The (Actual) Big Day!

The rest of the story...

We had been pushing for about an hour off and on. Dr. Jackson was pretty confident that Xavier was face up, and she thought there might be something else going on in the womb. She looked at Holly and said, "I can let you push for a few hours, but at this point I'm confident that this isn't going to happen. This baby isn't coming out this way."

We were bummed because we really didn't want a C-Section, but we understood that it was going to be a necessity at some point that night. With that in mind, we told Dr. Jackson to go ahead and prep for the surgery.

I couldn't believe that he was going to be here soon. How wonderful!

So, we prepped for surgery, in the mean time, Dr. Jackson actually went and delivered another baby, and then we went back into the operating room, ready to meet Xavier.

I sat with Holly, up at her head as they began the surgery. She was so scared, and very cold. I held her arm and kissed her and kept telling her how great she had done, how strong she had been all day.

It was nearly twenty four hours since Holly's ninja move out of the bed. Dr. Jackson called over the blue barrier, "time to stand up dad, get that camera ready."

I stood up and watched as my son was taken from the womb and brought into the great big world. What an awesome experience that I witnessed through the lens of my camera.

Once he was born, they showed him off to Holly then moved him over to weigh him and get him cleaned up. I couldn't stop smiling. He and I took some pictures, then he got to go to his mommy who kissed him about a hundred times. 

Then we took him out to meet the paparazzi!

Here are the people who braved the late night and long day in order to meet our little Xavier:

Grandma and Papaw P.

Grandma and Grandpa B.

Great-Grandma C.

Aunt Heather

Aunt Elna

Uncle B, Aunt Lisa, Kristi and Kaleigh

We found out later that they had a small pool going to determine what they thought Xavier would weigh when he was born. Here are those results:

Grandma P: 9 pounds, 6 ounces

Papaw P: 8 pounds, 7 ounces

Grandma B: 8 pounds, 2 ounces

Grandpa B: 7 pounds, 10 ounces

Great-Grandma C: 9 pounds, 3 ounces

Aunt Heather: 7 pounds, 12 ounces

Aunt Elna: 8 pounds, 13 ounces

Uncle B: 7 pounds, 15 ounces

Aunt Lisa: 9 pounds, 1 ounce

Kristi: 9 pounds, 7 ounces

He actually weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces. This makes Grandpa B the winner, although if this were The Price Is Right, they'd all be losers. Xavier was also 21 inches long!

What sticks with me the most about the birth of Xavier is a feeling that I have yet to describe adequately. We had known who Xavier was for months. We named him LONG before he was born, and we called him by name while he was in the womb. There was never any doubt that he was going to be our little Xavier. We were thrilled to meet him.

The actual event of meeting him, however, was overwhelming. I was completely dumb-struck by the idea that THIS was Xavier! This… concept finally had arms and legs and fingers and toes and very powerful little lungs!

I’m doing a remarkably terrible job at explaining myself, but it’s the best I know how to do. He had gone from being this abstract thing into being our little boy so quickly. I was completely struck by how much I loved him the moment I saw him.

It was like my life up until that moment had been remarkably incomplete. I couldn’t understand how I had ever been able to function up until that moment. How had my world ever been right before Xavier was born?

These are the things I’m processing in these days, and I’m sure I’ll continue to process them as long as I’m alive.

God is good, we love our little boy.

The Big Day!

I wanted to catalog my thoughts, so as the day of Xavier's birth progressed, I took notes of how I was feeling and what I was thinking. This is that document. It's real, unprocessed, quite open and honest. I'm not sure anyone in the room (including Holly) knew that I was doing this, but I wanted to share my experience in becoming a father.

About two hours ago, the two hours of sleep I was enjoying were very abruptly interrupted by Holly making a ninja move out of the bed. I was semi-conscious as she said, "Are you kidding me!?!?"

My response was a one word version of "whasgoingon?"

"I think my water just broke."

In my attempt to make sure that I carry on the good name of men all over the world, I wanted to make sure that she hadn't actually had a bathroom-type accident.

She assured me that she had NOT! So, we snapped into go-mode!

Now, we're sitting in a delivery room, dilated at three centimeters and having contractions every three minutes.

I'm completely overwhelmed, excited and ready to meet our little Xavier!

----

Well, it's ten o'clock now. We don't have a lot of progress. Holly is a little over three centimeters dilated, still having regular contractions. At this point we're thinking that the doctor is going to give her some pitocin to get things going.

I'm so proud of her, the deep breathing techniques we learned at the birthing classes are really paying off.

Grandma and Papaw (Pinkerton) and grandma and grandpa breitenbach are here. Aunt Elna has been here most of the morning. Uncle B and Aunt Lisa just came by, and so did Kristi. Aunt Heather and Matt were here when we first got here but we sent them home to get more sleep!

I'm confident that at this point in time, my church is praying for the three of us, and I know that God is good, and He will provide for us.

-----

We've been here about twelve hours at this point. It's 3:45, we are at 5-6 cm and 80-90% effaced.

We are both exhausted. I've been able to catch a couple naps on the couch in the birthing room. At this point, Holly has taken the epidural, she lasted about eight hours in labor without it. For someone with her pain threshold, I thought that was impressive. The epidural is making her sleepy, but there's so much going on that she can't seem to sleep at all.

While I was laying on the couch, trying to fall asleep (full disclosure, it's happening again as I write) I was completely overwhelmed with tears at the idea that soon my very own son would be nestled safely in my own arms. I give all praise to a glorious God who is making it so, and I'm completely floored by the incredible responsibility that's about to be placed on me and Holly.

The visits and support from family and friends has been great. Hilary has remained in near-constant contact with me throughout the day, I can't figure out who is more excited, her or Shanna.

------

It's 6:30 now! They came in and did an exam. We are at 8 cm, and 100% effaced. This means it's almost time to meet our son.

Papaw just led the family in a time of prayer. The nurse walked in just after we finished, she was wondering what happened that made nine grown adults cry. It was so precious praying together and thanking God for our son and praying for a healthy delivery.

We are now just waiting on some more change so that mom can start pushing!

It's almost time. Can't wait to hold my baby boy. :-)

-------

It's always difficult telling people that they need to leave the room. They are all quite excited, they all have a majorly vested interest in our little Xavier. In fact, most of them have known Holly since she was born. So, her husband of less than two years probably has no right to ask them to leave the room...

But I did.

Man that's tough on me, emotionally. But Holly's nurse asked her to get some serious rest, so we wanted to turn off the lights and let Holly rest. I asked the whole group to leave the room.

We had an issue with the nurse we met when we first got here. She wasn't vicious or mean or anything, but she had a way that just didn't sit well with Holly. So, we had a lot of stress when the shifts changed again and that nurse was going to be put back on the "case." Holly wanted a change, so we asked for a change.

Now we are sitting in the room, just her and I (and her parents) very quietly, in the dark.

We are hoping that she won't have to push for a long time, but preparing for that eventuality by letting Holly rest, just in case.

It is almost 8 pm. That means we are pushing 17 hours today. What a day! Holly is at 9cm, fully effaced. It's so close.

In the middle of this nurse drama, I got the chance to hold my wife and whispered in her ear, "we're going to hold him soon." This, of course, was an overwhelmingly emotional thing to say, and we both broke down and cried together, tears of absolute, unadulterated, unbelievable joy.

This leg of our journey with Xavier is quickly coming to a close. We're so excited for the next part.

--------

9:25 - I'm really dragging. Been trying to keep food/fluids up all day, but this is taking a long time.

Come on Xavier, it's time to get this show on the road. Mommy has done a great job getting you ready, keeping you warm, but it's time to get moving, son!

--------

12:35 - it's a whole new day. We are finally hearing the magic word, "push!" But it is in an attempt to finish things up so that the real pushing can begin.

I just keep reminding Holly that we are going to hold our beautiful baby boy soon.

On a different note, the nurse says that she feels hair! I keep asking her if it's red hair, but she can't tell. Come on now. Get it together, Polly!

Dr. Delong, whom we worked with all day has left, Dr. Jackson has taken her place tonight.

We can't quite get everything right at this point. Either the contractions are too irregular, his heart rate is too varied, or her cervix isn't "complete." So, all efforts are in place now to try and get those things together and get this little man out!

All our visitors are in the waiting room, desperately waiting for some information.... On May 7, we are all waiting together. We can't wait to meet this little guy.

----------

12:50 - nurse just left. No change yet. Can't get this last little bit to go. We are at 22 hours and counting now. Poor Holly is exhausted and miserable.

Anticipation is at an all-time high

Two weeks ago, we went to the doctor. He was very worried about Holly's blood pressure and sent us to the hospital for some blood work. He didn't say the word, but I did a little on-the-fly research and realized that he was worried about pre-eclampsia. We didn't take his concern lightly, we went straight to the hospital where we promptly waited for a few hours on the results from the blood work. One of the doctors from our office came in and told us everything looked good. She prescribed some more rest, and lower salt intake.

We went to the doctor last week and the doctor gave us some fun news. He told us that if Holly went into labor at this point, they weren't going to stop it. He was also worried about her ability to go full-term. Her feet have been remarkably swollen and her blood pressure is still mildly concerning. So, he said there was a good possibility that they would induce labor to take Xavier early to ease the stress on Holly's body.

We are now at 37 weeks and have another appointment tomorrow. We had two baby showers this weekend, and as the name suggests, we were showered with gifts and presents for our new little man! We're so excited and can't wait to meet him.

But, the doctor's appointment tomorrow has us on edge, because we're both anxious that he's going to tell us to go to the hospital because they're going to induce her. So, we spent the past 2 days preparing!

The car seat is all ready to go in the car.
Xavier's bag is all packed up and ready to roll.
Holly's bag is all packed up and ready to go, too!

We're most definitely at the place where this could be it, any time now! I say all that to say this, keep us in your prayers. Tomorrow could be the day!

Below are a couple pictures from X-Man's room =)

Living Life Together

A few months ago, I was talking to a pastor I know and he was sharing with me that he thought the entire concept of Life Groups was wrong. I found this to be a little weird because the church where he's a pastor has life groups. Naturally, I wanted to know why he felt this way.

"It's because the idea of living life together isn't real, it doesn't work."

His whole premise was that we are individuals (or individual families) and we live our lives apart. The idea that we can meet for an hour a week and somehow be living life together must be wrong. For him, it just wasn't true.

With all due respect to that pastor, I think he was wrong.

Sure, we don't completely live life together. I don't particularly need to know that you are out of coffee at your home. While the lack of coffee in my home is note-worthy (if not panic-worthy) to me, the lack of coffee in your home isn't nearly as concerning to me.

But when we talk about living life together, we're not talking about those little things are we? We're not talking about something as insignificant as coffee and the availability of hot beverages in each family's home.

Living life together is about the big things. Our Sunday School class has an almost identical life group attached to it. The life group is expanded a little bit in some ways and contracted in some others. A number of people teach Sunday School and miss our class, and so the life group is a great opportunity for them to stay connected.

Holly and I went to that group tonight (for the first time, actually) and to be honest, I'm completely sold on the concept of life groups. We are, in fact, living life together.

In our class/group there are four babies under a year old. We've celebrated with each of those families as they welcomed their children into the world (in fact I was in the hospital with two of them). There are even more children under 5 years old.

We are all living life together.

When I come into class, I find myself quite frequently overwhelmed with the latest aspect of fatherhood that I just stumbled into (on that note, it never feels like I gracefully I arrive into those moments. I feel like I'm just completely falling into them) and the men in my class are able to look me in the eyes and say, "I understand."

That's living life together.

When someone is sick, or a family member passes away, we mourn together. We pray together. We challenge each other and we call each other out.

We realize that we are parts of the same body and if one part is hurting or ill or messed up in some way, it affects all parts of the body.

Tonight, our group talked about worry. Jesus is pretty clear that there's no place for worry in the life of a Christian. I get the impression that a good Christian should never worry because God is still God, and God is always good.

I confess... I am full of worry.

I don't know what to do about it either. The last question of the group tonight was, "What one thing can you do to prevent worrying this week?"

I have no idea how to stop myself from worrying. The past few months of my life have been consumed with worry. I tell myself that it's not a lack of trust in God, I mean, I trust that in the end God will provide. I guess, I feel like I should be able to help God along?

Maybe I could put it better by saying that God gave me talents and abilities and if I use the gifts he gave to provide, then God is still providing. I don't want to be the sort of person who just sits around hoping that God will provide.

I know this, though. I'm absolutely tired of worrying. I'm tired of being so scared. It is taking its toll on me. I can't handle the pressure of feeling like I'm in this alone.

So, what tangible thing can I do to stop worrying? I honestly have no idea. But, I'm open to trying anything. So, I'm fasting, just for a day (until dinner tomorrow night). I don't say that to point at how great I am (as if not eating food somehow makes a person great), but to say that I'm at the end of my rope in the mental sense of all this, and so tomorrow I'll be relying on God for strength to just make it through the day.

I'll admit, that's mildly ridiculous. As if I couldn't make it through one day without food.

If you get a chance, say a prayer for me. This is an incredibly taxing period of my life. But God is good.

---

This doesn't feel like much of a fatherhood blog. So, I'll give an update on Holly and Xavier. We are currently at 27 weeks. We're going to the doctor tomorrow morning and will hopefully hear that everything is going well. Xavier has been moving around a lot. When it gets loud, he moves. I'm not sure what to think about that, being such a loud person.

As far as I know, everyone's healthy.

I can't wait to meet my little man!

Just how pregnant are we?!

Happy Valentine's Day to the love of my life who is 26 weeks pregnant!

Overwhelmed by stuff!!

It's been a month since I last posted. I suppose I'm not the best blogger in the world. Actually, I'm quite certain this is the case. My other blog hasn't been updated since the beginning of baseball season last year with my picks for the season. For the record, I got 2 out of 8 teams correct for the Playoffs. At least I'm not only terribly in blogging, I'm also terrible at picking teams in the MLB Playoffs before the season starts.

I can live with those failures.

A lot has happened in the last month, though. I got to feel Xavier move! That was certainly an exciting moment for me. Holly had been able to feel him all the time, and I'd sit down to try and get discouraged. Now, all things considered, I'm still not positive it was him moving or her stomach just gurgling at me, but I'll take it either way, I guess. Heh.

The freshest memory and bloggable experience for me happened yesterday. Holly and I were in Columbus for my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration and we decided to detour over to Babies R Us to register for the upcoming Baby Showers. We had registered for our wedding about 18 months before and that was a piece of cake. I mean, seriously, it really can't be any easier to register for your wedding because it's all stuff you understand completely. "We will need sheets for our bed."

I thought registering for the baby was similar.

I was completely wrong.

I thought a stroller was a stroller. Wrong.

I thought a car seat was a car seat. Wrong.

I thought a bottle was a bottle. Wrong.

We were going through the store, scanning items to put on our registry and I was just completely overwhelmed.

I'm convinced that I have no idea what I'm getting into. I mean, I literally have no idea what it takes to be the father of an infant. I shared these thoughts with our Sunday School class this morning and the other dads just laughed at me. I said I was looking for some support. They reminded me that they laugh because they understand exactly where I am right now.

As we were finishing up at the store, one word kept coming to mind. Overwhelmed. We were both completely overwhelmed with everything.

I don't mean for this blog to be completely negative, I really don't. In fact so far this experience has been quite positive. I am enjoying this time of preparation, this time of anxious expectation. It's all really fun for me and it's becoming more and more real every day. He's going to be here so soon, and I absolutely cannot wait to hold my son in my arms.

If you don't mind me adding something to the end of this post, I'd really appreciate some comments/feedback on here. I'm not writing this post to win any medals or trophies, and I don't imagine that there will come a day when someone asks me to compress my thoughts on fatherhood into a book. The reason I write is to unwind and think about things in a different format, but it sure is easier to write when I know people are reading.

Thanks for reading. =)

Leaving a Legacy

Sometimes, my job as a pastor takes me to really awesome things. For instance, tonight I am going to spend the night at Dave & Busters in Columbus with a bunch of teenagers. I mean, seriously, this is my job!?

Last week, I had the distinct honor of holding a newborn in my arms and celebrating with his parents as they welcomed their new son into the world.

There are days when I look in the mirror and say, I get paid to do this?

Being a pastor is awesome. But then there are things that I do that aren't nearly as fun. Funerals would be near the top of this list.

Last week, the same day that newborn was born, I attended a funeral of a man I never met. His great-grand daughter is a part of my youth group.

He had been married to his wife for 63 years! Sixty three years! I'll be honest, I missed a lot of the funeral because I was so focused on that fact. They were married for 63 years. They had children. Their children had children. Their children's children had even begun having children!

And here they all were, celebrating the life of this man who, according to everything I heard in the service was basically a saint.

So, now I sit back and I wonder, what did he feel like when his wife told him that he was going to be a daddy for the first time? Did he know that he would leave this incredible legacy of children, grand children and great-grand children who love Jesus?

I'm more convinced today than I was early last week about the importance of fatherhood and the incredible privilege and honor that it is to be counted among that group.

May I never forget the importance of leaving a legacy for my children, ensuring that they understand how awesome Jesus is, and what a great privilege it is to serve Him.