Part 1 - Choosing his birthday

**Sammy & Nanna Shelly Wednesday October 6th**

If I could add trumpet fanfare to the beginning of this birth story I would...although that might be misleading because I feel like this first part is boring but I guess that's how labor & delivery work -the excitement is at the end...

Our first induction date was set for October 11, 1 ½ weeks past my due date. At one of my last appointments we asked if there was a busy baby time of year in New Orleans and the doctor confirmed that it was the end August, September, beginning of October…about 9 months after cold weather usually hits the area, which coincides with the holidays so it's kind of a double jeopardy I guess. * smile* This "busy baby season" contributed to the late induction date, if someone scheduled for October 7^th went into natural labor earlier we would be the first ones bumped to that day.

We got a phone call from the doctors office Friday the 1^st. I didn’t recognize the number at first since, you know, being 40 weeks pregnant I didn’t my doctors office phone number yet programmed into my phone (it wasn’t until 38 weeks that I realized if I went into labor I wouldn’t know what to do first, call the dr or go to the ER or ???, I still say this fact alone makes me a dream patient). I listened to the message and immediately called Wendy (my doula) and when she didn’t answer I called my mom to see what difference 5 days would make in the wait for my body or Sammy to decide to be ready for birth. The consensus from both was that since my body was making such little progress the boost of induction would probably be helpful and 5 days probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. My family history is pitocin is necessary and babies like to hang out past their due date. And every doctor I talked to told me that babies with anencephaly generally go past their due date and would hang out forever so I was already resigned to induction…

My first reaction to moving up the date was excitement. Dave wasn’t quite ready. So I asked the doctor for the weekend to decide, 7^th or 11^th. I kept thinking of reasons why I liked the 7^th but wanted to respect Dave’s feelings and his part of the process. I learned that *my* original due date was the 7th but I showed up a couple days early. I googled the 7th of October and the 11th of October to see if anything special on one of these days would make it clear which day we should choose. Other than the 11th being National Coming Out day (while semantically fitting in one way, probably not quite what the founders of this day had in mind), nothing really grabbed my attention. Obviously we decided on the 7^th and got the family all geared up to come into town. Oh - and turns out it was probably a God thing that we chose the 7th...

My mom and stepdad had already been summoned to New Orleans and had flights planned for the evening of the 3^rd. Dave’s mom (Sharonne) and sister (Laura) made their plans to drive down on Tuesday. I honestly don’t remember much about Monday-Wednesday. I know we (read: my mom) cleaned and waxed the floors at some point…we got pedicures on the 5^th, which was my 29^th birthday, and I wasn’t really in the mood to go out so we had Whole Foods Deli for supper and Pinkberry for dessert.

Wednesday during the day I really don’t think we did anything. We did go out for supper and I finished packing my hospital bag before we headed to church. Every Wednesday night our church has a prayer and worship service, this was one of the reasons an induction on the 7^th appealed to me. The doctor’s initial scenario started with going into the hospital the night before at around 9pm. Perfect for spending some time in prayer right before walking into the hospital, one of the moments I had most fearfully anticipated.

We got all checked in and met our first nurse, Ann. She was fantastic. Everybody I met was fantastic, all that worrying and stressing I did in June/July, well, I wanna say it was a waste of time but really I think it was the Lord teaching me trust. I still feel it was justified anxiety but I will never forget the underlying calm, knowing somewhere really deep down that it was all gonna to work out.

And it did.