My Birth Story

I'm very excited to share my awesome birth story. I wouldn't have changed one thing about it. My baby boy was born healthy, and my recovery was minimal.

I was due on 3.31.13, such an awesome date. I was secretly hoping my boy would make his appearance that day. It was not his time, or God's time. Ryan and I prayed every night that he would come in God's perfect timing and that the labor and delivery would be fast. Well, God knew exactly what He wanted to happen...

I went to see my midwife on April 1st. She was the same midwife that had seen me the week before. We had discussed my concern of the baby measuring small since I was 36wks pregnant, and I had no progress in dilation or thinning since the week before. (I was 1-2 cm dilated and about 50% thinned) She decided to induce me during her shift the next evening through the next day. She explained that I would go to the hospital at 7pm and they would insert cervidil to soften the cervix. She said I would sleep all that night and she would take out the cervidil at 5 a.m. and I would take a shower then they would start the pitocin. I probably wouldn't have him until late afternoon on April 3rd.

So, I left the office, and I called Ryan and my mom to let them know the news. I went home and started cleaning some more and preparing the house. This time I knew I would be bringing home a baby that week.

I called the next evening to see if there was a bed available for my induction, and there was. We left our house around 5:30 p.m. and went to my parents house to drop off our dog, Rosie.

Here we are leaving my parents house:

After leaving my parents house, we went to FoodLion to get some snacks to snack on throughout the night...

We arrived at the hospital around 6:30 p.m. and checked in. Around 7pm, we got settled into the hospital room and my nurse had me get in my hospital gown and inserted my IV just to get some fluids in me before they started the cervidil. At 8pm, she unhooked the IV and my midwife came in and inserted the cervidil and left and said have a good night of rest.

I was like great, time to chill, get on the computer, listen to my ipod, talk to Ryan, and just relax. Boy was I wrong. Ten minutes after she inserted the cervidil the contractions started. After about an hour I was almost to the point of tears from the pain. I really thought I was being a big baby. My mom called and asked how I was doing, and I told her that I was having some major pain...she said, "Oh you just wait until the real contractions start!" When I got off of the phone, I looked at Ryan and said, "Oh my goodness, if this isn't the real pain, I may just die! My mom said to JUST WAIT FOR THE REAL PAIN!!" After a few more minutes and a few more huge contractions, I hit the button to call the nurse in.

The nurse came in and I told her I didn't want to sound like a big baby, but I was in a lot of pain. She looked at me with a sarcastic look and said well, I'll call your midwife to see what she says...She went out and came back in and told me just to breathe through the crampiness and if I can't take it anymore, she will call the midwife to take out the cervidil and just say "we tried!"...WHAT? Number one, CRAMPINESS? If this was crampiness, I might as well just be called the biggest baby ever. Number two, WE TRIED? What do you mean WE TRIED? Is the baby just staying in me forever?

At that point, I was feeling like a complete baby, in horrible pain, and felt like I was going to have the pain for the next 12+ hrs because she said I wouldn't deliver until the next afternoon.

Another hour of extreme pain went by. Ryan was by my side praying his heart out while I almost broke his hand off with every contraction. Let me tell you, those hospital beds are horrible to have contractions on...It was then 10pm. The cervidil was only in 2 hours and I called the nurse in again. This time I told her I couldn't take it anymore that I wanted that cervidil out. She called my midwife and she came and took it out and told me that it worked and I was completely thinned and about 3 to 4 cm dilated....Wait a second..You mean to tell me that it worked in 2 hours and I was supposed to have it in ALL night until 5:30a.m.? Huh, I guess I'm not a baby after all :)

The midwife went out and the nurse told me I could get in the shower if I wanted and I could use the birthing ball. I was completely ready to get out of that bed and into the hot shower where I could relax. She also gave me two Tylenol to ease the pain. ( I didn't even know what she gave me until after I delivered. HA! That Tylenol didn't touch the pain at all)

Even though the pain was terrible, the shower helped so much. I breathed through the pain and tried to bounce on the birthing ball. I decided there was no way I could sit on that ball while having back to back contractions. I stood in the shower and held onto the bars through each contraction. Around 11:30 I felt like I was pushing with every contraction. I told Ryan maybe he should get the nurse because I felt like I needed to push already. He looked at me surprised, and said "Are you sure?"....."Yes I'm sure!! GET HER!" haha

The nurse came in and I told her I felt like I needed to push. She looked at me surprised too and said, "Okay, if you think so, here, walk over to the bed and lay down and I'll go get your midwife."---The whole process, everyone thought I was some stupid 21 year old who didn't know what I was talking about, and thought I was some big baby.

My midwife came in and checked me..She said, "Okay, she is 8 1/2 cm dilated" (WHAT? Are you kidding?) The next contraction I was 9cm and she broke my water. Nurses started flooding in the room. The midwife said with the next contraction, "Okay she is 10cm, we are going to have this baby" and the nurses started getting her ready and bringing all of her stuff to her. I was in shock. I wasn't a baby after all. They inserted the cervidil at 8pm it was only 11:30 and it was time to push? My mom and sister were supposed to be in the delivery room and they weren't planning on coming until 11a.m. the next day!

Ryan was shocked! He asked the midwife.."Uhhh...should I call her mom?" The midwife said, "Well, if you want her to be here!!" I started pushing with every contraction while Ryan called my mom and sister. They were both in bed, and my sister didn't believe him at first. At 12:09 a.m. my mom rushed in the room with her pajamas and no makeup and exclaimed, "I have NEVER been out of the house without makeup, but I'm here"! At 12:19a.m. my sister rushed in as I'm pushing with all I have in me. At 12:29a.m. my beautiful baby boy was born, pooping all over the place, and me! :) I was in complete shock/happiness! Yes, a 4.5 hr start to finish, labor and delivery!

Levi Cross, April 3, 2013

Through the whole pregnancy, I tried picturing him and what he would look like, but it never really registers that you actually have a baby inside of you until he is right in front of your eyes and wrapped in your arms.

He did swallow a little bit of fluid, so they had to monitor him for a little while, which I was disappointed about because I couldn't hold him skin to skin for a little while. After he was okay, they brought him to me and I got to hold him!! After two hours they made me get up and take a shower! Ugh! So painful after just delivering! 

The next few days were very emotional. We found out he had a very high bilirubin level and had to be put under the lights and wear a bilirubin blanket too. No one could hold him except when I nursed, and he still had to wear that hard light blanket. It was very hard to not hold my new baby boy. We had to stay an extra day in the hospital to make sure his levels were down. The day we could go home, he had to have his heel pricked again to check the results, he was circumcised, and he had his tongue tie clipped. My poor baby!!

All in all, I'm SO happy that I went into labor on my own with only the cervidil. I'm so blessed that I didn't have to go on pitocin and have a super long labor. I delivered all natural like I wanted, with no epidural, and only two Tylenol. I'm so happy to have a healthy baby boy.

Levi's Nursery

Creating Levi's baby nursery was so much fun! I was inspired by so many great nursery's on Pinterest! It was so hard to find boy bedding that I liked, without it being the normal babyish themes that stores put out. There were so many cute and different girl themes, why couldn't there be a cute modern boy theme that he could grow with?

I searched a lot on Pinterest and found some great Ideas. I went on Fabric.com and picked out three different patterns I liked, and my friend told me she would make the bedding for me, since I don't know how to sew! I was sooo excited to see the finished product.

Here are some pictures from his nursery.

I still have to get a mirror to hang above his dresser! It's not 100% complete yet!

Of course, the nursery isn't complete without the baby and the baby pictures hanging on the wall, but this is a start!

The crib is a Delta 4in1 Convertible crib in black! I absolutely love this crib. I purchased it off of Walmart.com for a great price!!

All the fabric was Premier Prints from Fabric.com

The bookshelf is from Target, of course!

The bedding and curtains were all sewn by a friend of mine.

I used the left over fabrics to cover the canvases in order to spell his name above his bed. I got the letters and canvases from Michaels.

We can't wait to meet our little boy who is due in less than 8 weeks! I hope this nursery will inspire you to create your own look!! There are cute designs out there for boys other than a jungle theme ;)

--Abby

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes BABY

Ryan and I met at a Christian camp meeting in Virginia in September 2009. We never really talked, but we exchanged looks quite a few times. At the end of the camp meeting, I left to go back home which was four hours away. I was so upset that I had never talked to him, or got his number.

I decided to text one of his friends that I met and ask him for Ryan's number. Smart move, right? :) So I got his number and decided to text him, hoping that he wouldn't think I was too creepy for not talking to him at all during the camp meeting, but then texting him. After I texted him, I decided that I wouldn't talk to him anymore unless he talked to me first. I wasn't trying to pursue anything that wasn't God's Will for my life.

When I got home, I added him on facebook, and went to bed. If he didn't talk to me anymore after that, then I would know it was better off to just be friends. The next day, he accepted my friend request and started chatting with me through facebook. We chatted until two or three in the morning. Chatting on facebook led to skyping...and the rest is history....

Like I said, we didn't talk at all in person when we first met, so when we decided that he was going to visit me in the beginning of October, I was really nervous. To top it off, his family was coming too and our families were going to meet each other! Big step right? Everything turned out fabulous. His family was so sweet, and our families got along great. The best part about it was that we were all brothers and sisters in Christ. Two families uniting in the same belief.

We began dating on October 29, 2009! We both still lived four hours apart, which was really hard. Skype was the best thing ever invented for distant relationships. He would visit me about once a month, when he could.

In April 2010, we decided that it was best if I came to VA for the summer to work for his mom and see where our relationship was going to lead to, since we really hadn't spent a lot of time around each other. I worked for his mom as an administrative assistant in her insurance office while Ryan worked his jobs. We were able to get to know each other a lot more, but I was VERY home sick. I returned back home in August in order to prepare to start my first semester of college.

A few months went on and we just didn't know what to do as far as the long distance. We had been dating a year and knew that we wanted to be together forever. We constantly prayed that God would open up a door for something to happen to bring us closer together.

God never has failed us. The door swung wide open for Ryan to move to my home town. My parents had bought a piece of property and put a double wide on it. They were going to let Ryan rent it starting in December when it was finished.

Ryan visited me in the beginning of October 2010 and got down on one knee and proposed--on the coolest date ever 10-10-10!! We were so excited for the plans that God was holding for our future.

The wedding plans started, and we decided that we couldn't pass up getting married on 11-11-11!! Ryan moved into the new house in December 2010 and started his bachelors degree here. We prayed and prayed that God would bless Ryan with a great job. He applied for many days, to many places, in the dead of winter when absolutely no one was hiring. After applying to about 50 places, he got hired at our local Subway restaurant. We knew that the job wasn't going to cover any bills, but knew that God had something better in mind for him. A week later, Ryan got a phone call from a company that we were praying he would get a job from. The company called him for an interview and hired him that day on FIRST SHIFT! We were SO excited! Who knew that he would be able to get a job on first shift with so many great opportunities for the future. Although he was in a temporary position at the plant, we were still so grateful, and prayed that the company would hire him on full time before we got married.

The months passed and we both were busy with school, and Ryan was busy with school and work. I was planning a wedding for the middle of my school semester. It was a very busy time, but I was so excited. Ryan got hired on full time to his job in August 2011! We could not believe how many great things God was doing in our lives.

We said "I do" on 11-11-11. It was the best day of our lives and everything fell into place perfectly. I moved into the home where Ryan was living and we continued with our college and work schedules. We also bought our first puppy in February 2012. She was an adorable little Morkie (Maltese/Yorkie) which we named Rosie! She is such a loving dog and she fills our home with a lot of excitement each day.

I graduated with my associates degree in office administration in May of 2012. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for a job, but I knew that God would provide like he had been throughout our whole relationship.

Our plans were to wait two years to have children while I worked and saved up some money so we could buy a house in five years. God had completely different plans for our life. We had no clue what God had in store for us the next few months....

We found out that we were expecting our first little blessing, a BABY, on July 25, 2012 and the baby was going to be due on March 31, 2013 (3-31-13). We were BEYOND excited. We decided to tell our families right away, even though I was only 5 weeks pregnant. That weekend, we surprised Ryan's family in Virginia by walking inside their home after church with shirts that said "Daddy to be" and "Baby Williams" with an arrow pointing to my belly. Everyone was SO surprised!!

I began getting severely sick in August. I was throwing up every day and having severe headaches and sleeping all of the time. Everyone thought it was just morning sickness, including me. This is where God showed us how He can open and close doors just like that!! Even though I was severely sick, I decided I was going to try to go to the camp meeting where Ryan and I had met 3 years before. To my surprise, when we went away, the sickness went away completely! I couldn't believe it. I felt completely fine and didn't throw up once throughout the whole 4 day weekend. We thought that my sickness just had passed. When we got back home, we started unpacking, and after 15 minutes of being in our house, I threw up. OH NO! I just couldn't believe it. I called my mom and she said, "It HAS to be something in your home making you sick". I started thinking back to all the times I had thrown up. I had only thrown up in our house, never at any other place.

We had a lady come to our house to test our air quality and found out that our home had higher levels of VOC's which is in the glue they use to put the whole entire double wide together (also known as formaldehyde). We were in complete shock and devistated. What were we going to to?

My parents let us move in with them until we could figure out what the problem was. I didn't throw up one time while I lived with my parents, but every time I went into our home, I was sick. It had to be the glues that affected me during the pregnancy.

Ryan and I started praying right away. We had a baby on the way, and couldn't live in the current home we were renting from my parents. We didn't know how we would even buy a home. We had only been married 10 months and this was definitely not in OUR plans. God's plans never fail!

In the middle of September, after living with my parents for a week or so, I started looking like crazy online for a home. There was no other way, we just had to try to find a home now. I looked up foreclosed homes in the area, and found one that I fell in love with online. I texted a real estate friend of ours and she told me that she could show it to us that afternoon. I was stoked! I called Ryan right away, not knowing that he had been praying all morning to God about the situation that we were so uncertain about.

That afternoon we walked in the home, and fell in love with it. Even though the home was smoke filled, dirty, stained, and needed a lot of fixing, I knew that I loved it and it had a lot of potential for our little family.

The real estate agent was unsure on how the process would turn out since it was an online auction and all the people that you tried to communicate with were foreign. A lot of research was done through my agent and our real estate lawyer to see if the website selling the home was actually legit or a scam. They found out it was legit, but that it would probably not work out because of the lack of real talk communication etc. We prayed about it, and decided that we would try to bid online for it anyway...

I put in our first bid and then had to call the bank to try to see if we could even get a mortgage of our own. I was on the phone every day and writing emails constantly.

To sum up the process, we won the bid on the house and started the process of buying all while our mortgage was being process and hadn't fully gone through. Let me mention, that Ryan found out he had good credit and we could get a 30 yr fixed mortgage all by ourselves! What a blessing! God worked, and worked, and worked, in our lives.

After what seemed to be a long process, and seemed like wouldn't even work out with the time the mortgage was taking to go through, we successfully closed on our first home in exactly 30 days! All the doubts that we had, God crushed. We closed on a FORECLOSED home, with our own mortgage, in 30 days?! Who would have thought. The agent, lender and real estate lawyer were shocked how everything went through so fast.

Next, we had to fix up the house. All the walls had to be fixed and painted. We needed all new carpet, appliances, light fixtures, curtains, and the wood floors needed to be refinished. Two windows were chewed by the previous owners dogs, and so we had to get those replaced as well. Many windows were leaking, which led us to find that none of them were sealed from the outside. So, much of the siding had to come off and the windows had to be sealed. So many things took place in the next 3 weeks, but in 3 weeks, it was all completed!!!!! We moved in our new home a week before thanksgiving! How incredible is that? I want to give ALL the glory to God, because there is no way anything could happen that fast without Him!

We also found out that week that we were expecting a little BOY who we named Levi. We were so excited to meet our precious little bundle of joy! We were so surprised it was a boy since I had two nieces, and it seemed like all girls were being born in my family. It would be the first grandSON on both sides, and the first grandchild on Ryan's side.

God has allowed me to be a stay at home wife and mom so far. Our goal is for me to stay at home with our children and home school them. We feel that this is the best thing we can do for our children in order to put God first in our family's life. It is not easy financially with only one income, but God has provided in so many ways. The number one thing is tithing, number two is being wise in every area with our money. Penny pinching is a must. Not eating out helps SO much. Fixing all meals at home and packing my husbands lunch cuts costs in so many ways!

Our little Levi is so blessed already. I will post pictures of his nursery in my next post. We can't wait to meet him in March and give him so much love and teach him what God can do when you follow Him with all of your heart.