Ahna's Story

Ahna's story

Last summer (2013) in June marked 9 months since our second son Abram was born. We had chosen not to take any type of pregnancy preventative measures besides breast-feeding ever since the day Abram was born. We both had an overwhelming feeling that we wanted a third child even days after coming home from the hospital with him. We put it in gods hands and decided not to fret over it and that we would just not try to prevent it, but we would see what happened. And sure enough at nine months of age (abram) we found out we were expecting our third child. We were elated!  We called family and we told them the great news.  We knew it was soon to tell people but we figured we had waited with every other pregnancy,  and I had never had any complications, so we spread the word like wildfire to our families.

   I don't regret telling them because in the next few weeks I would really need them.

Loss

     I don't feel as though I should get into detail but within one week of finding out we were pregnant we had no choice but to give back our tiny baby to the loving arms of The Lord. I was devastated, I had already fell in love with this child and it was one of the hardest things to have had to go through. I was sad.I was angry. I was jealous of other people getting pregnant and keeping their pregnancy all while I vowed to never have another child. I would plead with god to give the baby back one minute then the next I would curse my own body for letting me and the baby down. Matt grieved silently as he informed the family, something I was not willing to do. 

    By the beginning of July I had began accepting what had happened and we just decided to move on with our lives. We were content with our two boys and the thought of trying again for another baby was difficult to say the least.  We put it to the backs of our minds. During this time we were approached with a big decision. Matt's niece and nephews had been taken into foster care a year earlier and were now looking for a permanent home. Knowing we could not take all three of them we decided to take the youngest boy, he was five at the time. Trying for that other baby was pretty much eliminated from our minds. JD (our nephew) moved in the end of July. Life began to move on and we got really busy. Our rental house was too small so we bought a bigger house that needed a lot of work. Between taking care of three children, getting ready for

Kindergarten (a lot Sooner then we had anticipated) and doing constant construction on a house for a month, you could imagine how surprised we were to find out that at the end of September we were, in fact, pregnant again. Our hearts sank and skipped a beat all at the same time. We had already decided that we were done after JD moved in,  that this must be God's way of giving us that third child. We were wrong. I took a pregnancy test every morning for two weeks just to keep watching the line get darker and darker. We didn't tell the kids or my family for quite a while, let alone announce it to the world Untill 20 weeks, we were ,for obvious reason, very hesitant. 

At 20 weeks our dreams came true, IT'S A GIRL! After 3 beautiful boys we finally get to experience a baby girl. All fears subsided and we couldn't have been happier. The boys were also very excited. JD was upset we could no longer name the baby Darth Vader.

June 18th 2014

At 39.3 weeks, after being almost 5cm for a week without any real labor I woke up at 1am to one extreme contraction. It made me sit up in bed, and cower in pain. Within 1hour contractions had gotten 5 min apart. We literally live on a mountain, we have to go down a pass to get to the hospital, it is about an hour drive. It was 2am and all the kids were sleeping. I called my mom and asked her to come to us instead of us bringing the kids down and waking them. It took my parents about an hour to get to us. At this point I can barley walk. The pain was intense. 

    Matt drove like a man on a mission, blowing stop lights and speeding down a dark mountian pass. I kept telling him to slow down but secretly I was glad because I needed to get to the hospital. He made it in 30 minutes. 

     Once there we found out I was 6cm, they could feel her head, and my bag of water was buldging out. Weird,I know.  Contractions were 3 minutes apart and baby was head down but turned to the side.  Not an ideal way to deliver, and the cause of extreme back labor. I was taken from triage and admitted at 3:30 AM.  Once in my room they were drawing blood, starting IVs, and giving me the epidural. I have to say I was pretty proud of myself because right after receiving the epidural they checked me and I was almost  8 cm. I felt like I made it pretty far without medical intervention. Being a huge wuss, this was quite the accomplishment.

    At 7 AM the doctor came in and broke my water . I very quickly went from 8 cm to 10 cm.  however I refused to tell anyone that I needed to push because it is my least favorite part.  This being my third child I decided I was going to do it my way.  The epidural is really good so the pressure wasn't unbearable and I labored down for about an hour. Matt finally said that he was skeptical that I was lying about not feeling any pressure. Which I was lying to the nurse, but I didn't lie to my husband. I knew what contractions are there for and I just let my body do the work instead of pushing for two hours. And it worked.  They checked me around 830am I was 10 cm and her head was already crowning. They suited up, got everything ready, and one push later our sweet little Ahna Dianne  was born. 8:58am on June 18th ( her great-grandmother Rita's birthday) she weighed 7lbs 12 oz and 20 1/4in long. She is our angel, our last baby, our surprise and our heart healer. To say we love her is an understatement. Her name means gracious, full of grace and favor. And that's exactly what she means to us. God showed us grace in giving us her after such a loss. And I know she will continue to show grace to others in her life. 

Our family is complete.