My mother is a saint. I’ve been told by my sister and sister-in-laws that she is great to have around post-baby, but oh boy, my appreciation for her is THROUGH THE ROOF right now. She magically appears in the middle of the night when Adam is screaming for no apparent reason and takes him from me and says “go to bed.” And then she somehow has him sleeping and I’m sleeping and we’re all sleeping and it is glorious. She has mopped my floors (that was after my dad vacuumed my entire house for 45 minutes, including under the beds and the baseboards. And he cleaned the bathrooms. I’m telling you, these people who raised me amaze me). She has washed about 8349587 loads of laundry. She has changed diapers, driven to the store alone multiple times (it isn’t easy to navigate Houston), cooked, cleaned, and just generally been so great to have around. We’ve had a lot of fun together too, and I am already preparing myself for the tears to flow when she leaves this week. Thankfully, my sister was able to switch her flights around (hooray, Southwest Airlines!) and she’ll come in as soon as my mom leaves since I can’t drive or pick up heavy things. I pray I can be half as good of a mother to sweet Adam as my mother is to me.

Hi friends! Hard to believe that just one week ago we were laboring and laboring and laboring and laboring and laboring at the hospital. I say “we” because Thomas EXCEEDED MY EVERY EXPECTATION in that delivery room. He was a saint. For. Real.

While I am not going to blog all the gory details of my labor/delivery, I will just say that literally nothing went as I’d imagined from the very start. All of the moms that I’d consulted had the same piece of advice going into labor: be flexible. Nothing will go as you plan. So, I tried to go in with an open mind and our goal was a healthy baby. Obviously, I had hopes and a “plan” but my main objective was to be flexible. Well, the Lord held me to that and I felt about as flexible as an over-cooked noodle by the end of the day. In the end, Adam came into this world via emergency c-section because I was running a high fever and his heart rate was increasing, which put us at risk of an infection and needing to be separated for 48 hours. NO THANKS. Oh and did I mention that I’d only progressed 4 cm from the time we checked into the hospital at 3cm? It took me 14 hours to go 4 cm. I’d even caved and gotten an epidural because my contractions were happening every 30 seconds and Thomas’ arms were going to fall off from rubbing my back with a massage stick through back labor for quite a few hours.

Ok, I said I wouldn’t post all the gory details and I kind of am. Basically, my body rebelled and Adam did not want to enter this world in any sort of non-dramatic fashion. But boy oh boy, we are thankful for him and that Mama and Adam are as healthy as can be expected right now! By the time we needed to make the decision on the c-section, I was not scared or nervous, just very determined to meet my baby. 15 hours earlier, I’d never been hospitalized, never had any sort of surgery (do wisdom teeth count?) and was terrified of needles. What a difference a day makes!

It was so much fun not knowing whether we were having a boy or a girl. I honestly think that is part of the reason I wasn’t terrified going into the c-section. Our amazing, sweet, wonderful, fabulous (Thomas says I have a girl crush on her) doctor held Adam up and said “Thomas, look over here at what you have!” and Thomas proclaimed “It’s a boy!” and I said “are you joking? are you SURE?!” I’d been secretly hoping for a boy yet knew I wouldn’t care either way, but it was such a fun gift after our exhausting day.

We think our little man is the most gorgeous baby ever, obviously. Thanks so much for ALL of the wonderful love and support and mostly for the prayers in the past week. We truly felt sustained by sweet prayer that night in the operating room.