5 Years Ago

This is the year that my beautiful, outgoing, creative, loving, dramatic, talkative little girl turns 5! Five years ago tonight I was staying in a hotel waiting for 5 am to roll around to go to the hospital. I was a nervous wreak! I am tearing up as I write this. She shouldn't be this old! The time has gone by too fast. Is it normal to want to scratch and scramble and get those years back? I just seem to flash forward to when she is 10, 15, off at college. I don't think I am ready. I know nobody is ever ready for their babies to grow up.

This is the year that all the days fall the same as the year she was born. The year she was born Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday and it was snowing in Guthrie, Texas. Monday, the 16th that year I had a doctor's appointment in Lubbock and had gone ahead and taken the day off from school. I had been having high blood pressure and was supposed to be on bed rest anyway. (I disobeyed doctor's orders and just sat and taught rather than waste my precious maternity leave days on me instead of my little girl.) We lived so far from the hospital we were inducing anyway. My principal already knew that depending on what the doctor said, my maternity leave might begin immediately. I had everything all set up for the sub that would cover for me.

As I sat on my couch the morning of February 16th, 2004, I dozed and took a little nap before I had to get ready for my hour and a half drive to the big city. I thought to myself this would probably be the last time I got to nap when I wanted.

I got to the doctor and found out my blood pressure was still elevated (Yours would be too if you were a first time mom that had to take at least a half day off work and drive 3 hours round trip each time you had a doctor's appointment.) and I was starting to dilate. My doctor said she would call and get me scheduled to be induced the following day. So a little later I made the call to my husband back at the Mare Barn in Guthrie to tell him that he would need to get my bag and everything together because...we would be having a baby tomorrow!
To say that I wasn't ready and that I really would rather have gotten everything together myself was an understatement. It just didn't make sense for me to drive all the way back and then us drive back to Lubbock again. He did really well though. He had a list of things to do and pack about a mile long and the only things he forgot were my hair dryer and my wedding ring. ( I hadn't been able to wear the one for months and let's just say the horrendous hairstyle I had at them time looked the same + or - the hairdryer.)

We began the process at about 6 am on Tuesday. As I was pushing, she would move back up a little bit after each push. I still figured this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. After an hour and a half of pushing, our little girl came into the world; all 7 lb. 11 oz of her. She had the cord around her neck and this was the reason she kept sliding back up as I was pushing. I had a "reaction" to the epidural and was somewhat out of it. This was really a blessing in disguise because had I had all my faculties, I would have realized that I should be really worried. I remember thinking to myself "She looks like a little grape." Not necessarily the color fruit you want associated with your newborn!

We each got to hold her and then they took her off to the nursery. I had never done this before, so I had no idea of what "normal" was. She was born at 3:11 pm and I would not see her again until about 9:30 pm. By that time I was coming around and thinking she shouldn't still be gone. Jeremy had been back and forth to the nursery to see her since then. I finally made him go ask when they were bringing her to the room. Finally, after more than 6 hours they brought her back. She had so much hair. Not like a crazy amount of baby hair, but alot. I remember I just stroked it over and over.

I still doesn't feel like Jeremy and I should be old enough to have kids. Now we have not one, but two. I hope to someday have another.

So to my firstborn, I love you so much. You know I love you now, but you won't really get it until you are holding that new baby of your own. I want so many things for you. I pray every day that you grow up and become a good Christian girl and that you make good decisions. I pray that you get to live a long healthy, happy life. I want you to go to college and get a job you enjoy that makes you a good living. I want you to find a great Christian man that loves you more than life. I hope you are blessed with children that are healthy. At the very least, I hope that your life isn't always a struggle. I hope I am around to get to see and spoil grandkids! I know you are too young to understand all this, but I just felt like writing it anyway.

Happy Birthday Mady!

I'll update you on the first real "kid" birthday party we had over the weekend. It was great!