In case you’ve missed the big news in the Hedding family, there is a new addition! Our son Asher was born on Tuesday last week. He came into the world in such a beautiful way, and I thought I’d share that story with you now that I have some energy to do so. The whole experience has been is still quite a roller coaster ride, but God is good through it all.
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| Only a couple hours old |
Monday was just another day. I have to admit, I was expecting Asher to arrive that weekend. So when Monday rolled around, I was disappointed that ‘D-day’ hadn’t happened yet. By the evening, I was starting to feel rather achy. I had to have Leon put bread in our bread machine because I was too uncomfortable to stand and do it myself. An early bedtime was definitely in order, so I took my microwave heating pad and settled myself to sleep.
At 2:30 Tuesday morning, my waters broke. I wasn’t certain it had happened at first so I decided to wait a bit before waking Leon. Sure enough, it was and I was soon on the phone with the labour ward at hospital to see about calling the midwife out to our home. Even though I was booked for a home birth, they asked me to come in to confirm that my waters had broken because I hadn’t had any contractions yet. Of course, as soon as I got off the phone, contractions started… so I made another phone call to the labour ward to see if I really needed to come in. It was my choice, and I was asked to start timing my contractions.
My contractions came on in full force at first. As we were timing them, we discovered they lasted about a minute and came about a minute apart. After a third call to the labour ward, they decided to contact the midwife to come out to our home. It was time to put the TENS machine on and get ready to set up the pool!
By the time the midwife arrived around 3:30, my contractions had settled down a bit, although they were definitely still regular. I was definitely in active labour, and the midwife said I was already about 4 centimetres dilated. Wow, that was fast. At this point, that birthing pool couldn’t be set up fast enough since my contractions were getting stronger and the TENS machine was becoming less effective.
The pool was filled within half an hour… but that half an hour passed slowly when my current means of pain relief wasn’t working well any more.
The remaining time up to the birth is a bit of a blur. It certainly wasn’t easy, but the warm water in the pool helped.
Days before Asher’s arrival, I put together a play list of worship songs to listen to while in labour. I was amazed how the songs I chose seemed to encourage me right when I needed them. Leon and I also spent a lot of time in prayer in between contractions. I’m pretty certain the midwives thought I was crazy when they heard me praying in tongues at times.
After pushing for quite some time, our sweet baby was delivered into the water with one gigantic push. It was a BOY!! After Asher was born, we got some sweet cuddle time. I really couldn’t have asked for a more perfect way to bring our son into the world.
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| Sweet family time |
After those first moments together, things started to get really exciting…
