than I could bear.}**

It dawned on me that Nate is six months old today, and I have not yet shared his birth story.

So here goes.

As with my four pregnancies prior to this one, nine months went by pretty smoothly.  My entire pregnancy was pretty unremarkable.  That is a very good thing when one hopes for a homebirth.  At my 36 week home visit I was not ready, as in I had yet to order my birth kit, had not yet cleared off my dresser (upon which the contents of the birth kit would sit), hadn’t scrubbed my bathroom clean (yes that is absolutely a necessity for MY homebirths) and hadn’t gotten out any baby clothes.  I needed a little more time.

Two weeks later I was ready!  It was the day before Thanksgiving (or as Evan would say Thanksgiving Eve) when I had my regular check up.  My friend Heidi was due the same day as me (we couldn’t have planned it that well), so in the last month when we were seen each week or two we rode together to our appointments (yes, two friends, due the same day, planning homebirths, were being seen by the same MW) and enjoyed a little we-time at Panera.

So we’re at our day-before-Thanksgiving appointment and we both felt ready.  Me carrying baby #5 and her baby #6 we figured surely these children would cut us a little slack and make an early appearance.  So we joked that we’d have to time it just right, one go into labor in the morning and the other in the evening (so the MW and her assistant could attend both) during that weekend.

Thanksgiving (and it’s weekend) came and went with no babies.

By the next week I was sure it would happen.

It didn’t.

To take my mind off labor I got crafty.  I made the baby (at this point we were still unaware of whether baby was a he or she) some diapers and wipes, like any good cloth-diapering momma would!

It was really good to get my mind on something other than the impending labor day.  At my following appointment (December 8th) I let my MW know that I was at peace, the baby would come exactly when he/she was ready and I would be fine with that.

And if not, next week she could strip my membranes.

Sorry, just keeping it real!

She congratulated Vince on another great delivery. This time he handled it like a pro (he had a little cheat sheet too).

Seven years ago when we had our first I never would have thought I would one day see this…

Have I mentioned that my husband is The Man? He is!

Nice to meet you baby boy (yeah, we didn’t have a name yet).

Our oldest was pretty excited to meet the new kid.

Andrew asked if some one could just bring the baby in to see him. So very Andrew. But he managed to get himself out of bed to meet the little guy.

I went to MHONP to see if Heidi was awake (or in labor so I could send the MW to her) and to post an announcement over at HC. Gotta love technology.

Then he got all his checks…

He is perfect in every way.

We did it (again)!

The only thing left to do was to name him.

That proved to be harder than his birth! Seriously it was.

Vince told me he liked the nickname Nate. I did too. But I didn’t love Nathan as a name but I loved it’s meaning, it was perfect. Gift of God.  I like Jonathan(also Gift of God) David(Beloved) and since “nathan” was a part of that we figured we could swing that.  

You see, finding out we were pregnant for #5 was met with a little bit less than the joy one would hope, we thought our hands were pretty full with the 4 we were already raising, but you see the creation of this little life happened at a time that we were really growing as husband and wife, it was the closest we’ve been through our marriage and God had blessed us in *His* time by rewarding us with a child (please see Psalm 127, especially verse 3, if you don’t understand that). Our little baby was nothing less than a Gift of God for treating each other as our Beloved.

So Jonathan David it *was*.

Yes, I said was.

Two days later my sister Laurie came down with her husband Dave and their son Matthew. They asked how we chose Jonathan… during the pregnancy I had said I liked Daniel Joseph, why hadn’t we considered Nathaniel? Hmm… hadn’t though of that at all.  Since I wasn’t liking Nathan I didn’t even look at the variations.  Oops! I hadn’t called him Jonathan once, we were only calling him Nate.  But was had already sent out emails with the other name. I hadn’t yet filled out his birth record application yet. So we changed it.  He is Nathaniel David, our Gift of God!

and he is growing fast…

seriously fast…

Before you know it I’ll be posting about his first birthday. *Shudder to think!*

So there it is, Nate’s birth story. Glad I finally shared it with you!

A huge thanks to Kim (Kimberly Brooke Photography) for all the great “Birth Day” pictures, it made it very easy to tell the story!

p.s. Heidi gave birth the next day to Joshua (and the midwife and her assistant were there for the whole thing).