You Are Always Enough

This post was inspired by my post I did for Whitney's blog for her Mommylogue series.

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You are their mother, you are always enough.

Let me explain.

My first with Baby Fox was typical one.  I went into early labor about 11am on Christmas Eve, and then labored through the night, I knew that I wanted to labor on my own for as long as possible, because I knew once I got the epidural I would be bed ridden. I lasted until about 4:30am and the pain was too much, so I asked for the epidural and was at 7cm. Phew, just in time, after 7cm, they don't give epidurals at our hospital. The epidural seemed to speed up my labor as I was at a 10 around 6:30am and ready to push. But Baby Fox had other plans, his heart rate was all over the place so I was really only "allowed" to push every 2-3 contractions to get his heart rate back up. Baby Fox was born at 7:19am on Christmas Day. I know, I never in a million years thought I would have a Christmas Baby. Our due date was early January, so it never crossed my mind I would go into labor early as a first time mom.

First selfie as a family of 3

Mini Fox...wow Mini Fox was like a tornado. We had put Baby Fox to bed about 8:50pm, and I had my first contraction while I was putting him to bed. I kissed him goodnight and went down stairs to watch some TV. Mr. asked if he wanted him to start timing the contractions, I told him not yet...then about 15 minutes later I was like maybe we should start timing them. About 9:45, he says I think we should head to the hospital, I was like I just started, it took forever with Baby Fox, let's just wait. He said well I'm going to call your parents to have them come over. I told him I wanted to take a shower, while we waited. So off to the shower I went, while in the shower, probably the warm water in hindsight, I was having so many contractions it took a good 30 minutes to take what usually takes me 10 minutes. Of course I was wearing this really super ugly nail polish (Baby Fox wanted me to paint my nails orange) and I didn't want all of my pictures to have orange nail polish. Mr. said we don't have time for that, let's just get going. Just then my parents showed up and I had a contraction at the top of the stairs, and then another one at the bottom. My parents were certain I was going to have the baby at the bottom of the stairs. Luckily our hospital is only 12 minutes away, but man those were a painful 12 minutes, the contractions are now 2 minutes apart. I'm getting no relief. We get to the hospital ER (since you have to enter through there because it's now about 10:40), and they take one look at me and said sign here, here and here and we'll fill it out later, get her upstairs! We get there and I tell them my contractions are about 2 minutes apart, but I'm talking normal and smiling, I'm sure they didn't believe us. They tell me to change into the gown and get in bed and they'll come and check me. As soon as I change and I am about to get on the bed (literally, one leg on the bed and one leg on the floor) my water breaks. I tell Mr. I either just peed myself or my water broke. Mr. calls in a nurse and she takes one look at it and says yep your water just broke, they change the sheets and clean up and I get in bed. I tell them I want the epidural right away, so can they give me the IV fluid. They check me and I'm at 7cm. The nurse gets the IV in me and I am having contractions on top of each other. Just as she finishes (5 minutes later), the other nurse says let me check you again, and I'm now at 10cm, no wonder I was in so much pain! I ask, so does this mean no epidural...insert sad face here. There are people running around everywhere, I'm screaming in pain...and I just need to push, the nurse says, stop pushing there isn't a doctor here yet. So I wait through one push, the doctor runs in, and catches Mini Fox 2 contractions later. Wow, I just did that with no drugs?! Say what?! That was NOT my birth plan!

See the orange nail polish?

I've been through both sorts of births, both a medicated one and a natural one, so I have first hand experience. Does having one sort of delivery make me a better mother? No. Does having an epidural make me weak? No. Does having a no drug delivery make me a better mother? No. Does loving my children unconditionally, no matter what make me a better mother, Yes! When it comes down to it, that's all that matters, that we love our children no matter how they came into the world. So let's celebrate a new little human coming into the world instead of judging how someone prefers to get that little human here.

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