Cherie has been feeling like going into labor for weeks now. For some reason, her body wants to give her extra trouble, between feeling incredibly sick throughout her pregnancy to an irritable uterus, I wouldn't call it a "happy go lucky" 9 months. After weeks of thinking it might be labor, February 1st came... true labor! Yay... we were all so grateful that the time was here for "baby next" to enter the world. Cherie and her husband Kyle got to the birth center around 9:00 am on Wednesday. Lori (my mother in law) and I arrived early afternoon to hopefully be of service. We massaged her some, then drove her across town to buy her some much desired Jack fruit from an Asian market, but to our dismay they were out :( so we decided to stop and have some Vietnamese lunch... mmmmmm! From there we drove to the mall, to walk and get this labor going. We walked around for a couple hours, somewhere in there more sister in laws showed up to be apart of this labor process. After sufficient walking we all headed back to the birth center. Cherie, Lori, Lily, Leah, Harmony, baby Django, Ann Marie, and Kelly... I know what your thinking, that's quite the crew, and it was. Jenny, the midwife was feeling concerned that all of these people were going to take a toll on Cherie's labor process and that she probably wasn't going to have the baby till the next day, so... Leah, Harmony, and baby Django decided to go home, that left Lori, myself, Kelly and Ann Marie, if Cherie didn't progress more as the evening went on, some of us were going to head home to give them some more freedom to just "BE". She did progress more as the night went on, and because I myself am 36 weeks pregnant, I didn't want to do too much, but more than that, I wanted to be there for Cherie and do what I could to help her, she requested my "magic massaging fingers" to be there.
She might not realize this, but some of my most treasured hours of her labor was in the middle of the night, we were laying on the bed side to side facing each other, every time she woke up to a contraction, she held my hand as I walked her through relaxing different parts of her body. I think getting the opportunity to love someone like that doesn't come every day... and so for some reason, I will always cherish that.
She got up to pee roughly every 15 minutes through out the night poor girl! Cherie's contractions had decreased in frequency throughout the night, so the rest of us decided to go to breakfast and let them be for a while. We got coffee and breakfast and then went to Target to walk around for a little while. Cherie was soon asking us to come back, so we came back. Jennie had broken her bag of waters at 10 am and so until the baby was born, I had the privilege of relieving a bit of pain by pushing on Cherie's hips during contractions, which eventually were getting very strong and close together, soon she was pushing, and then she was really pushing... you know freaking out, not knowing what to do with herself, and all of this intense amount of pain waving through her body without relent.
Kyle and I held her legs, as she pushed that baby out at 12:04 pm, and when the baby actually came, I couldn't hold the tears back... for a couple reasons. One of them being that this whole thing for Cherie was finally over, it came to a complete climax, and she now had that sweet baby Judah crying in her arms, at the same time, I knew I would be doing this very soon, and all of the sudden felt the inevitability that this would soon be me. I am so thankful that I was able to be there with Cherie and actually be of some help in such a difficult process both physically and emotionally, I am so proud of her, she did so well in relaxing during contraction, and just bucking down to do the job. There is no way that you can't be closer bonded with a person after going through something like this with them, I would say it's pretty personal... and so, HONORED I am! Thank you Cherie... I love you so much! :) And Congratulations to Kyle and Cherie on their beautiful new baby Judah Bernard Shropshire weighing in at 9lbs 3 1/2 ounces, 23 inches long. And don't forget to tell Judah that his aunt Lily was the first one to change his diaper ;)
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| Judah Bernard Shropshire 9 llbs 31/2 ounces 23 inches long |
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