Hayvn Walter Paul Davenport

surprise...our son was born on Wed. May 28th at 7:22am. He weighed 5#11 oz and was 18" long. It all started on tue the 27th. Sarah and I had an ultrasound scheduled to see the progress of Hayvn about one month before he was to be born. It was mostly just for us and the grandparents who came along, but the reason Sarah wanted it was to make sure everything was ok--thank God for mothers intuition! While having the ultrasound done our dr suddenly stopped pointing out limbs and toes and started measuring stuff. the room got quiet as we all watched him search around for pockets of amniotic fluid around hayvn's growing body. soon he was done and he switched off the u/s machine with a short 'every thing's fine' comment...and then he left the room. hum. the grandparents left too and we were left waiting for the dr to return. when he came back in he calmly told us that he was a bit concerned over the lack of amniotic fluid and was, therefore, sending us to sierra vista to undergo a non-stress test on the baby and another u/s. that was when the real fun began...

ok...jeremy's got the little peanut, so i (sarah) think i'll take over the writing of this blog....

we got set up in a room at sierra's labor and delivery at 12pm on tuesday. after many hours of watching hayvn's heart beat on the monitor and undergoing another u/s, the nurse came in at around 4pm to tell us that we would be admitted and the dr was on his way to explain the inducing process to us. wha..? needless to say, i was scared and not just a little bit panicked. we really weren't ready for him--the house wasn't ready, we'd only taken 3 childbirth classes, hadn't even discussed our labor plan with our doula, hadn't packed a bag, cleaned his clothes, learned how to install the car seat or, more importantly, hadn't reached that stage in pregnancy where you're so uncomfortable that all you want is to get that baby out. i liked being pregnant and to have it cut off almost 4 weeks early was a strange reality to suddenly face. but when the dr got there and explained that my placenta was aging and therefore not providing hayvn the appropriate amniotic fluid level, we knew that it was better to get him out rather than keep him in. so our readiness was neither here nor there--ready or not, parenthood was where we were bound. 

i won't bore you with the gory details of my 12.5 hour labor. let me just say that the dr assured us that the inducing process was a slow one and could take days. they gave me my first dose of cervedal (sp?) at 6pm. by 10pm my contractions were coming faster and more intense and i wanted to punch that dr in the throat--a slow process my butt! they tried twice to give me medication to slow down the contractions, but my body was in gear and not stopping for anyone. by 6am the following morning, i was almost dilated to 10 and more than ready to start pushing.

i have to give credit where credit is due...although i pushed this baby out, jeremy was an amazing coach. by the time i hit 6cm, the pain was enough to make me one miserable girl. but jeremy just sat with me and let me hang onto him for dear life (including taking hold of one of his ears at one point and almost twisting it off!). i wasn't always the greatest breather, so jeremy literally breathed through every contraction with me. keeping my focus on him and following his lead, i was able to get through it all without any medication (go me!). our doula, kathy tuck, was also a miracle worker. even though we hadn't finished our classes or even gotten a chance to sit down with her to go over our birthing plan, she knew exactly want we wanted and gave us the best possible birthing environment we could have imagined. and our dear sweet friend lealah was also a great support. i feel so blessed to have gotten to share this experience with these 3 amazing people.

when hayvn finally entered the world at 7:22am, after almost an hour of pushing, i have to admit that i wasn't flooded with the sense of euphoria like i had been promised. mostly, i was just thankful to jesus that he was out and i was done. poor hayvn's first words he heard me say were, 'oh, thank god he's out!"

from here, our world got even more turned inside out...while hayvn was placed on my stomach immediately following his delivery, he only got to spend a few sweet seconds with me before the nicu team took him. he was grunting something fierce, as his little lungs struggled to take in air for the first time. they gave him some o2 and then swaddled him up. we got another very brief moment with him before he was whisked off altogether to spend his first of seven days in nicu...but that's another blog...

to say we feel blessed is an understatement....while so much of our struggle to conceive and then to maintain this pregnancy has been about our testimony and about what God's been doing in our lives, i now see hayvn's testimony taking it's own, separate, form. and his testimony started when he was only an embryo. from each stage of his development, God has shown His fierce love for this child. and his timing has always been perfect--regardless of our own expectations. thank you, Lord, for holding all of our lives in the palm of your hand.