She made it!... and me too...

She is sleeping in her "park" in the livingroom and the boys are sleeping upstairs. My husband is organizing some stuff and finally I get to write about what has been in my heart and mind for the last 9 months...
Some of you know that I just delivered a beautiful baby girl about 10 days ago, it's actually funny cause it was planned that she would arrive on August 12th, but instead she decided she couldn't wait to meet us so I started having contractions on wednesday 6th, after a nice morning of swimming with my oldest son. As we walked home from the swimming pool I struggled to make it home with contractions every 10 minutes. Of course I had it before so I just went to bed to rest and they went away, I guess that's what I thought.

On Thursday morning life went as usual except I was quite unconfortable the whole day as I felt a lot of pressure on my lower belly. In the evening my husband went to have his last work meeting before going on "holidays" the next day to wait for our "baby-appoiment". At about 9.30 in the evening i had a little bit of stomach pain so I decided to go to bed until Henri came home at 11 o'clock, by then I was fine and came downstairs to talk to him for a while, after half an hour I went back to bed.

I had no idea I was going to be waken up at 1 o'clock at night with contractions every 20 minutes, but since I had it before I decided I was just going to "sleep through them again", and I did for a while, but by 3 am they came every 10 minutes got even stronger, so an hour later I decided to wake Henri up, to say that we should better go to the hospital to have a look if everything was fine to make it through the weekend, what we didn't know then was that our daughter had gone tired of being in Mama's belly and wanted to come out to "watch" together with Mom(that afternoon) the Opening of the Olympic games.

To make the rest short (if you want details you are going to have to come to the kraamfeest if you got a babycard ;-D) we arrived at the hospital at 5 am and she was born at 6.20 am!
Of course after the dissapoiment of she not being able to make it to her appoiment on the 12th( just kidding!) we were thrilled to hold her in our arms and finally getting the chance to admire her. What most of you don't know is that for the last 9 months I have lived torn between the joy of a new life growing inside me, and the fear of not being able to see her after she would come out of me.
Yeah, almost at the beginning of this pregnancy we were told by my gynecologist that the chance that I will bleed too much, like the last time at the birth of my second son (a year ago I lost about 1.5 liters of blood in about 10 minutes while giving birth) was high. As the pregnancy went on I seemed to be doing really good and everything was going good with the baby, it was a really healthy pregnancy which meant that my body was (maybe) making more bloodvains around my belly, exactly the ones that needed to be cut open to be able to get the baby out. There was no way to know if this was the case, we had to wait until the cesaerean was performed and then the gynecologist could see what was going to happen.

You can imagine, we were happy to know everything was going good, with every week that went by we were getting closer to the day we could cuddle our baby in our arms, but at the same time the closer that we got to that date it meant for us to start thinking serious and planning what decisions needed to be made in the operation room and what decision Henri had to make if something went wrong (this is not really how you imagine you will experience the last months and weeks of your pregnancy).
At times I tried not to think too much about that, and just tried to be joyfull with the fact that God had heared my prayer once more and had given us a new baby, but of course there were moments when I couldn't help thinking that maybe I was going to miss the rest of the life of my boys. Don't get me wrong I'm ready to go when my Father calls me home, but it's hard to think of leaving my boys behind when I have just started to enjoy them.

Anyway, by the end of the pregnancy we decided together with the gynecologist that the best we could do was to order blood to have it ready at the operation room and hope for the best. At home I started showing Henri where everything was( all the baby stuff he was going to need) and convince him that we needed to have the "what if..." conversation, so that he will be prepare to deal with all the practical issues while dealing with a newborn baby, and two little boys at home. It wasn't easy, we postponed that conversation as long as we could but just a week before the birth of the baby we layed in bed and talked, and cried and rested our lives in the hands of the One Who gave it to us, I know it wasn't easy for neither of us.

On August 8th, just a little bit before 6 o'clock as the gynecologist said the words:"Okay, we are going to start now", it hit me (between wednesday and that moment I was too distracted by the pain to think about it). I left the house without saying goodbye to my boys(we left at 4.45 am, I wasn't going to wake them up),I didn't tell my mother in-law how thankfull I had been for having her in my life as my mother here and didn't get to ask her to look after my boys in case I wouldn't make it, I didn't get the chance to call my Mom before going to the hospital to say goodbye.

For the next 20 minutes I held my breath and prayed in my heart that God will allow me to get to see my daughter at least before going Home, those were the longest 20 minutes of my life as I layed there with my husband by my side, seeing the smoke coming out behind the courtain(in a c-section you have a little courtain in front of you so you don't get shock by the view of your open belly) as they opened my belly with the laser; all I could think was: "I will know how bad it is by the facial espression of my gynecologist"(his reaction last time was pretty bad) so just kept my eyes on him. The stress got higher as he asked the anesthesist to have an injection with some kind of hormon to make my uterus contract fast to avoid the extra lost of blood, as soon as they could get her first shoulder out.

Then finally a few seconds later I heard her cry (like mad by the way as she came quite hungry to this world!)the warm tears rolling down my eyes; tears of joy and thankfullness for being able to hear her. I looked at the gynecologist,while the nurse took our daugther to be cleaned up, it only took one or two minutes for him to say it was not as bad as last time. Henri ,who usually leaves the room with the new born babies was still standing beside me and finally then he went to the next room to get our daughter so I could finally see her.Then I breathed at peace and waited for them to clean up the mess and close me up. Then Henri came back in the room proudly holding Sytske in his arms, and the tears fell down again as I streched my hand out and touched her face.

Today 10 days later, everything is behind. The struggle of not being able to talk to family and friends about how I felt during the pregnancy, for the fear of making it to real, for the fear of focusing too much in the possibility of dying instead of celebrating life, for the fear of worrying (maybe without need) those I loved. As I see her sleeping there in our living room my heart is overflown with joy, thankfullness and once more humbleness to my God who has my life and the lives of those I love in His Hands.

She made it... and I'm here to see it!!!