It has been a long five and a half years waiting for this point when I could hold a precious little infant in my arms and call him our son. Our prayers were finally answered and on Thursday, February 25, 2010 Miles Aaron Conner joined our family at 6:38 in the morning after keeping his mother up all night for several nights in a row (just preparing us for later, I suppose!) He weighed 7 pounds, 9 ½ ounces and was 19 inches long. Pretty good sized for being two weeks early! Anyway, back to the beginning of his birth story….
After a false alarm on Sunday, February 22, and being sent home from the hospital I refused to go back until I “knew” it was time. Despite pretty constant contractions all Monday and Tuesday, I still didn’t go. At my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday the 23, Dr. Russell could see how exhausted I was but that I was progressing. He told me that if he could, he would send me to the hospital right then and break my water but they frown upon that if you aren’t 39 weeks along (I was 38). He did reassure me that should I return to the hospital at any time, he would admit me and we would have this baby. Contractions picked up that evening and became very strong during the night. But, not wanting to get sent home at 3:00 in the morning, I refused to go anywhere (plus, I would have had to go downstairs to the guest room to wake up my husband, where he was trying to get some uninterrupted sleep, and I didn’t have the energy!) I again went to work and only made it through about half the day. I came home and rested and let Aaron take care of me (it was his day off) until around 5:30 when I decided we better eat dinner because we were going to the hospital and I was going to have this baby.
We were admitted around 8:00 pm and Dr. Russell broke my water at around 9:30 pm to help move things along (Dr. Russell knew me well and knew that I didn’t want to be in labor for a long period of time—he figured the past few days of constant contractions was enough!). He said that if at midnight I hadn’t progressed, we’d start Pitocin. The contractions kept coming stronger, longer, and more intense. It came to the point where I decided that if they were going to be giving me Pitocin, I was going to give in and have the epidural. So, right before midnight, I received the epidural (Ahhhh…relief; As Dr. Russell told me several times—God let us invent the epidural for a reason) and the Pitocin drip.
Our sweet labor and delivery nurse Helen (who was beyond amazing!) really wanted us to have baby Miles before her shift ended at 7:00 am. I told her that I would do my best! Around 5:45 am on the 25th I felt the need to push, so we started pushing. Dr. Russell arrived at about 6:15 and about 15 minutes later, our beautiful baby Miles was born. I remember the nurse telling me I had to open my eyes and look down so that I could see him. I was so busy concentrating on getting him here, that my eyes were squeezed shut. What an amazing feeling of overwhelming love and gratitude filled me as he was placed on my stomach and I held him for the first time. I looked at Aaron, who had tears rolling down his cheeks. What a miracle! I never thought I could love Aaron more than I already did, but that love grew so much as I saw him hold our baby for the first time.
There is a country song by George Strait that talks about having a baby that says “I saw God today.” Truly, we saw God as we witnessed the birth of our first born son. What a blessing he already is to us!
