Labor Day--Literally

Everything about our first daughter was a surprise. After numerous miscarriages and fertility treatments in my first marriage, I had been told that I was unable to have children. So when Dwight and I fell in love and married, we talked about the possibility of adopting. American adoption agencies require that you must be under a certain age and married a certain number of years before applying for adoption, criteria we couldn't meet, so we researched other agencies and decided on an agency that facilitated adoptions from Central America. We filled out all the required paperwork and completed the home study, and were placed on the list to receive an infant from Paraguay.

Then, shortly before our first wedding anniversary, I discovered I was pregnant. First surprise. We were thrilled, but I had been pregnant before and miscarried, so we were very, very cautiously optimistic. I was still under the care of my fertility specialist (who was also surprised, needless to say) so I had lots of tests, bedrest, and sonograms, and miraculously everything seemed to be progressing normally.

Almost 20 weeks through my pregnancy to the day, I felt my baby move for the first time. I had never gotten that far before so I was ecstatic. Actual proof of the baby! Then, that very same day, the phone rang and it was our case worker from the adoption agency. She informed us that they had a baby for us, and we needed to make plans to travel to Paraguay for two weeks to complete the adoption process. Second surprise.

We never told the adoption agency I was pregnant because we were too scared to believe I could actually carry my own baby to term. Now we were faced with an unbelievable situation--I was pregnant with one child, and we could actually adopt a second child. Of course we wanted both. We cried, and prayed, and talked to my doctor, who told us that I absolutely should not travel, given the potential risk and my pregnancy history. With a heavy heart, we called the case worker and told her no. It helped to think that she was able to place the baby in another home and make another couple's dreams come true.

My baby was due right around Halloween, which pleased me because my birthday is October 30 and I couldn't think of a better birthday present than a baby of my own. We started prenatal classes in late August, and our class had a good mix of parents-to-be, some young, some our age.

Labor Day weekend arrived and we were planning on working on the nursery. On that Saturday morning, September 3, we were sleeping late until a sudden pain in my abdomen woke me up. I went to the bathroom and whoosh, my water broke. I immediately began having contractions. We were dumbfounded--this couldn't be happening--I still had two more months to go! We hadn't even covered Braxton-Hicks contractions in class yet, and here I was having real contractions! Dwight rushed me to the hospital and I said, "I'm in labor and you have to stop this--my baby isn't due until the end of October!" That's when we found out that once your water is broken, you really can't stop contractions.

Third surprise.  The baby was coming and coming NOW. I was so early that the baby hadn't dropped or turned into place, so they prepped me for an emergency cesarean section and put me to sleep. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room, crying because I was afraid I had lost the baby. A sweet nurse came up to my head and comforted me. "Mrs. Crisson?" she said. "Do you know what you had? A baby girl!"  She showed me a Polaroid picture of our baby, tiny, scrawny, red, and crying. She was crying! I knew if she was strong enough to cry, she would be all right.

Rachel Megan Crisson weighed 3 lbs, 6 oz, and she was perfectly fine. She stayed in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit at UAB's University Hospital until she weighed 4 lbs, and then she came home with us.

And for that, we will be forever thankful.