And now, without further ado; the last but certainly not least of my babies...
My Little Lady Leah!
I'm excited to share the final introduction of my children, and yet again a life lesson God has taught me through her.
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| My little snuggle-bug Leah at our family reunion. August 5, 2011 |
So if I could say one thing about Leah it is that being her mom is a delight! Really - she's a pretty happy, easy baby. Having just turned 1 year old on June 29th, she has brightened our lives in unimaginable ways. She's a pretty good sleeper, eater and listener. She loves to laugh and explore. Leah has a pretty sweet temper... so far she's just a great baby. Of course she has her moments, but outside of the way she spits when she is mad there really isn't much negative I can share.
One thing about Leah that stands out as special to me is her birth delivery. It was a very different experience than I had gone through with my other two. With Madison I was heavily drugged and induced - resulting in going from 2 to 10 cm in about 25 minutes (can you say ouch!!!). This is what they call a "traumatic pregnancy". With Nathan my 1st contraction was instant labor with the next following under 2 minutes later. I had an epidural, but since that precious little bundle of joy gave me the gift of "back labor" (double ouch and a crazy scream) I got to experience pretty much every movement of pain through my spine... making the epidural nearly pointless. So when I was preparing to have Leah, knowing that my labors are pretty fast (thank you traumatic pregnancy), I had told Eric that if things were going quickly I did not want an epidural and wanted to go natural. He thought I was being hilarious and had me record this request on his phone so use later so I could listen to my own voice sharing the birthing plan. And yes... he played it back to me while I white-knuckled the hospital bed.
Now... I need to point out that my decision to have a natural delivery had nothing to do with a belief in a drug-free environment for the baby, or fear of epidurals or for any reason that would cast judgement upon someone else's birthing choice. I wanted to go natural simply for the fact that I thought it would be faster and more time efficient. Basically my logic was:
Horrific pain for a short amount of time
was better than horrific pain for a long time.
Now remember, this thinking is a result of my experience with Nathan of having an epidural during back labor, which basically meant that labor slowed down, but the pains in my back were constant.
Okay... so what's the point?
The point is, our nurse was a wonderful gal that I liked from the moment I met her. After talking we discovered that she actually lived across the lake in the same community we were from and was an active Christian in a local church just down the street from our house. Once Eric (gleefully) played the recording and she knew I wanted to go natural she grabbed me by the hand, looked me in the eyes and assured me this was a great choice. I'll never forget what she said to me. She said (give-or-take):
"God designed your body perfectly to birth this baby.
Every contraction is His design to get you closer to your child.
It is our nature to resist pain, this is why we take drugs and epidurals,
which is actually resisting the intentional design of your body.
Instead of pushing and fighting the pain away, you are going to embrace it.
You will breath through every contraction and find peace....
peace in your fingertips, toes and butt.
Let the contraction move through and out of your body.
This is best for you and the baby - and if you work with the contraction,
work with His design,
you will see your baby sooner than if you fight against it."
I remember chanting to myself, through each contraction, "Embrace the pain, this is God's plan", "Embrace the pain, this is God's plan", "Embrace the pain, this is God's plan", etc. I will not pretend that giving birth is 'fun'... but by making Leah's birth a truly spiritual event I believe I personally received such a beautiful gift from the experience. Yes, it hurt like crazy when she entered the world, and my dad swears he could hear me screaming from the courtyard, but four hours and 20 minutes after my first contraction, Leah Marie Joppa made her debut. My mom, aunt and husband were there to witness her arrival. And just like on TLC's 'Baby Story', it was beautiful.
Honestly, delivering Leah might just be the most empowering, liberating, strength building experience of my life. And in the past year I have often thought of how the words of my nurse can really be used as a metaphor for so much in our lives. It is natural to resist pain and do everything to avoid hard situations. However; sometimes God's plan just might intentionally include painful experiences to strengthen and grow us. When we push His plan/pain away... we can lose the lesson... or perhaps we just delay it. But taking life, even in the painful times, one breath at a time and working through them (sometimes over and over) just might be the best for you/me. Ultimately, when we are following Gods desire, when we get to the end destination, retrospect shows us that the journey might of been difficult but worth every minute. Perhaps the journey is actually the real point of this crazy thing called life!
Or... in simpler words, from one of Nathan's favorite books, "Going On A Bear Hunt":
Can't go over it.
Can't go under it.
Can't go around it.
Gotta go through it.
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