God is Good!

As many of you know, our 2nd daughter, Gianna, or "little g", was born yesterday morning. This pregnancy has been rough: morning sickness for all but a few days, couldn't eat dairy in the mornings, horrible heartburn, insurance nightmares, and sciatic pain for the last 5 months. I could not wait to be DONE!! I'd been feeling "done" for most of March, but one of my aunts reminded me via Facebook that everything happens on God's schedule and in the way God plans it for our own GOOD!

That was proven to me yesterday morning. I'd been having contractions for 18 days. Everyday just teasing me from 8am to 8pm like clockwork. Every morning I was convinced I'd go into labor, but I see now all the things I got to do for God because I didn't have a newborn, especially helping teach a Theology of the Body class for the teens of our parish.

I do have to say that the events of yesterday morning were so surreal. I woke up at 4am with contractions and then I woke up Matt half hour later when they didn't go away. By 5am I was in the shower then I took a bath. For most of the next couple of hours I was trying to offer up the pain from the contractions, but I was mostly complaining "I'm so done. Let's just go to the hospital, get me an epidural and a nap, and then we'll just have her by 10:30/11am." But my loving husband refused since we had to wait for our doula to come and for San Diego morning traffic to subside. I ended up on the floor during the worst part of my labor, just lying super still and Matt thought I was asleep. The doula finally came and I was convinced I had to push so we got in the car. Let me tell you: worst car ride of my life. I had contractions every 3 minutes and I totally just wanted to push. But I couldn't since we were in the car (turned out I really almost did have her in the car). We got to the hospital at 9:30am, checked in at 9:50 to find out it was go time. The nurse didn't even have time to put in an IV, and barely got the fetal monitor on me just to check Gianna's heartbeat. Between pushes she asked me and Matt questions for the paperwork. My fave moment was when my water broke. It was just so funny how it exploded and I couldn't stop laughing for the next couple of pushes. Finally I was just so done I decided to squat and 2 pushes later there was our baby! Per the usual, our doctor didn't make it but blessed be God all the nurses and on call doctor were totally fine with me going naturally. It was so cool to see how everything worked out for everyone. I'm even feeling strangely well after delivery which was soooo not the case last time. So that's my little story about the birth and how God placed a lot of things into perspective for me over the last 24 hours.

(No pix yet, I'll post a couple later)