Meeting Grace for the first time

On Friday 21st May, we had to be at the hospital before 8am. Walking in was awful knowing I would be walking out with nothing. My husband had told me that as long as he walked out with me safe then that was really important.

The midwife started things off with more pills and a hoard of other medical necessitate's and then left us for some time together. The next few hours went slowly with not alot happening except for feelings of apprehension and nervousness. About lunch time I started to be quite uncomfortable and after some pain relief we started to prepare for when Grace arrived.

We were given beautiful gowns, booties, beanies and quilts to sort through and choose from and these had been handmade and donated to the hospital. We already had a gorgeous outfit that had been given to us from Teresa, but unfortunately it was too big. We selected a small gown with beautiful pink lacing, a beanie and some booties along with a beautiful quilt embroided with angels.

I was feeling quite comfortable with the labour pains and close to delivering. There was a sense of calmness and quietness in the room at this time with apprehension and dread all in one. The nurse taking care of us was lovely and caring and helped us feel at ease. 2.30pm and our baby girl was born, all very easy and effortless, all very different to the boys.

Grace was handed to me and I could not stop looking at her. She was perfect. She had tiny toes, fingernails, a button nose, tiny lips, everything tiny and perfect. I wanted to see an imperfection, something wrong, something out of place to make all of what just happened make sense, but nothing was wrong with her by looking at her. She was tiny, 210g and 20cm long. I held her and cradled her against me. Grace was my baby girl and I just wanted her to breathe, to move to be alive and be ok. But she was born 'sleeping', my precious child, my angel.