Whirlwind (pt. I)

Whew!

We are finally catching our collective breaths after the birth of our beautiful daughter, Ruby, enough to post something on our blog. We had hoped to do this much sooner, but as you will read below, we have all had to deal with a little more than we initially bargained for. In a nutshell, we are very happy to finally be back at our house with Ruby and starting to establish our new routines with her as part of the family. She seems to be doing very well, as she is prolific at doing all of the things that new babies do (eat, sleep, poop). We are ecstatic to have her, and we are really looking forward to seeing her grow and develop over the course of many years to come.

As many of you know, Leah intended to give birth to Ruby here at our house under the supervision and guidance of the wonderful people at Treasure Valley Midwives, and with the support of our incredible doula, Molly. After waiting nearly 2 weeks past her projected due date, Leah finally broke down and decided to try some castor oil to get her labor started. To her relief, the castor oil did exactly as she had hoped and actually kick-started active labor around 8:00 PM on Sunday, August 8th. After a few hours of contractions, we gave Molly a call and she was kind enough to come over and join us in the middle of the night. Leah continued labor throughout the evening and into the morning, so we finally called Paula, from Treasure Valley Midwives, at around 7:30 AM. Paula arrived shortly afterward, and she brought Kathleen and Jill along with her to help us all through the remainder of the labor process – we all became very close (both literally and figuratively) over the course over the next several hours. I won’t go into any of the details of the labor here, but I do want to make a few quick comments about the labor experience at our house:

1) Leah was amazingly impressive. I really can’t come up with enough superlatives to describe what she accomplished/endured – I definitely have a new appreciation and respect for my wife that I didn’t even know was possible until then. She displayed such a determination and resolve to deliver the baby the way she wanted, yet such a sense of calm and control throughout the process that it could have only come from a combination of her faith in God and her love of Ruby.
2) We appreciate Molly so much – I don’t know how we could have made it through without her. She spent 30 hours of her life continually waiting on us hand and foot to make sure that Leah had everything she needed to make this experience as positive as possible. We are extremely grateful that The Lord brought her into our lives, and we hope that we can continue to keep in touch as Ruby grows.
3) Paula, Kathleen, and Jill were awesome! They brought a collective experience and guidance that we leaned on heavily throughout the day. It feels like the used nearly every tool in their considerable toolbox to help Leah try to deliver Ruby at home. Every time it felt like we may be getting close to a roadblock, they would find a new way to potentially get around it. We also very much appreciated their honesty and candor when it became fairly obvious that Ruby was turned in such a way that it would likely be best for everyone involved to go to the hospital.

At around 8:30 (24 ½ hours after active labor began), we made the decision to finish the delivery at St. Lukes Hospital. Leah was extremely grateful for both the epidural and the pitosin at the hospital, and after a few minor heart rate issues and a brief discussion of a c-section (which ended up being unnecessary), she delivered Ruby without issue at 5:30 AM on Tuesday, August 10th.

I was going to make this all into a single posting, but after seeing how much I have already written just about Ruby’s birth, I will follow-up with subsequent post(s) to talk about the rest of our week.

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