It's been six years since we welcomed my sweet Christian Taylor into this world.
It was such an exciting and terrifying time.
I remember walking out the front door of my house that morning I was to deliver, and thinking how different my life would be the next time I walked through that door. Having a child is such a huge life changing event anyways, but I really had no idea just what was to come.
We walked into the hospital that morning and went through all the routine things, paperwork, getting the IV hooked up, and all that. The usual nerves were of course, already set in, but there was certainly an unspoken element of fear in the room about what was to come. The unknown can be scary at times.
My parents showed up a little later before time for the C-Section, and we all stayed in the pre-op room. We really did talk casually and joke around. We were all scared, but still were calm enough to just spend time together. Honestly, we all knew that freaking out or sobbing or going wild wasn't going to help anyways. We didn't know what the outcome would be, so we figured we might as well have stayed calm and kept the atmosphere peaceful for the time being. There would be time to freak out and sob and throw our fits later if it came to that.
A few hours seemed like an eternity, but I was finally taken to the operating room and given my spinal. (SO fun, by the way. Ugh!) Chris was brought in and I just laid there for the next bit while the doctors did their job.
The moments after he was born were nothing but a rush and a blur. There were people everywhere; three anesthesiologists at my head, two surgeons working on me, a plastic surgeon there working on Christian, nurses for me and for Christian, and so many others that I couldn't tell you who they were.
I began to hemorrhage while the doctors were closing me back up, so the already chaotic room really became busy. It was like something you'd see on an episode of a hospital TV show; doctors calling out orders for medications "stat," and tons of other staff racing all over the room. Meanwhile, I was careening my neck to try to get a glimpse of Christian as they assessed him. I couldn't see him. I wasn't allowed to touch him. No one would tell me how he was.
Chris had been over checking on him and came back to me, crying. The mix of medications coursing through my body along with the chaos of the operating room made my head swim. I was sort of just lying there, at the mercy of everyone, waiting to hear about Christian and waiting to be sewn up so I could get up and get to my baby. It was almost as if I was dreaming, like all this couldn't be real. It was like I was in a fog, really. I remember looking down at my cell phone once, trying to text someone to tell them that Christian had been born, and not being able to make out the buttons to type. I was in the middle of a storm, but I was paralyzed and unable to do anything to seek shelter or get out of the downpour. I was being swept wherever the wind blew me, wherever the nurse wheeled me to. I had to wait for all the medications to wear off before I was able to be fully coherent and to myself.
I was powerless.
That is a good way to describe that day. Powerless. Everything that happened was out of my control. I would ask to hold my baby and be told no. I would ask for my pain medication and get a snooty nurse who told me she would get to it when she could. I would ask to be wheeled to see Christian in the NICU 1/3 of a mile away on the other side of the hospital and would be treated like a burden; like I wouldn't have taken myself, dragging my IV and catheter behind me, if I could have. I couldn't even get up out of a bed on my own for a few days. I was powerless.
There was so much pain that day. More than I could ever adequately put into words, but in the midst of that pain came the most overwhelming sense of love that I had ever experienced. In the middle of some of the darkest days of my life shined the brightest of lights. February 18th, 2011 was the day that I began to learn what it truly looks like to have joy in the midst of pain. It was the beginning of a journey where there would be so many days where I was terrified to take another step, but where I compelled to continue moving forward because I knew Christian needed me to. In so many of the photos I have of Christian's first few weeks of life, I was smiling. I was smiling because I was happy. I was holding the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen and he was mine. And if I had to go through all the pain a million more times to get to be Christian's mama, I would do it in a heartbeat. No question about it.
Sometimes, through our deepest pain, God can bring the most beautiful gifts. My gift on February 18th, 2011, was Christian Taylor Buchanan.
