And Then There Were Four

It seems not that long ago, I was cleaning up dinner, waiting for Geoff to get home, and suddenly wondering if I ought to be on my way to the hospital to deliver our fourth child.

As it turned out, I probably would have been okay staying home, but we made the hour drive just to be on the safe side.  The baby wouldn't come that night, but the question was whether to induce sooner or later.

I've shared my views on induction before, but for the newbies and the forgetful, the short version is:  I'm not a fan of inducing, preferring to let everything happen naturally, but the circumstances of our first child's birth - he wasn't breathing - - led to our reluctance to risk a side-of-the-highway baby, and our second child's birth - he was born within fifteen minutes of arriving at the hospital - led to our belief that a side-of-the-highway baby was a very real possibility.  So we induced our third and fourth babies.  In retrospect, I wish we'd let them come in their own time, but part of my change of mind comes from the experience of having three healthy, uncomplicated deliveries.  Anyhow...

We decided to induce labor the following morning, rather than later.  Several factors influenced that decision, not the least among them being my feeling that my body had begun preparing for labor and if we went into labor in the next day or so, we might have that breathless highway baby I so feared.  Assurances from the doctor and nurse that the risk of the induction failing were very low.  The nurse actually laughed gently and reassuringly when I expressed concerns that it might not work, and I'd have to have a c-section.


"This is your fourth baby.  Your body knows just what it's supposed to do..."

The natural birth advocate in me cringes a little even as I retell this, and in truth, the labor and delivery process was not what I had hoped it would be.  There were moments when I felt truly discombobulated, as if none of the parts of my body were doing what they were supposed to do and my fragmented mind had no control over any of those renegade parts.  This birth was not the intensely powerful, yet inexplicably peaceful experience I had had with the previous two births (one of which was all natural, one of which was induced).  It was intense.  It was powerful.  It was inexplicable.  Peaceful?  Not so much.  I felt like an absolute mess, arching my back, flailing every which way, bearing down...  Maybe I wasn't as uncoordinated as I felt... I don't know what I looked like, but throughout the five hours it took to deliver our sweet baby boy, I felt completely out of sorts.

Nonetheless, Luke was born - seven pounds, thirteen ounces of perfect...





And then there were four.  Four beautiful children to fill our home with love, laughter, joy, and a large dose of glorious (and sometime gory) chaos...

Soon after he was born, his siblings came to see and hold him.  Elisabeth crawled beside me in the bed and held on for dear life. She and the boys posed proudly for pictures with their new baby brother.  After a couple of days, we brought our baby boy home, where he would grow from a sweet bundle of peace - a baby whose gorgeous, serene brown eyes more than once soothed his weary mother in the time it took to change a diaper - into a whirling force of joy - a boy, a big boy, who charms the socks off everyone he sees and is quick to proclaim that he is his mommy's sweet baby boy.  Yep, that's my Lukie-Pie.

He has enriched our lives immensely.  Full of laughter and always ready with a hug, a kiss, a zebert, or a high-five, I can't imagine life without him.  It seems such a short time since we first saw his beautiful face, yet his face, his whole being, are so integral a part of our lives, it seems he has always been with us.  Surely, we are blessed that God made him part of our family!

Happy birthday to my growing boy!  

May you always walk with joy...