***Footprints***

If you would have asked me during my senior year of high school, I would have told you my life plans would be to teach school and have a family. It is funny to look back to that time and realize where my "feet" have taken me. I did pursue my goal of being a teacher and enjoyed the four years I spent in the classroom. However, I have gotten the greatest reward out of being a stay-at-home mom. I never considered staying home when having Jeremiah because I thought we needed two incomes to survive, I loved my job, and I just thought it would be boring. Well, the Lord had another plan for us and I'm glad we chose to take that path. Jeremiah stayed sick (including multiple hospital stays) his first two years in daycare and we decided it would be best for me to stay home with him until he reached school age. It's the best decision we ever made for our family.

Robert and I have wanted more children since Jeremiah was 6 months old, so waiting the three years was hard but worth every minute. I feel blessed that the Lord has seen fit to send us another bundle of joy. I have chosen to share details of her delivery not to get sympathy for my pain or her difficulties, but to show how something beautiful can come out of a tough journey. I will have to say that this pregnancy was much easier than Jeremiah's because I was home and not working on my feet all day. We went into the hospital on March 20th at 5:30am to get prepped for the delivery of our baby to happen at 7:30am. Everything went so smoothly with check in, surgery prep and it comes time to wheel me into the operating room. It took the anesthesiologist four tries, but he finally got the epidural in and the doctor began the procedure. Her actual birth was so smooth and we were excited to hear we had a little girl. Robert was able to go with her to the nursery while the doctor finished with me.

My husband loves our children and I didn't think anything about it when he stayed in the nursery a long time while I was in recovery. It was hard for him to leave Jeremiah when he was born, so I just figured he was spending lots of time with Susannah. His face told a different story upon entering the recovery room that day and I knew things hadn't went well in the nursery. While the doctor was delivering Susannah, it turns out that she swallowed a good bit of fluid and was having a difficult time maintaining her blood oxygen level. They had to put her on oxygen to help her breathing and we would just have to wait to see what would happen. Surprisingly, I stayed pretty strong during the whole ordeal and tried to encourage him. We had been through oxygen level issues with Jeremiah, so we knew what they were talking about and that it would just take time to resolve the issue. I guess the hard part for me was that I couldn't see her and I was having my own issues with a bad reaction to the anesthesia, while Robert was able to go anytime to visit her. While in recovery, my face started to itch so bad and I started getting very nauseated. My recovery nurse said there were only two side effects to the medicine and I had gotten both of them. My symptoms lasted the whole day, but they were able to give me some medicine to help with them.

I had a wonderful recovery nurse and when it was time to go to my room upstairs, she wheeled my whole bed into the nursery so I could get to see my daughter. It was the nicest gesture and gave me some peace just being able to see her for myself. Susannah ended up having to stay in the nursery until 1:00am the next day. Even though I just had surgery, I was able to get in a wheelchair on Tuesday afternoon to go downstairs to see her and nurse her twice. I still could not tell you how I mustered up the strength to do that, but by saying it was adrenaline and being blessed. It was a huge relief to have her in the room with us that next day and she has done wonderful since that day. She has the best daddy in the world because he spent most of Tuesday going from my room to the nursery every thirty minutes to check on us. If you tried getting in touch with us on Tuesday, now you know why it might have taken us a little while to get back to you.

With all that happened that day, I would not trade our journey from trying to conceive until the day of her birth for anything in this world. I look at her everyday and ask Robert what we did to deserve such a beautiful gift and he replies "nothing". So, our "feet" may take us on a path not planned, but it is worth the blessing in the end. I feel blessed to have a family that I can stay-at-home with to take care of and make sweet memories with on a daily basis. I couldn't do a post without pictures, so here are a few of our angel below.

Susannah taking it easy on the couch.

Mommy and Susannah with her footprint on the hospital wall.

Daddy and Susannah with her footprint