Iris, Our Strong Little Flower

As most of you know, our wonderful daughter Iris (Hebrew, meaning “flower”) has finally made her entrance into the world!  Every day we are filled with praise to the Lord for her life and feel incredibly blessed.  We wanted to share with you a little more detail about how Iris was born to give more glory to the Lord for how good He has been in bringing her to us!

I went into labor on July 1st ready to attempt a VBAC delivery.  Jude’s delivery had been unexpectedly difficult and had ended up in an emergency C-section after 24 hours.  This time I desperately wanted to try again to have a natural labor and after consulting with my midwives and signing the official papers saying I recognized the risks involved, I was ready to bring our daughter into the world.  Lord willing the “normal way.”

Once it started, my labor progressed very slowly and became uncommonly difficult very early on.  We did not know it at the time but learned later it was because my uterus ruptured.  My caregivers believe it happened very close to the time we arrived at the hospital. Because it is very complicated, I will spare you the specific details but suffice to say-because the Lord was specially protecting me and our baby, my midwives could not tell I had ruptured either.  I continued to labor (after rupturing) for about six hours until the pain was too excruciating for me to bear.  Then I was given an epidural and continued to labor for another six hours.  Again, I will spare you detailed explanations but after this amount of time things were not going well (in many ways) and my care givers felt convinced it was time for me to go into surgery.  None of them were aware of the rupture still.  Iris stayed stable this entire time, amazing!

As soon as the surgeon cut through my skin she started to see the mess of all that had happened. There was only one layer of tissue that had not broken and it was the only thing basically saving Iris’s life, separating her from all the blood, broken “stuff” and fluids seeping into all my surrounding tissues. The surgeon told us later that she does not know how that layer of membrane held up and that it “should not have held up through everything.”  I could go on and on to explain to you the many more amazing reasons why Iris is perfectly ok and why neither of us died. It is truly amazing. The surgeon said over and over, “you have no idea how lucky you are, this ‘should’ have had a far worse outcome.”   I would disagree with the surgeon in one way, we were not “lucky,” God worked mightily on our behalf and saved us from the worst!

We cannot thank the Lord enough for how he preserved us during the delivery, even when we had no idea what was happening.  He is so good and we give Him all the praise for his amazing power.

So, we are now home, amazingly let out of the hospital a day early because my recovery was going “so well.” PRAISE!  I have a lot of healing ahead but things are going well so far and we are trying to be patient with the process.  Iris is doing perfectly, she is just perfect in every way and we cannot get enough of her!  Jude is adjusting well to his little sister and seems to like her.    We are truly a blessed family!

We hope you are encouraged by our testimony of God’s goodness.  For those of you who prayed for us, thank you very much. Your prayers were needed more than we knew and God clearly heard and answered them!