The Birth of Anna Shepherd "Annie" McNeese
I tried for weeks to clean the laundry, the house, buy the groceries, declutter despite our kitchen in chaos and all to no avail. We kept dirtying our clothing--we experienced a winter storm that left us without the capability to do laundry or clean much and the mud was building up in the house. We kept eating our food and it was tricky to get more without the Clicklist and with low availability. The kids were feeling the upset and Will was in a conference in our bedroom all day so we tried to be quiet-er.
And then the sun came out, the water increased, the food trucks made it through, Clicklist was up and running again, Ms. Cynthia made it back to Jackson and was available to help clean, Friday Program opened again, and I had a chiropractor appointment! Hallelujah!
At 11:30 on Frida I returned home from my chiro appointment. I had told Dr. Molly that I hoped I wouldn't need to come again because the baby would have arrived. But, man, she sure did help a lot. I went in waddling and full of self pity and walked out telling Will that I was up for being pregnant for another week if I needed to be. Earlier that morning, we had taken the boys to school and Juni and I went on a 2 mile walk--the first in a long time because of the winter storm.
Mrs. Cynthia was just finishing up our house when I walked in feeling awesome. I snuggled Juni and fell asleep as she watched the episode about Daniel Tiger bringing home his little sister, Margaret.
Around 12:30 Will and I started making plans to go get paint at Lowes, then pick up the boys together. I went to the bathroom and had bloody show. I knew that was a sign of the end of pregnancy, but it could still be a week or two. I had already been losing my mucous plug and having tons of braxton hix contractions. However, a few minutes later, I felt a contraction--and it was crampy and kind of painful. I called across the house to Will, "babe, a few minutes ago I had bloody show and now I just had a real contraction!" "Whoa! What should we do?" he called back. I decided we should just keep going with our plans and I'd let him know if it happened again.
10 minutes later, it did. "Should we call my mom?" he asked. "Let's just wait a bit more...but maybe we should pack up our toothbrushes and be ready." Soon after that I told him we needed to put our stuff in the van before we picked up the boys from school.
On the way to get the boys we kept track of contractions and called Will's mom. It became clear that this was labor and we needed to get the kids to her soon so we could know the kids were taken care of and could concentrate and feel at peace.
We waited in the pick-up line for 20 minutes. We told Juni that we were pretty sure that our baby was coming soon. The boys climbed into the car and quickly asked," Why are we going this way? This isn't the way home." When we told them they started screaming with excitement. Ezra asked, "Is your belly squeezing right now? Does it hurt?"
We dropped them all off giving each enough kisses to last two nights.
"Where do you want to go now?" Will asked me. We had never been in labor during the day. Our other three started coming in the middle of the night so we had labored at home, until I decided I didn't want to have to travel with feeling much more pain. But, this was the daytime. We were close to the hospital and my contractions were still 10 minutes apart. The last thing I wanted was to go to the hospital. It seemed cold and harsh, unsupportive, dark and unwelcoming.
"Let's go to the park and walk around and watch the kids," I said at first then a few minutes later decided I'd rather go to the nature path near the path. I was feeling more private.
