I have been up the last few nights with Clara, who has continued to have a stuffy nose and cough, so I have been giving her a little formula in the middle of the night. She is really good about taking 2-3 ounces and promptly going back to sleep, so I don't mind too much. In fact, a few nights ago, I went in there when she was crying and, after I picked her up, she very clearly signed "Milk, please" which made me so proud! I was like, "well, ok then . . . I'll get you some milk." How can I not, when she communicated it so clearly and calmly? :)
Anyway, most nights I am able to go right back to sleep after putting her back down, but last night, I was thinking about what I was doing exactly a year ago at that time: 3 a.m. I almost came down and blogged about it in the middle of the night, but I knew that if I did, I'd be up for the rest of the night for sure. So, I just laid in bed and reminisced . . and got teary eyed and choked up.
At 3:00 a.m. on January 11th, 2008, my epidural had set in. My dad had driven over a blizzardy pass and almost slid off the road to get to the hospital, and he was asleep on the hard floor of my room. Jeremy was sicker than a dog, and so they brought in a cot for him and he was asleep next to me. My mom had gone to the waiting area to take a nap on the couches. Jeremy's parents had come from Salem, but gone to our house to get a few hours of sleep and check on the dog. And, finally, I was laying in bed, watching the contraction monitor with my grandma, who also couldn't sleep. The nurse had told me to try to sleep for a little bit, which I couldn't fathom at the time. Sleep? With my body working hard to get ready to push out my first little baby? (Even though I couldn't feel those contractions . . . epidurals are lovely things!)
This is when the special moment occurred. In the middle of everyone else sleeping. Jeremy and I had chosen not to find out the sex of the baby beforehand, and, in the few weeks leading up to Clara's birth, most people were predicting that she was going to be a boy. Honestly, that's what Jeremy and I were hoping for. We'd always pictured our family to have a few boys and then one little girl that would be a tomboy from all the influence of her older brothers. We also were thinking, towards the end of the pregnancy, that we were going to have a boy that would be around 8-9 lbs, since I was almost a week late. Well, in those quiet moments before she was born, the Lord very clearly told me, "Laura, you are having a precious little daughter in a couple hours." He just told me. No one else.
When Clara came out at 6:12 a.m., EVERYONE was so surprised to see this petite little girl! I was surprised, too, but not as much as everyone else, since I had been prepared a few hours earlier by the Lord. I will never forget that. Our precious girl was born just six hours after the 10 year anniversary of the awful day that my little sister, Rebecca, was killed in a snowmobile accident when she was 11 years old. On the 10th, I think we were hoping a little bit that she would come on out and greet us on that day, just because it would be pretty special to bring in a new life to our family on the same day that we so tragically lost one . . . but now, I'm glad that Clara Rebecca gets her own day to celebrate what she has brought to our family: joy. Absolute and pure joy.
Happy first birthday, sweetheart! I love you so much!
(I'll get some pictures up in a few days of her little party I had for her yesterday, as well as her one year "stats" after her doctor appointment tomorrow.)
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