"Hello, Grace. We will be good friends."

     I wish all my long absences were for more fun reasons.  Life goes from being fairly consistent and not very exciting (work, clean up the house, make food, watch tv) to being fairly full of conflicting emotions (hope and sadness are probably the front-runners).  Mom’s cancer has spread to the point that it has a grip on most of her abdomen.  Most recently, it has caused excess fluid to build up around her lungs, constricting their movement and not allowing her to get a full breath.  Sam and I went to spend the week with my parents in case this doesn’t get better.  I wanted to be able to have some time with her, to help her and dad.  It was so good to be with her.  She is so hopeful and full of faith that it is easy to be hopeful around her.  There were a few things that were pretty hard to see that week: watching your mom struggle for breath, wheezing and convulsing trying to get air is awful.  She has a pretty huge wound where the cancer has eaten away her right breast and one day I had to dress the wound.  It is just so painful to see my mom like that.     As hard as all that was, it was still really good to be able to spend time with mom.  I still believe that God wants to heal her and that he can and I hope that he will.  I would love for my mom to not be in pain anymore and to have her life back.  I miss her.  
    There was some beauty in last week.  My older sister was due to deliver her fifth child while we were there.  She said that if nothing had happened by Thursday (her due date), her midwife was going to help her “get things moving” (caster oil?  ew...).  On Monday night, Abby came over with her sister-in-law and my good friend, Nicole and her twin sister Natalie.  We watched a movie called “The business of being born”.  The movie was all about natural birth with a midwife vs. hospital birth.  It talked about the medicines hospitals give to induce labor and what they do to the baby and the likelihood of a c-section delivery.  They also talked about the mortality rates for hospital births.  It was interesting to see the statistics and think more about what I would want to do in the future.  The movie talked about how there is a fear surrounding birth, and I realized I had felt that!  I want a baby, pretty badly, but there is that fear of delivering.  All you ever hear about it is “Oh it hurts so bad!” And you see women giving birth in movies or TV shows and they always seem so angry and afraid, like they’re furious with their husbands for making this happen to them, or their husbands aren’t there and they have to face this alone.  So I thought about that some, but didn’t really know what to think of it all.  And then Tuesday came...
    Tuesday afternoon we were all sitting around watching some movie on TV.  Mom was in and out of reality, catching some sleep when her breathing would allow.  The rest of us were half-paying attention.  The phone rang.  Dad answered the phone and “oh really?”-ed and “okay”-ed for a while and then said something about “baby” and gave a thumbs up.  We instantly perked up.  Once he got off the phone he said Abby was in labor, but it was slow for now.  He said she would call when things were getting closer.   We waited and waited and waited and finally we gave up and went over there anyway.  Her labor was speeding up and slowing down and frustrating her quite a bit.  We waited for quite a while, and then we decided to not waste more of mom’s portable oxygen tank and also to let mom get some rest before the big event, so we left and went home.  At around 9, Jason called and said we should probably hurry and get over there.  Abby does water birth, and she had just got in the tub before we arrived.  The contractions were getting stronger and closer together and we all waited in anticipation of meeting the new baby.  About an hour and a half later, things built up to a breaking point and Abby was exhausted.  She told me once that you get to the point where you don’t think you can do any more, that you can’t possibly push again, or handle another contraction, and then you know you’re almost done.  She hit that point, and then she was done.  

    It was beautiful, and full of the strength and grace that beauty possesses. Being a part of the birth was so communal (mom called it tribal) and as far from fear and anger as I can imagine.  I am so grateful that I got to be a part of that before the birth of my first child.  So, after all that pain, hard work, waiting, anticipating, we got to meet her.  At 10:46 pm, November 1, 2011, we welcomed Abigail Grace Shalom Howard into our family.  She has dark hair and dark eyes.  She weighed 7 lb, 7 oz and was 19.75 inches long.  She’s beautiful.  She’s perfect.  
    Abby held her first.  She held her until she needed to get cleaned up and warmed up, and she passed her on to mom.

 

When mom could finally let her go, I got to hold her. There is something so incredible about being the third person this baby has ever met.  “Hi, Grace.” I said “I’m you’re Aunt Hannah.  We are going to be good friends.”


 


















And we are!

Abby expected her to be a lot bigger than she is, so most of her clothes are too big.  That’s why her sleeve is in front of her face. I think she’s waving hello to you.
    So that’s what I did last week.  I loved my mom. I loved my dad. I met my new niece.  I had a life-changing experience.  I was filled with range of emotions at once.  It was a good week.