Ruby's Birth Story

It has been WAY too long!!! A lot has happened in the past months (year). One thing is we got pregnant and had a baby (who is now 9 months old, cue the tears from this momma)!!! I will probably go back and do some posts about going through my pregnancy after Eleanor and how it affected me, but I wanted to start with our second daughter, Ruby's birth story.

Ruby's birth story begins with me at work. I all of a sudden started feeling super dizzy and lightheaded even though I was sitting down. I had our medical intern take my blood pressure, and it was high for me. So I called my husband at work, and he came and took me to the hospital. We got to the hospital, got checked in, and into our labor and delivery room. They took my blood pressure and did blood work. My blood pressure was of course normal, so they weren't too worried. They wanted to go ahead and have us wait until the blood tests came back, so we sat there watching Ruby's heartbeat on the monitor. I was feeling pretty stupid by this point, because I was obviously fine. I kept telling my husband we should just tell the nurses we want to leave, and I am feeling better. Just around that time our nurse came in. She started explaining what we were seeing on the monitor. The nurse said she had some concerns, because there were some pretty low dips in Ruby's heart rate. So she wanted our doctor to come up and look at it before they let us go. Thank the Lord it was my doctor who was on call that day. My doctor came up and let us know that she was concerned about Ruby's heart rate, and so she was taking us in for an emergency c section now.

I, of course, started panicking thinking that this was going to end up just like Eleanor, and we were about to lose our second daughter. My doctor kept reassuring me that everything was going to be fine. Everyone was rushing around. It was pretty intense for me. At one point our doctor told us if my husband didn't get back in time she wasn't going to wait for him. This was after I had tried to sit up in bed, and Ruby's heart rate dropped low again.

Praise God, my husband made it back in time and was able to be there with me. They wheeled me back to the surgical suite and got me all ready to go. At 1807 (6:07 PM) Ruby Jean was born, 5 lbs. 12 oz, 19 inches long.

She was a feisty little thing, coming out kicking and screaming. (They had told us before that she might not cry at first since she technically wasn't ready to come out yet). I was so thankful she was screaming. I cannot put into words the emotions I felt seeing our daughter for the first time. It was surreal. The craziest thing was that Ruby looks identical to Eleanor.

(Ruby top picture and Eleanor bottom picture)

Looking back now I can see God's hand all over Ruby's birth. He orchestrated everything beautifully even if it didn't seem like it at the time. I had a very difficult time trusting God with this pregnancy. Literally every one of my prayers that we prayed throughout me being pregnant were answered. Maybe not in the nice wrapped up present kind of way I thought they should, but in the chaos and mess of it all God was there answering the prayers. It just goes to show that God has it all under control, no matter how much I want to be in control of it. Thank God he is the one controlling the universe.

Welcome to this crazy world Ruby Jean!!