my Anna in a year

It has been quite a year since last July 7th! Last year at this time I was feeling large, hot, and ready to meet my sweet little surprise baby! Her birth was not as we'd expected but she was far more than we could have hoped for or imagined. Going in that morning for some reason we were pretty sure we were having a boy. We had a boy name picked out and hadn't bothered to narrow down a girl name. Oops. Obviously, we were wrong. We had happened to go through our favorite girl names and discussed their meanings. And that turned out to be a very good thing.

I went in to be induced around 5am on July 8th and by 10am was still feeling great and not feeling too many contractions. Around 1030am a R.U.S.H. of nurses swarmed into our calm room and began tossing me around, hooking up new wires, and generally freaking me out. The baby's heart rate had dropped into the 60's and that is clearly not good. Quickly it went back up and the nurses explained what happened and suggested an epidural sooner than later in case of c-section. So we did. A funny side note...the nurse came in a few minutes later asking if I wouldn't mind letting a gal down the hall go first even though I was next...based on the screaming filling the hallways and the fact that I still wasn't really feeling pain, I agreed. By 12pm I had my epidural and was closely monitoring the heart rate myself. I watched it drop into the 40's around 1pm and this time the nurses came in on a mission. I was crying and trying not to massively freak out. Thinking my hysterics could only make things worse. Andrew was trying to be near me but with 15 nurses doing their jobs all around me that wasn't really happening.

Through the craziness, praise the Lord, within 20 minutes our wonderful doctor and team had safely delivered our precious baby girl. We looked at her, cried, and knew her name would be Anna. God is indeed gracious.

And He has shown Himself gracious over and over this year. Anna Elise is such an unbelievable undeserved gift in our lives and I am so thankful for her. She is sweet, gentle, easily comforted, laughs at her brother, sister, and silly daddy, and is a full blown Mama's girl. I couldn't be happier.

Our verse for Anna is Isaiah 26:3

"He will keep in perfect peace him whose heart is steadfast, because he trusts in You."