Welcome Baby Chase, 10/2/11

Oct 3, 2011 by Carly    5 Comments    Posted under: Pregnancy, The First Year

Yesterday was an average early October Sunday in New England—cool gray skies with intermittent drizzle and a Pats game on the tube in most living rooms.

It was also a nice day for a miracle.

No, I’m not talking about the sports kind complete with Hail Mary pass or beat-the-clock field goal—hardly miraculous in my humble opinion—but rather I’m referring to the kind of miracle that ends with a beginning.

A human birth.

Yesterday, at 3:21 pm, my sister delivered a 9-pound, 11-ounce baby boy named Chase. I was blessed to witness it.

She left me a chipper voicemail around 7:30 am saying that her water had broken in the wee morning hours and she was annoyed with the mess. By early afternoon she was on her way to the hospital with contractions a few minutes apart.

When I arrived—in the nick of time after driving like a bat out of hell down the interstate—she was on the “birth march” to the room where she would deliver. If you know anything about labor, you know the march.

My sister shuffling down the hall, giant belly hanging low, stopping every few minutes to breathe through intensifying contractions and grab the railing for support—her husband and a gaggle of midwives and nurses alongside.

Roughly 30 minutes later, (not so) little Chase was in the world, taking his first breath in her arms, slowly turning blue to pink, transforming from fetus to newborn before our eyes.

As I sit here to write this, I have no words worthy of the scene. Beautiful. Amazing. Awesome. A wonder to behold—quite literally, the definition of a miracle.

“Just so you know,” one of the nurses said to me as my sister calmly (and with nary a sound louder than your standard treadmill workout) birthed her child without medication, “this isn’t normal. She makes it look easy.”

“Oh, I know,” I responded, flashing back to my own experience. But then I realize that the nurse couldn’t be more wrong.

The birth of Chase is both normal and perfect—thanks to a perfect Creator.

Baby and mother work together in harmony. Labor progresses efficiently, and yet, occurs in peaceful slow motion guided by my sister’s rock-solid strength and that of the calming midwives.

No tortured, screaming, complicated plot. Nothing made-for-television trying to lure the sensational-seeking modern audience.

Just a regular birth on a regular day. Just a regular miracle.

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