Blessed By Birth: a Collection of Inspirational Birth Stories

By SK Bell

We often call it “the miracle of childbirth,” yet we rarely take the time to discuss just how many ways God was present throughout our pregnancies and during the births of our babies.
In Blessed by Birth, 12 women share the intimate details of the way God blessed them, guided them, or helped them survive their pregnancies, births, and early days of motherhood.
These 26 stories will make you laugh and cry. Whether you haven’t yet had your first baby or are watching your grandbabies welcome babies of their own, you’ll treasure the miracle of each individual story. They will offer you hope, facilitate healing, and inspire you to find God in your own birth story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365996634

Book preview

Blessed By Birth: a Collection of Inspirational Birth Stories

Blessed by Birth

A Collection of Inspirational Birth Stories

Compiled by SK Bell

Copyright ©2017 by SK Bell

Cover and interior design by Caitlin Abrams

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in any way without the express written permission of the publisher.

Some names, dates, locations or identifying details have been changed to protect identities and privacy of those mentioned in this book.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

First Printing: 2017

ISBN 978-1-365-99663-4

This book is for every mother, grandmother, mother-to-be, and mother at heart…the mothers who adopted, the mothers who miscarried, the mothers who had C-sections or natural deliveries…the mothers who used pain medications and the mothers who didn’t…the mothers who gave birth in a hospital or at home or any strange place in between…those who mother around the clock, those who mother from a distance, and those who mother only in spirit…

May your heart be touched and your perception be altered. 

Introduction

The greatest gift I have ever been given is the gift of witnessing a new life enter the world.

I was 18 years old and had just enjoyed a mother-daughter weekend in Texas. We visited family, we explored the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and I lasted an embarrassingly short number of seconds on a mechanical bull.

We stepped off the plane in our own state and I turned on my phone to discover a cousin was at the hospital and in labor, not too far from this very airport.

My mom agreed that we could go say hi but warned me that labor takes a long time and it was very unlikely that we’d actually get to see the baby.

Once we arrived at the hospital, we spent a little time chatting and enjoying the moment. My mom decided to step out for lunch with my grandma and great aunt. I opted to stay in the delivery room with my cousin, knowing that we needed to leave when Mom came back.

It was all fun and games for a while since my cousin has such a high pain tolerance. There was laughter, a silly movie, and joking interrupted only by the occasional slight wince. Then she moved into transition labor. She started to cry. At some point she cried out, I want my mom!

Unfortunately, her mother was a thousand miles away, and all I could do was helplessly cry quietly in the corner, unable to replace my cousin’s mom role.

Everything happened so fast after that; I barely had time to register or process it until I got home that night. One minute the doctor was saying the actual birth was so far away that she was leaving for a family barbecue. The next minute that doctor was rushing back into the room where my cousin had already very quickly delivered her baby.

I normally had met babies several weeks after their birth. I had never seen a brand new newborn before. She was smaller than any baby I had ever seen. She was purple. She was covered in slime. She made my cousin a mother instantly. She was not a mother for her entire life, and then one single second later she was. The moment shocked and amazed me. I knew where babies came from. I’d just never witnessed it before.

To my 18-year-old eyes it was all at once disgusting, terrifying, beautiful and amazing.

Although I did make the drive down the mountain to see her third baby’s birth, I missed the second. I had to work. If I could go back in time, I would do whatever it took to get that day off.

I thought the experiences were neat. As a spectator I even found them fun.

I didn’t recognize then how amazing the miracle of life was. I see now what a wonderful gift she gave me, one I’ll never be able to thank her enough for, in allowing me to stand in the room and witness such an intimate and miraculous moment. Twice!

Maybe my own children will someday invite me to witness the birth of a grandchild…but maybe they won’t. They may choose to preserve the intimacy of that moment and keep as few people in the room in the possible.

It’s very possible that the only births I will ever witness in this life are my own three children’s births and the two beautiful births my sweet cousin let me witness.

Each time someone I love is in labor, these five experiences replay in my mind. I typically spend a whole day misty-eyed and double-checking my phone for more news.

I send text messages out to my mom, aunts, cousins. Any updates? Anybody heard anything yet? Any new news?

Someone goes into labor and the women in my family lose our minds. We’re highly distracted and spend the day stuck in our own heads, picturing magical moments and almost, almost being able to pull up the memory of that newborn baby scent.

Then the baby comes and the statistics are announced. We offer our congratulations and we say things like "She’s so tiny! I can’t believe my kids were ever this tiny! and Oh my goodness, does he look like his daddy!"

We call each other while we look at pictures and say, If you cover up her mouth and nose she looks exactly like…

We smile as we write their new birthdays in our calendars and day planners.

When the time is right, we press for details.

Did your water break on its own?

Did you get an epidural?

How long did you push?

I love my own memories and I love a good birth story. I find it almost hilarious that I was so incredibly terrified of birth the first time around but am now just so in love with the process.

I love that every birth story is so unique in its own right.

Sometimes they are quick and nearly painless. Sometimes they last for days. They end with natural deliveries, emergency C-sections, planned C-sections and inductions.

Birth stories take place at home and in hospitals, in birthing centers, in hospital elevators and on the side of the road on the way to the hospital.

They take place in a room filled with a lot of other people, and they take place in dark and quiet rooms with only one or two other people around.

I love all of them. Every last one. I love to hear about and picture that beautiful, amazing moment where another person, another life, suddenly appears.

It’s amazing to me that all of us mothers are joined together in this miraculous event that is so alike and yet so different for each of us.

At the end of my third pregnancy, I found myself on a birth story kick.

I’ve eaten them up since shortly after my first baby was born. I love it when a favorite blogger shares her birth story or when a good book about motherhood includes that beautiful account.

I’ve always loved them, but during my third pregnancy, I was addicted. I wanted all of them. I wanted the boring stories that mirrored my own — a typical hospital delivery with no complications — and I wanted dramatic tales that were nothing like my own story.

I went to each appointment with my midwives feeling excited to hear my baby’s heartbeat and then to check the pregnancy magazine stash to see if any new ones had shown up with a birth story in the back.

Those were my favorite. Those magazines, unlike my laptop, could be held and devoured while I soaked my exhausted, heavy body in a warm bath.

This eventually led me to look for books of birth stories. I was surprised to find just how few there were and decided I wanted to reach out and collect birth stories for a book of my own.

It took no time at all for me to know with a deep conviction that I wanted to put together a book that would touch on the often neglected spiritual side of birth.

We call childbirth a miracle but we don’t usually talk about the way God carried us through it or the way He answered our prayers. We don’t talk about the prayers our husbands fervently whispered on the way to the hospital or the scriptures we held in our hearts in the dizzying rush of pain, excitement and anxiety.

I knew a book of birth stories would appeal to women of all ages and stages of life. I imagined a book that would be read and loved by young women planning to start a family, by young mothers, by mothers wanting to revisit birth though they long ago stopped having babies of their own, by grandmothers whose hearts were recently warmed by the birth of a new grandbaby.

I wanted my book to touch the hearts of all of these women. I wanted these stories of birth to pull us all closer to each other and to God. I wanted this book to remind us of this miracle and the ways it changes our lives. I wanted it to offer hope. I wanted it to offer healing.

I wanted it to showcase God’s most beautiful creation — life — and to honor the miracle in it, and in the fact that we lowly humans are blessed with a chance to experience it and take part in something so amazing.

I reached out to a few fellow mothers who were willing to share their stories with the world. I asked them to share their accounts and provide a glimpse of the way pregnancy and birth changed their relationship with God.

I must have smiled and cried at least a hundred times while putting this book together.

My prayer while putting this book together was that it would touch hearts and inspire, and that it would make a difference for even one single person.

I hope you enjoy it just as much as I do.

-SK Bell

My Rainbow Baby

Tamara Ashby

May, 1993

I was starting to think that being pregnant was my new normal and I would never get to meet my new son. I was also convinced the baby was a boy. All of my friends who had had babies within the past year had boys.  My mom instincts told me it was a boy.

I woke up that Saturday morning feeling kind of tired and cranky (what woman who is nine days overdue with their first baby wakes up in a good mood?), but I was super excited to attend the baby shower of my sister-in-law, Cindy, who was due in August with a boy.

I went to the shower and then came back to our tiny two bedroom apartment in southwest Phoenix, where I quickly changed into my swimming suit and waddled to the community pool.

My husband Mike had to work that night, so I was on my own for most of the evening. As usual, I spent most of that evening talking to my mom and Cindy on the phone.

I was having odd cramping and pains but I honestly thought it was probably false labor. I didn’t really time the cramps, and it wasn’t until I had to get on all fours during my false contractions that I started to think that maybe I should at least go get checked out. 

My mom and Cindy both were timing them for me on the phone at various times in the evening, and they both told me I should call Mike and have him leave work to take me to the hospital.

I finally called Mike a little after 10 p.m. to let him know I might be in labor. I reassured him that I probably wasn’t and that they would most likely send me home, but my mom and Cindy thought I was having regular contractions between 10 and 15 minutes apart, and since they had started late that morning, I really should get checked out. I truly thought that they would send me home and tell me it was false labor.

Mike got home about 10:30, and we got to our hospital around 11 p.m. While we were registering in the ER, I bought a Snickers candy bar out of the vending machine because I was starving. I was half way through swallowing it whole when the triage nurse saw me and reminded me that once labor starts they recommend you do not eat anything.

I begrudgingly gave the other half to Mike, and grumbled to myself all the way upstairs to labor and delivery that since they’re going to send me home anyway I should just get to eat the whole thing. Ha!

Once the nurse had checked me, she told us that I wasn’t dilated enough yet to be able to determine if it truly was real labor, but if I would walk around the halls for a while it might speed up that process and I could possibly have my baby that night! Woo hoo!

So we started walking, and walking, and walking. The contractions began to come more frequently and way stronger, and on the last lap around the maternity ward I had to stop multiple times to wait out the contractions. 

Back in the room, only 30 minutes later, the nurse told us I had dilated from three to six centimeters, and this was real labor all right! (Sheesh, I had already figured that out during the last 3 contractions.)

The nurse asked me if I wanted to have an epidural or any kind of pain medicine for the remainder of my labor. ABSOLUTELY NOT was my answer!

I had heard horror stories of women getting epidurals and either being paralyzed the rest of their life or having chronic pain and problems from them. I figured if my mom and grandmothers and women for centuries could do it drug free, so could I. I just didn’t consider the fact that if they had been offered a painless way to deliver their children, a good portion of them would have taken it. Idealism — it’s not for the fainthearted!

Within the next hour or so my labor continued to progress, and I entered the transition phase.  That’s the medical term for absolutely miserable dry-heaving nauseating pain that rips you apart and makes you feel like you’re dying stage. I can see why they shortened it to transition. It’s easier to say.

The nausea was horrible, and I could not stop dry-heaving after barfing up that perfectly good half of a Snickers bar. 

Mike was the official barf bucket emptier. I cannot say I felt sorry for him. Twenty-three years ago they did not have safe antiemetic medication to offer pregnant women to ease their suffering.

After a few hours of this, I was beginning to beg for