Skip to main content

The Day I Met Mataya

This birth story was much smoother and bit more predictable than the first birth story. But, it was still full of surprises.

The whole pregnancy, I had been trying to convince myself that this baby would be late. Joash was 10 days early, but I didn't want to get my hopes up too much that baby #2 would also be early.

On Thursday, May 16th, it was the last day I was planning on tutoring a student that I had been working with at the local Christian School. I felt really "off" when I got up. Nothing to really indicate labour, but just a bit funny. But, I really wanted my student to have closure and to say good bye and stuff, so I just pushed through and got myself ready and went to school. By the time I got there, I felt fine. The rest of the day I felt fine too and even cleaned some random stuff and baked a batch of cookies. That's right. I was nesting.

I woke up around 1:40 am Friday morning to go to the bathroom. I stood up and my water broke. No question in my mind this time, it was clear that my water broke. I woke Wilbert up and we cleaned up, called his mom to come over, called the hospital, ate something, packed up and headed out. I was having mild short contractions about every 10-15 minutes or so. 

We arrived at the hospital around 2:45 am and got all checked in and the nurses did their normal checks and hooked me up to monitors and stuff. Once I layed down, my contractions slowed way down too. The nurses asked if I wanted to labour in the hospital, or go home for a bit. I decided to just stay because while the contractions were further apart, they were making me more uncomfortable. I just really wanted to get up and walk around. Finally, around 4:30, they were satisfied with the printouts from the monitor and said I could get up and walk around. The nurses had not checked how dilated I was yet, and I asked why. They said they don't do it unnecessarily to reduce the possibility of introducing infection. Fair enough. I got up to walk and they said to walk around for hour and the come back. But to also come back if contractions really picked up or I felt pressure.

Well, we walked for 10 minutes and I was back. The nurses were a bit skeptical when I said I was feeling pressure, but they checked me anyway and discovered I was 9 cm dilated. Then we had to hurry to the delivery room and Mataya entered the world at 5:24 am. 

We were super surprised we had a little girl! While we did not want to know the gender of our baby, we had convinced ourselves that it was a boy. We had 3 ultrasounds during this pregnancy and all three ultrasound techs said "he" during the course of the ultrasound. And Wilbert, who has seen a lot of cow ultrasounds this by this time, thought he detected some boy parts on the ultrasound. So, we were pretty much planning on a boy. We love how God surprises us!


Comments

Mary said…
She is beautiful!
Tam Velderman said…
Just precious~so happy for you.

Popular posts from this blog

A Perspective

I have already mentioned my "Word of the Day" screen saver that I have on my laptop that is hooked up to the projector in my room. I am learning that the words go in cycles a bit, so the same word will pop up in several classes during the day. Today's popular word was "entitlement." A fantastic word to share with teenagers who often think they are entitled to a whole lot of stuff. In fact, we as humans often think we are entitled to a whole lot of stuff when really we are fallen people who deserve nothing but death. We so often miss how wonderful and blessed our life really is and we get caught up on the little things. This video sort of puts that in perspective in a rather humorous way. I am by no means promoting this comedian, but if you take what he says to heart, it is so true. We live in an amazing world, created by an amazing God. We really should be happy with the blessing we have been given.

The Best Summer of Our Lives by Rachel Hauck

  Twenty years ago, the summer of '77 was supposed to be the best summer of Summer Wilde's life. She and her best friends, Spring, Autumn, and Snow--the Four Seasons--had big plans. But those plans never had a chance. After a teenage prank gone awry, the Seasons found themselves on a bus to Tumbleweed, "Nowhere," Oklahoma, to spend eight weeks as camp counselors. All four of them arrived with hidden secrets and buried fears, and the events that unfolded in those two months forever altered their friendships, their lives, and their futures. Now, thirtysomething, Summer is at a crossroads. When her latest girl band leaves her in a motel outside Tulsa, she is forced to face the shadows of her past. Returning to the place where everything changed, she soon learns Tumbleweed is more than a town she never wanted to see again. It's a place for healing, for reconciling the past with the present, and for finally listening to love's voice. This was an enjoyable book to r...

Birthday Fun

It was my birthday on Saturday, so Wilbert asked me what I wanted to do. Since it was nice weather, I decided to have a picnic in the park. We opted for the easy picnic and picked up Subway and headed to the Elliot River Dream Park. It was a lovely day. After our lunch, Wilbert and Joash explored the park. They found musical instruments...  played a bit of hide and seek...  and tried out the slides. Joash did pretty good in the park, but he is still pretty timid and cautious over all. He never really dared to go down a slide by himself, but he was running around on his own by the end. After we were finished at the park, we stopped for dessert at Cows Ice Cream since we didn't get an ice cream cone we went earlier in the week. It was very tasty! In the evening, we had a bonfire and invited lots of people over. At 5 in the afternoon, we had a crazy thundershower pop up right over us and it rained like crazy. But by 7, the weather was great and once it got dark...