Acker Country Living: The Arrival of Miss Susannah Jane Acker

Introducing for the very first time on Acker Country Living...
Miss Susannah Jane Acker!

What a surprise to have our sweet baby girl join us three weeks before her due date! She knew what she was doing though, and I am so thankful to have birthed a 7 1/2 pound baby 3 weeks early rather than a 10 1/2 pound baby on her due date. Gracious. The following is the story of how everything went down with her arrival, and it gets a little lengthy, seeing as I now have an awesome blog-updating companion (see below) and not a whole lot I'm allowed to do just following a natural labor; so put your reading glasses on before proceeding...

(There are pictures at the end if you'd prefer to pass by the birth story and look at the good stuff!)

Photo cred: the amazing SuSu

On Sunday afternoon last week, after a weekend of things being a little different in my belly than it had been, I told Pete, "I know I've been wrong about almost every prediction I've made with this pregnancy, but I think this girl is going to come this week..." To which we both laughed and talked vaguely like, "yeah, maybe..." and "that'd be cool..." and "we'll see..." Who knew just how right on I would be.

Pete was planning on hitting the woods at 4:00am the next morning (Monday), and I was exhausted from your general 3rd trimester lack of sleep; so we both went to bed early that night. Around 10, my stomach began to feel a little like I had food poisoning, so I got out of bed, thinking that I might be having false-labor contractions. Just for kicks, I began to time them. Though they were consistently 4 1/2 minutes apart, I had convinced myself they'd eventually stop because of the varying level of intensity of each one and I'd go back to bed.

After calling my sister-in-law Lauren shortly thereafter to pick her brain on what I should be doing, I jumped in the shower to try to relax and see if these darn false-labor contractions would finally begin to wane. Upon hearing the shower kick on at the midnight hour, Pete woke up and immediately felt around on the bed for puddles of amniotic fluid, deliriously convinced my water had broken and I was calm enough to get out of bed without shouting expletives. Once realizing the impossibility of that situation, he came to check on me, and I nonchalantly told him I was just having false-labor contractions and would be back in bed soon -- so he should do the same. After asking me 25+ questions to confirm said false labor, he headed back to bed, and I headed to the living room to continue timing my false labor, you know, just in case...*

By about 2:15am, the intensity of my not-so-false labor contractions had increased significantly to the point of doubling me over, so I decided to wake up Pete in order to head to the hospital. When we finally reached our destination at about 3:15, I told the receptionist very honestly that I had no prior knowledge of contractions but was pretty sure I was in labor and had been for about 5 hours, to which she replied, "Oh, well, if you're actually in labor, your contractions now are nothing compared to what they will be..." Very optimistic, thanks for that.

We were all under the impression that I would be something like 3 cm dilated or just around the beginning stages of labor since this was my first pregnancy and those labors tend to last 15+ hours. Upon the nurses' inspection, the one checking me up looked at the other nurse in the room, started dying laughing, and said, "Um, well, you're aboouuut....8-9 cm!" Excuse me, WHAT?!

Before we had time to absolutely freak out or get remotely nervous about the fact that we were a centimeter away from birthing a baby, they moved us to the delivery room, hooked me up to an IV, called the OB, and told me to chew on ice and try to breathe. Suffice it to say, once the OB arrived, it was go-time; I started pushing at 4:15am and precious Susannah was crying in the room with us at 5:02!

I know how seemingly ideal this situation was for a first-time mother, and I can't thank the Lord enough for our labor story. Now with that said, it was not an "easy" labor, by any means. In fact, it was by far the most painful thing I've ever experienced. But my goodness, in the words of my sweet sister-in-law Beth, I "now know what it's like to have my heart on the outside of my body." I can't even begin to describe the amount of love I feel for our baby girl. Postpartum emotions aside, my cup is overflowing, and I love every second I've had with her this past week, even the seconds that take place in the wee hours of the morning.

Susannah is a GOOD and PERFECT gift from above (James 1:17), and we cannot wait to introduce her to all of you!

*Please know that I am not an idiot! I had read page 269 of What to Expect When You're Expecting (false labor vs. real labor) 18 times, and my symptoms fit both categories. Just wanted to set the record straight!