six years ago (jordyn's birth story)...

this is one of my very favorite things to do...share the stories and think back to birthing my beautiful babies!! i love thinking back to those very special days!! words can't even express how much i cherish those four birth days!! so with jordyn's birthday coming up, i am going to share my second baby, first baby girl's birth story!

six years ago, i gave birth to our first baby girl, jordyn alexis. it is crazy how fast the last six years have gone by. i have always always wanted to be a mommy to a little girl and i feel so blessed to be jordyn's mommy! i feel double blessed that she gets to be a big sister to our second baby girl, jaelyn!

going back seven years ago, i remember holding my sweet baby niece, hannah, she was dressed in a sweet pink dress, with lots of pink and white ribbons in her hair and she smelled so good. oh, i knew i wanted a baby girl and i remember praying to God and asking Him to bless us with a baby girl.

it was several months later, just a few weeks after joshua turned two years old that we found out we were pregnant with our second baby. we had been trying to get pregnant for almost a year. and we were on our third and final round of clomid (fertility drug) when God blessed us with our second baby. i had been quite frustrated and had finally given it all to Him, i released my control and put it in His hands. and that is when He gave us our beautiful baby!!

overall, i had a wonderful pregnancy with jordyn. of course there were a few bumps in the road. i was sick for the first 14 weeks, just sick feeling all of the time, morning and night. we had a little scare around 9 weeks when we couldn't hear a hearbeat, but when i came back in two weeks, we could hear her heartbeat with no problem. my uterus was tilted making it hard to hear the heartbeat (this happened with all four of my pregnancies) at 13 weeks, when i had some spotting, i was so scared, but an ultrasound showed a happy healthy baby!! and then at 16 weeks, we had an ultrasound that showed my placenta was low-lying. we also found out at this ultrasound that we were going to have a baby girl. i was so excited!! i was so excited to create a girly girl nursery and buy dresses and ribbons and bows! we had another ultrasound at week 28, which showed that my placenta had moved and i did not have placenta previa. yay! i really wanted to do another natural childbirth. the ultrasound also showed that our baby was definitely a girl!! i breathed a sigh of relief.

friday july 11, 2003: my mom had been in town all week, hoping i would go into labor with jordyn early. my due date was july 15. but i hadn't gone into labor, so she left that morning to go home to pennsylvania. she and my dad were heading to the outer banks the next day with my grandparents, it was the first beach trip i missed in several years. after she left, josh and i were going to the ymca, when i got into the van, it would not start. i had a dead battery. my friend stephanie and her little guy elijah came to pick us up to go to the ymca. we did a yoga class then we went to buy a new battery for my van. i was driving a 1998 toyota sienna at the time. we brought subway home for lunch. we ate while my brother in law put the battery in my van. that afternoon, i headed off to my week 39 prenatal appointment.

i was seeing the doctors in my practice at the time. i was 4 cm dialted and 80% effaced. dr. makemson, delivered joshua and had walked with me through all the infertility stuff i went through so i really wanted him to deliver jordyn. we set up an induction for that following monday. and i headed home excited to know that there was relief in sight. i was probably home for less than 2 hours when i started having contractions. they were painless and very far apart. they continued on and became closer together. i knew i had to play it safe and get to the hospital relatively soon. my first baby came extremely fast. and since i was already 4 cm, i didn't want to risk having a baby in the car (which i was close to doing with baby #1) ! i called my doctor's office and they told me to come up to the hospital when i was ready. we headed to the hospital around 9:00 pm. by the time i got checked in and settled into a labor & delivery room, the monitors showed that my contractions had stopped. i was so afraid that they would send me home. when my nurse checked me, i had progressed to 6 cm. so that bought my ticket to stay!!

by 11:00, my contractions hadn't really picked up at all. so we started talking about breaking my water. my doctor broke my water at 11:30 pm and within minutes the contractions resumed. by 11:45 pm they were on top of each other and quickly i was 9.5 cm and by 12:00 am i was ready to push. i pushed three or four times and our sweet baby girl, jordyn alexis, made her entrance into the world. she weighed 7 lbs 1 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long. she was and still is absolutely precious. she was born at 12:27 am on saturday july 12, 2003. a year later, almost from the date of my prayer for a little girl, she was born!

jamil and i were at the birth with my doctor and nurses. this is the only birth that we did without a friend or family member in the room. and we will never forget that because, we have no pictures of immediately after jordyn was born. the first picture we took was after the nurses took her to the nursery to do the evaluations and then brought her back all clean and with a little bow in her hair. i still can not believe that we didn't take any pictures, nor did the nurses on anyone remind us. we were so completely enthralled in her birth and loving on her that we just forgot. one day i know she will ask if she was adopted since we don't have those pictures like we do with the other three. but that is ok, this special event is forever implanted in my memory and i know she was born straight from me.