His tiny baby bottom rests on my forearm, his legs are tucked up tight against my stomach, and his cheek is pressed against my chest, while I sway and hum and kiss his perfect head over and over and over again. I am in love.
This pregnancy was really hard for me. I wish I could point to one reason why- but I think it was a combination of a lot of things. First, I've never been pregnant while running my own business and mothering 5 kids. I think I was already so run down in every way possible, and then I was asking my body to grow a human at the same time, and that made my body a tiny bit angry. I had morning sickness for two months longer than usual, was completely wiped out by a case of COVID, and caught the stomach flu, but those things aside, I never really felt good during the pregnancy. I wanted it to all be okay, and it all HAD to be okay, because I had a school to run and ballet to drive to and the laundry wasn't going to wash itself. And as it turns out, when you tell yourself everything is totally fine when it's not, you can almost convince yourself it's true-- almost.
"LONDON!!!! KIDS!!!!" I called out from the kitchen.
They could tell something was wrong from the tone of my voice, and all 5 kids came running down the hall to rescue me.
"Don't step in the kitchen! I just need a towel!" I cried.
Kyle was at Discount Tire, car up on the lift, right in the middle of getting his tires replaced, when he received my frantic call. "911. My water just broke!"
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When we arrived at the hospital, I was 5.5 centimeters dilated, and the nurse called for the epidural immediately.
Hours went by without any progress at all, and then at about 10:30 pm, the nurse introduced a huge peanut-shaped exercise ball thing. She placed the giant peanut in between my knees, and I suddenly started having more painful contractions. I started to push the "extra epidural" button with each contraction, but I felt no relief from the pain. I was really hurting.
Since the day we found out we were having another baby, Kyle was convinced the baby would be born on June 2nd-- 15 days before my due date. So when my doctor arrived in my hospital room at 11:51 pm on the night of June 2nd, Kyle told him right away that the clock was ticking.
"Challenge accepted," my doctor said. "Bristyl, you have one chance to push him out. You can do it!"
I laughed, pushed exactly 3 times, and Liam Jackson Garvin was born, sunny-side-up, at 12:02 am on June 3rd. He screamed for the first hour after birth, finally got the urge to nurse, and has hardly left my arms since.
Everyone has been so so kind to me, and when I venture out of the house, I hear things like, "Wow, I don't know how you do it!" or " You're super-mom!" and I don't know how to respond other than to say "thank you". I don't feel that way about myself at all- and I feel like I haven't even slightly figured out how to balance a newborn with the emotional and physical needs of five other children, plus the running of a very demanding business that I pour myself into, the nurture of a marriage, AND my own needs to eat, exercise, read, and sometimes sleep.
This could very well be my last baby, and I'm not quite sure what to do with that either. The time we have to have babies and to raise them just isn't enough time at all. I only get to have this beautiful, amazing, life-altering experience six times, and then I'm just supposed to move on to the next phase of my life? With all the demands of Treehouse, I feel like the chapter of growing our family is closing without my consent. Every part of me wants to be able to do it all, but I recognize that it truly isn't possible. For now, I'll just savor this sweetest little Liam, currently sleeping on my chest as I one-handedly type out his birth story.
