A Time for Tess to Arrive

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down

 from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or 

shadow of turning. ~James 1:17

She is finally here! Tess Lucille came fast and furious on October 18 weighing 9lbs, 9oz, our biggest baby yet! Of course she has the full head of hair our babies are famous for-almost ready for ribbons and bows! 

With my past pregnancies, delivery has taken 12+ hours so we expected the same with Tess. Even with being induced the Dr's fully anticipated it would hours before she would make her arrival. When we realized we forgot our camera, the nurse told Ben he had time to go home and get it. For some reason I didn't like that idea and I instead called my friend who lived down the road and she brought us her camera. Good thing too because Ben definitely would have missed the birth had he left-she came that fast! The epidural I wanted never came because there wasn't time, which was fine, it wasn't my first delivery without it, although it would have been nice!! :) From start to finish the entire process took 90 mins....no one was expecting that, not even the Dr. When I told her I needed to push she told me it couldn't be, that it just felt different because of the pitosin. She was wrong, I was right and things moved swiftly once they saw for themselves she indeed was coming! 

I love our hospital, love the staff, love the doctors. We get such amazing care so when they wanted to keep me an extra day to monitor my blood pressure, which was alarmingly high, we had no complaints. Thankfully Ben's mom had come down to take care of the other 5 so we knew our kids were in good hands. After trying different medications that didn't work to lower my blood pressure they have finally found one that is helping. My doctor was really great at explaining to us everything that was going on, and was very gentle when he told us he didn't recommend more pregnancies because he doesn't believe I'll survive another one. We appreciated his honesty but also his compassion in giving us this news. We have much to pray about and consider but more importantly we have a lot to be praising God for and thanking him for. I came close to having a stroke yet he spared me from that and He has given us 6 beautiful, amazing, healthy children and for that we are so grateful!