Growing up

My entire world has been wrapped up in this sweet squishy face for the last two weeks.

I'm semi aware of what is going on in the world outside of Drolmond Dr. I'm just beginning to enjoy sleep again and Elijah and I are starting to figure each other out. However, there is another life changing event that has happened this week that needs noting. 

As of this week my childhood home is no longer mine. My parents have sold our house as a first step to moving here to Raleigh. In the midst of all the chaos that one 7lb human can cause, I haven't let myself linger on this loss. The last time that Jesse and I traveled to Etowah I took some pictures to try to capture some memories to hold on to, so I'm going to share them with you now.

I moved into 49 Armstrong Rd when I was 3 years old. It's the only home I've ever known with my family. When I think about my house, there are a couple of places that stick out the most. 

I will never forget coming up these stairs every day from school and seeing our cats sitting on the top step waiting for me, snuggles ready. We were so lucky to have such wonderful family pets. Poco, KC, Nicholas, and Jolie all lived out wonderful lives in this house. 

Our dining room that was host to many holiday meals and family gatherings.

 Blake and Clayton, the two boys that lived in the house before us used the side of this door to mark their heights. I thought I should do the same. My lines are the ones on the right.

 My first two songs I learned to play on this piano; Heart and Soul and Van Halen's Right Now. The second one was thanks to my big brother.

 I have loved watching our 5 stockings that hang above this fireplace grow to 13. We'll get to add another this year. :)

 I used to look out my bedroom window and dream about my future.

This is the window that I would stand in front of every year on the first day of school to get my picture taken, and I mean every year, all the way through high school. It's also the spot where our Christmas tree would sit each year.

This is the house where Jesse told me he loved me for the first time. It's where we fell in love, where we had our first Christmas together, where he became part of my family.

There is something so bitter sweet about this change for me. I'm sad that Elijah will never get to run up those steps on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought him or play on the swing hanging from the tree-house or add his own height lines to the bedroom door. The sadness is completely overwhelmed however by an immense joy that my parents will soon be living here in Raleigh and not 5 hours away anymore. When I think about it, it's just a house. It's walls and doors and windows. The memories I have, the countless moments that continue to warm my heart years later, they're all because of these two people (with a little help from my brothers). While I will miss this yellow split-level, I am ecstatic that my mom and dad will be living in the same city as me and my brothers and we will be able to make many new memories together. 

Yesterday

This face could pretty much describe my day yesterday. Everyone tells you to cherish the moments, sleep when he sleeps, rest when you can... what if your child takes no naps during the day and makes this face at you?

Needless to say it was a very tough day. His worst time was right around 5-6 and he could be consoled by being held but after a long day of no naps and 3 visitors, all I wanted to do was close my eyes. By 8:30 I was crying out to God for just a short break, just 5 minutes of peace. Not 10 minutes later He answered my prayers. With a jingle of keys at the door, my husband rode in on his noble steed, kissed me on my tear stained cheek and sent me to bed telling me he would wake me at 2. My heroic husband who had just worked two jobs was willing to take the next two feedings so that I could get some sleep. With no arguments from me I shuffled upstairs to get as much sleep as I could.

I woke up at around 1:30 feeling much better and came downstairs to see how things were going. I swear my heart catches in my chest every time I watch Jesse hold our son close. He looked up at me and as I waited to see his exhaustion or frustration, he just smiled at me. He said our son had slept beautifully from 7 to 10 and then again from 10 until right then. He finished that feeding and I through tears tried to explain to him how much it meant to get those few hours of sleep. He just shook his head and said that God loves us so much and because of that it was his joy to help me out. I sent him upstairs to get his sleep before the early alarm went off telling him to get to work and I finished changing Elijah and swaddling him for bed. A few minutes later I could hear Jesse coming back down the stairs. I asked if he had forgotten something as he seemed to be on a mission and before I knew it I was swept up in the most incredible toe-curling, end of the best chic flick, butterflies in your stomach kiss. He told me that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and with that went off to bed.

I sat down on the couch dumbfounded. Me? Beautiful? I don't remember the last time I showered. I know my shirt was covered in formula and gripe water and desitin and let's face it, your body one week after a c-section is a disaster and yet my romantic and incredible husband wanted to remind me that he still thinks I'm beautiful.

With those extra hours of sleep and that sweet moment, I felt like Scarlet O'Hara shaking that carrot or turnip or whatever it was at the sky, swearing that I could do this. I could take on another sleepless fussy night with a smile. I immediately thought of Ecclesiastes 4:9- 10, "Two are better than one because they have good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up." I know these verses can be used for many situations, but I have to wonder if God was thinking about late night feedings with a newborn when He inspired these words.

I was falling and my companion without hesitation lifted me up and our return for our labor was a happy sleeping baby who slept in almost 4 hour stretches all night! We have so many blessings to be thankful for but today I want to thank God for my partner, my best friend, my husband. I would be lost without him.

Our story part 2

As we went down the hall, the nurses heard a call that someone else had been scheduled for a section as well. My nurses started sprinting with my bed down the hall towards the OR, not wanting me to get bumped again. They sent Jesse to a room to get scrubbed in. Even just those few minutes without him beside me seemed like an eternity. They placed me on the OR table and started explaining what would happen step by step but all I could say was “Where is my husband?” They put up the blue curtain and happily told me that my epidural was still working great and I wouldn’t need a spinal block. They said they would wait until my professional hand holder was in the room to get started but when I finally heard his sweet voice beside me he said that he had accidentally looked over the curtain and they had already started. Another eternity later I heard this beautiful cry break through. The world stopped and Jesse and I looked at each other knowing that our entire lives were from this moment on different. The doctor immediately made a comment on how much hair my sweet boy had which made me feel vindicated for all of that heartburn he had caused for nine months. She also said that the cord was wrapped around his neck twice which had been causing his heart rate to drop. They brought him around the curtain for a few seconds and then I watched as he was carried away. There’s no way to describe how hard it was to watch him go and then Jesse leave as well. Everything that mattered to me was so far away in that moment. 

A few minutes later they brought him back in and held him close enough for me to kiss his sweet cheeks and tell him how much I loved him. Then he was gone again and I was alone with the 8 strangers in the room sewing me back up. I tried to keep my heart from breaking as once again my expectations mocked me. Everyone is meeting your son before you do. Everyone is bonding with him before you. He won’t even know you by the time you get finished. It sounds silly, but for anyone that has been on that table waiting for the surgery to be over, you understand. As soon as they finished they took me to another room with different curtained areas. Jesse was there waiting for me and I could not have been happier to kiss him and feel his hand on mine again. I asked him a million questions between ice chips as they monitored my progress (and pushed painfully on my abdomen every 15 minutes). I facetimed my mom and dad so that they could see that I was ok and they showed me my beautiful son through the glass window of the nursery. That image got me through the next hour and finally it was time to go to my room. As I was wheeled past the nursery, a nurse met us in the hall with my sweet bundle of joy. They put him on top of me and I took a deep sigh of relief. He was ok, I was ok. My April Fools Day baby born at 1:31 a.m. So close to being a March baby but it wasn’t meant to be.

That was my biggest lesson of the day and would continue to be over the next few days. The things that I thought I could control, that I had power over, God continued to gracefully show me that I really didn’t. His gentle voice kept reminding me of who was in control and that He was much better at it than me. My expectations were my way of trying to be in charge and in a matter of hours each expectation had been washed away and left with the reality that I had a son. I was a mom. Everything was going to change and it was time to let go of what I wanted and do what was best for Elijah.

Elijah Harmon Durst arrived unexpectedly for us and yet exactly at the time that God had planned. And now our adventure had begun. 

Our story

I should start this story by saying that like with everything else in my life, I had set very specific expectations of what labor, breast feeding, and the first few moments with my child would be like. I had dreamed about them repeatedly and could almost touch them in my mind. Induction was never part of that dream and so when a week late the doctor told me I was scheduled for one on the next Monday, it seemed so definite to me that my son would come before that. I just knew at any second, maybe even the last possible second he would come on his own. Months ago I was swearing that he would be an early baby and now here I was waking up at 6:28 a.m. on Monday, March 31^st listening to the nurse tell me I needed to be checked in to the hospital at 7:30 to be induced. For the next hour it seemed surreal as we packed our bags, hugged our kitten a little tighter, and looked back at our house as though the same people would never return. I still held on to the thought that at any second my water would break and we would tell people this funny story of going in to labor on our way to be induced, but it wasn’t meant to be.

 We checked in to room 229 and I put on the most stylish hospital gown I have ever seen. 

Jesse and I held hands and waited anxiously for someone to come in the room and start the process. With so many people in my life uttering some form of the phrase “Oh, you do not want to be induced!” or “You just need to hope he comes before that,” you can guess how high my stress level was when an hour later a nurse finally walked into the room. She said that they had an emergency delivery arrive right after me but they were ready to get started. First came the IV and some blood work, nothing enjoyable there. There was what seemed to be an endless line of questions and then at 9:30, they started my Pitocin drip at the smallest amount possible. I could feel contractions a little more strongly but it was nothing compared to 30 minutes later when the doctor came in to break my water. The nurse and doctor both promised I would be holding my son before 5 that night and Jesse and I rejoiced that things were moving so quickly. It wasn’t 5 minutes after my water was broken that the intense contractions started. Everything I had learned about breathing left the room because the pain was so sudden and so strong. I moved to the glider and Jesse and my mom took turns holding my hand and reminding me to breath. An hour of those contractions went on and finally they gave me some morphine. Dr. Creighton wanted to wait on an epidural to make sure the induction was working. Morphine is a strange thing. It didn’t change the amount of pain at all, it just changed the way my brain interpreted it. I immediately felt some peace and was able to breathe through my contractions much better. This only lasted about 30 minutes and then wore off as all of the pain came rushing back. I remember trying to take a bite of lemon Italian ice in between each contraction when all of the sudden the breaks stopped. I asked Jesse to check the monitor and he as calmly as he could told me that the contraction was not stopping, it would come down for a second then immediately go back up. I began telling him that I couldn’t do this, that the pain was unbearable and that I was giving up. I’m not sure what I thought would happen but it seemed like the only thing running through my mind. The nurse seeing the incredible pain I was in made a quick call to the doctor and she decided I could have the epidural now. I promised myself I wouldn’t look at the needle and instead focus on the relief that it would bring. The anesthesiologist walked in and I called him Santa Claus. Within minutes I was hooked up to the epidural and the contractions disappeared as if they were never there. Jesse watched the monitor and said they looked exactly the same but I couldn’t feel a thing anymore. Downside to epidural is the catheter and being confined to the bed but it was worth having a break. I enjoyed an entire Italian ice in peace. My parents came up to the room and saw that I was finally getting some relief which helped them as well. 

Every time they checked my cervix I was 2 more cm dilated and things seemed to be going as well as they could. They even turned down the Pitocin because I was doing so well on my own. The day seemed to be flying by for me and Jesse. Every time we checked the clock, 5’oclock was even closer. Well, it may be closer to 8 now is what the nurse told us. That seemed fine too as Jesse was adamant this baby be a March baby. At 7:30, shift change as we learned quickly, we said goodbye to our incredible nurse and two new nurses came in. I did not enjoy a single second of them. They whispered at the computer almost the entire time as one was being trained on Rex’s system. It wasn’t long until I could feel an incredible pressure which surprised me considering I had felt nothing blissfully for hours. The nurses told me it was finally time to start pushing. Once again, those expectations entered my mind of what this moment would be like. The doctor would come in and they would change the bed to look more like a delivery bed and the whole world would shift to just pushing and waiting for that baby to arrive. Not at all what happened. No doctor came in. Every time I felt a contraction I was told to push 3 times. Sometimes the nurses stood around me and counted and sometimes they were hovering over the computer and Jesse would take over. They would check every so often and tell me that he was getting closer and closer and that one could even see his head on one of the pushes. Jesse excitedly texted my mom that we were at the finish line. I was in such pain but it didn’t matter because things were almost over. I kept looking back at my husband, so thankful that I had this incredible man by my side. He was my rock through every contraction, praising me, comforting me, brushing the hair out of my face and holding my hand tightly. With every minute that passed I could feel my energy slipping away and started to lose hope that I could get this baby out. Every so often they would tell me my son’s heart rate was dropping and would put an oxygen mask on me which made pushing even more difficult. Two hours into pushing the doctor made her appearance and upon checking informed us that my sweet boy was turned sunny side up, was stuck on my pelvic bone, his head was swelling, and that the only choice was a c-section. Just like that, all the air left the room. This wasn’t the plan. I could push him out, I knew it. Maybe they could use the vacuum, or I could change positions to help him shift where he needed to be. The word c-section just hung in the air. I did what any girl would do in this moment of fear, I sent for my mom. She came quickly and offered just the calm strength that I needed to realize that this was what was best for my son and that was most important in this moment. I asked how long it would take and they all assured us my son would still be born in March. They finished getting me ready for surgery and started to wheel me out when an emergency c-section jumped in front of us. Now it would be an hour and a half wait if not longer. The contractions were continuing and getting stronger and I could no longer push so I just had to endure the pain as well as let the fear of a c-section grow larger and larger. The anesthesiologist came back and told us that because I had an epidural in for so long they would have to take it out and give me spinal block. The risk with having both would be that it would go up to high and paralyze my lungs as well requiring me to have a breathing tube down my throat during surgery. That sounds fun doesn’t it. The reality started hitting, no baby in March, no normal delivery, no snuggling with my son immediately after his birth… it just kept coming. I remember apologizing profusely to Jesse that I didn’t push hard enough, that I wasn’t strong enough to have this baby normally. Thank God for my incredible husband who stayed so supportive and uplifting through the whole thing. After waiting every agonizing minute of an hour and a half, the doctor came in and said it was time to go. I said goodbye to my parents and was wheeled down the hall towards the closed double doors.