There's nothing quite like having a friend who sends you a "Welcome, Baby!" package with a gift like this inside. This particular friend is a linguist who loves words and names and meanings, an incredibly skilled knitter, and a wonderfully thoughtful gift-giver. Combine those things and what do you get for your Maranatha Eleanor?
A handcrafted blanket rich with symbolism--made with "Light in the Darkness" yarn and designed with flame-tip ends. (And it smells really good, to boot.)
Maranatha has been smiling for about a week now, first with lots of coaxing and now a bit more readily. She's started giving the softest, sweetest girly little coos in the past couple of days. She is the gift always in my arms to remind me of the Giver. She is the delight of her brothers, hugged and kissed and comforted and generally made much of. She is the first daughter of her daddy, who loves her abundantly and can't wait to torment her as she grows.
We are so excited to know you more and more, Marnie Girl.
As all babies are, Marnie is her own self; she doesn't merely have a face borrowed from some distant relative. HOWEVER. Thirty-three grandchildren deep, my mother finally has a baby to claim as her very own mini-me. Rundy and I immediately thought she looked like my mom, and in the past month several unrelated people have commented the same without being asked (so it must be true). She also at odd, random times based purely on her expression or the shape of her mouth or her dimples has reminded me of her Uncle Evan or her Grandpa Purdy or her Aunt Titi. In general she doesn't resemble any of them a bit. It's just those split-second moments that are uncanny.
You have no idea how hard I worked to get some relatively traditionally "cute" photos. Marnie is a wonderfully distinctive looking newborn, and she has a truly impressive ability to wear expressions that make you chuckle (or outright belly laugh) when you see them in still form in a photo.
Exhibit A--Boring, More Normal Marnie:
Exhibit B--Marnie at her Finest:
And then, to cap it all off, have her wear a handmade baby turban before bed (given to me as a hand-me-down from I-can't-remember-who). This particular hat always makes me think she looks like a little old lady wearing a shower cap. Coo at her. Make her smile. Take a bunch of pictures and then laugh heartily at her wonderful funniness in all of them.
Three children, one of them brand spanking new. Fresh out of the hospital in time for Christmas Eve (thank goodness for all of those crazy, 9 months pregnant, get-everything-ready-for-Christmas-before-the-baby-comes days).
I was achey and exhausted and happy.
After Rundy and I had bustled around on no sleep getting the house and the stockings and the presents all ready for Christmas morning...
...we went upstairs to crash. Rundy told me I needed to peek in at our boys in their room because they were so sweet. We tiptoed in together.
(Funky lighting compliments of the Christmas lights hung all around their room.)
Morning arrived, and when the boys woke up we all snuggled in bed for a bit before heading downstairs. Unbeknownst to me, Rundy had sneakily bought some fixings to start a new Christmas morning tradition: sparkling grape juice in goblets and chocolate milk. (I was just as pleased as the boys.)
At this point, I only took a couple more pictures before I forgot about my camera and just enjoyed being with our little family. So...sorry. This is all you get.
Sleepy newborn Maranatha.
And a blurry, super excited Tadhg.
Rundy did get this video, though. I love having just this sort of quiet, slow Christmas morning. No present-opening frenzy. Just the delight of doing something special and utterly unnecessary together as a family. The boys are so pleased with so little at this point. We took a nice long break during stocking-opening before even getting to presents so they could play with their new Dollar Store matchbox cars.
We headed off to spend time with both sides of the family after our own little Christmas at home was over. My last three Christmas photos were of Rundy and Tadhg working together on one of the boys' Christmas presents--a build-your-own helicopter and fire engine kit.
The best part of Christmas this year was Marnie and having such a long stretch to be together as a family. Quiet and peaceful and just as it should be.
(And she's been here for quite a while, but I've failed to post anything to introduce her. Something about having three children 2 and under makes a solid chunk of time for blogging really hard to come by.)
The birth story in short, to remember (it's always so much more than straight-edged words can hold, but I at least want to put up a marker)...
The circumstances surrounding Peregrine's birth dogged me more and more as Sugarplum's due date neared. Sleeping, showering--whenever I had a bit of stillness, a moment to myself--it all replayed again and again. Trying to trust God that all would be well and just as He intended was a challenge met regularly, a foe so familiar that it could almost be called a friend. I was content to have her inside, remembering all too well what must be endured to bring a child into the world, until the weekend before her due date. Time shifted as it does in the last days of pregnancy, and those last few days felt interminable.
The day after Sugarplum was due, I started having regular contractions--just at night, really, and still quite mild but enough to keep me from sleeping much. More the next day, lots the following night, then they slowed again during the day. Since I've never had the chance to go into labor on my own before, it was pretty mentally exhausting not knowing what was going on or if labor was really starting or whether this sort of thing would keep going on for days. I had an appointment with my OB on the 21st, and was pleased to learn that my contractions were at least doing something. Dr. Rupp thought it within the realm of possibility that she'd see me that night. And she did, but not because I was in active labor. Nope--because Sugarplum was going nutso inside me and my water broke just as Rundy and I were going to bed. Pretty sure she's responsible... That forced our hand a bit; we headed to the hospital and were admitted around 11 PM.
According to one of our nurses, the timeframe for hospital delivery after membrane rupture was 12 hours. Twelve hours from arrival to having the baby out, or close to out. Other hospitals give 24 hours, or 48, but it seemed like we were out of luck. It seemed apparent that my labor was progressing far too slowly on its own for Sugarplum to arrive within their window. That left us with two options: becoming reacquainted with my old friend, Pitocin, or a repeat C-section. Because I was aiming for a VBAC, we knew that most doctors--including whoever was on call until my OB was available in the later morning--would be either reticent or downright unwilling to medically induce/augment labor because it's harder on the uterus and can potentially increase the likelihood of uterine rupture. In phone conversations in the wee hours, though, my OB (soft-spoken, gutsy woman that she is) never so much as mentioned a C-section and wanted to start me on Pitocin.
At this point I was feeling pretty defeated and emotional. This whole pregnancy, I had wanted nothing more than to experience my body laboring on its own terms, start to finish. For His own reasons, God was definitely closing that door. I didn't know if Pitocin was wise, and I did know how Pitocin feels when it takes over my body, and I wanted to avoid it if possible. But my body... It was going so slowly by itself. And a C-section was definitely more undesirable than Pitocin.
And it was then--just then, mind you, smack-dab in the middle of making what felt like a pretty harrowing decision--that our nurse walked in and handed both Rundy and I fresh masks and told us we needed to make sure we were wearing them at all times.
(Cue dramatic music.)
My mandatory eyeball-and-brain-probing Covid swab, taken soon after arriving at the hospital, had come back POSITIVE. The real kicker, though, is the context. I actually had Covid back in October; it had spread through Rundy's workplace like wildfire and had come home with him. Rundy was asymptomatic and tested positive. I was sick as a dog and symptomatic like crazy for over 2 weeks, and the version of the test I took was less accurate and came back negative (gives you a lot of confidence in test validity). And here I was just a few days before Christmas--symptom-free for months, in labor and ready to deliver a child--and I tested positive two and half months after my false negative. I looked it up later, and even the CDC admits that you can still test positive up to 3 months after actually having Covid (whether you're at all infectious at that point or not). Basically, in a matter of minutes I had become a Plague Patient without really having Covid, masked even while laboring (thankfully, once I hit hard labor I took it off and no one cared), quarantined, surrounded by (nice!) people in hazmat suits, and put under mind-numbingly irrational hospital regulations (for example, Rundy never had to take a Covid test, yet was treated as someone who needed to be protected from my germs; he was with me for hours in labor & delivery, but when we got to the maternity wing he was told to sit on the other side of a curtain from me in our negative pressure room). I could go on and on about the Covid part of the whole experience, but that's enough. It's sufficient simply to say that leaving that hospital felt like being set free.
With Covid now acutely adding to my distress over What to Do, Rundy and I talked and prayed and decided that we'd give me until 5 AM to see what my body would do on its own without Pitocin. An added consideration was complete exhaustion--the past 2 nights had been pretty much void of real sleep because of contractions, and I hadn't slept at all at the hospital. I wanted to have a bit of rest before laboring in earnest. So that's what we did. I didn't actually sleep, but I did rest and think and pray and regain some equilibrium. And at 5 we started Pitocin. Because my body had already progressed on its own a bit, I was hoping maybe just a few hours would do it (and maybe I would be able to stop at a low dose of Pitocin).
Eight hours and the maximum dose of Pitocin later, a brand new girl child was pushed out into the world. Maranatha Eleanor joined our family in the flesh on December 22 at 1:14 pm. 8 pounds, 20 and a half inches of God's own knitting together. We wanted to name her something meaningful for Advent--Maranatha means "Come, O Lord" and Eleanor means "God Is Our Light." Together, "Come, O Lord Our Light." And she just so happened to be born the day after the winter solstice, which added a nice, unanticipated layer of meaning.
Her entrance was not the calm, intervention-free experience I'd hoped for. But I've been struck profoundly in the days since her birth by the weight of goodness even still. I was able to have a VBAC. She came out rosy and crying. She is well. I am well. And deeper still is the weight of knowing that no matter what birth looks like--the idyllic vision in our heads or the grueling travail of hard decisions and terrible physical pain--it is always an honor not to be taken lightly. It is a gift from God's own hand to endure whatever must be endured to bring a child into the world.
And so we rejoice in the gift of our Marnie-Girl's life. We rejoice in the gift of her birth. We rejoice in the days we've been given so far, and we rejoice in the days yet to come.
We are rich with God's giving.
It was a huge boon to be discharged from the hospital just over 24 hours after Maranatha's birth. We were so very ready to go home.
Watching the boys meet their sister was heartmelting. Tadhg was old enough--and aware enough--to know where I was and what was happening. He was all tenderness with Marnie, completely transfixed by her tiny little self. Pippin was so overjoyed to see Rundy and I home and to be all together again that he didn't even notice his baby sister at first. When he did, he stared at her like she was an alien for a good 5 minutes before slowly realizing what was going on. He's been nearly as enamored with her as Tadhg in the days since.
Almost all of the photos on my blog these days are blurry phone photos taken with my not-great phone camera, but they still do the trick for sentimental purposes.
One of my most precious memories of Maranatha joining us was the morning after coming home. Every morning when Tadhg wakes up he comes into bed with me for his Very Important, Absolutely Necessary Morning Snuggles. And he just couldn't get enough of his precious little sister. He spent an hour straight talking softly to her, stroking her face, kissing her cheeks, holding her. He is such a good big brother, truly, and watching him love her is about as sweet as life gets.
Many mornings since have begun with that same routine--Tadhg and Pippin starting their day by heaping some affection on Marnie.
