A very great blessing...

This is Grady. He's 9 days old and already the light of his parents' eyes. He is a very special little guy - his mom is featured in an entry back in February, so you can read her story there.

Every birth story is different, but as long as the story ends in the arrival of a healthy baby, every story is a good one. Grady ended up arriving via emergency c-section. So often I hear women lament that their birth plans went awry at the last moment and they didn't have their chance to have a "natural childbirth." If they only knew how lucky they were...

I knew that Grady was going to be born on March 9, that was the scheduled induction date. All day I thought about his mom and I prayed that she would have an easy labor with a wonderful, joyous outcome. At her maternity session, she had told be about Grady's older brother - a little boy who had arrived too early and left too soon. So I was thinking of her a little more than I usually think of maternity clients and their impending labor - we have so much in common, having lost sons to prematurity and gone through difficulties to start a family.

I got a call on the evening of March 9 and my heart just sank. I recognized the number - it was the local coordinator for NILMDTS. She only calls me when a baby has died, or isn't expected to live. Immediately I thought of Grady and his family, and I hoped that it was not them. Of course, the odds were greatly against it - the odds that something would go wrong, and that I would be the photographer "on call" for the NILMDTS person that evening. And it wasn't Grady at all - it was a little girl at St. Joe's who wasn't expected to last long. So I packed my gear and set out for the hospital - grateful that it wasn't someone I knew, but sad knowing that some other mom was going through a horrible time. That mom had gone into the hospital expecting to come home with a healthy baby - and that was not going to happen.

So I am thankful for EVERY birth that has a healthy baby at the end of it - natural, "unnatural," with a midwife, with a doctor, induced, or c-section - they are ALL great options if the outcome is good. Too often I see women who are disappointed because their labor wasn't their ideal - but really, isn't the best outcome of all a healthy baby we can take home with us when we leave the hospital?