This time last year I was 9 months pregnant with baby #4 to be born any day. Our usually sure-footed Carolyn fell at the playground, and what started as a headache quickly progressed to worse. She went first to the hospital in Annapolis, then was transferred to Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC so a skull fracture and swelling could be closely monitored for a couple of days – thankfully she recovered without intervention.
Her headache lasted for about a week, and she sat out of gym class and recess for the next 6 weeks as a precaution, but oh how blessed we are to have her with us still.
Home from the hospital with Carolyn, we awaited the birth of our second daughter. As with the others, we didn’t have the luxury of scheduling baby’s delivery. But we hoped (and not-so-secretly planned) for a weekend birth – better than disrupting a busy work week. When the office can’t be open without daddy, there’s a lot of patients and staff who would rather not be rescheduled.
So last year at 5 PM on Thursday after the last patient had left for the week, we looked at each other and said “ok, let’s have the baby now.” That’s us, scheduling everything down to the minute!
Not surprisingly given my history, baby kept us waiting. After her due date. After the entire weekend came and went. Monday early morning we knew baby would come soon. Not soon enough to cancel the day though, so we went to work. Me, 40+ weeks pregnant. Grrr.
Tuesday afternoon we finally had baby Jennifer in our arms. Three older siblings, and a baby in the house again! Now this week we celebrate Jennifer’s first birthday – what a year & what a reason to smile!
Each day we get to hear our patients’ stories – and everyone has one. The more I hear, the more grateful I am for the good things in each of our lives. We hear the struggles and hard times too, so I know life is hard – really hard – sometimes. But each and every day I am more convinced that we all have so many reasons to smile!
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Reasons To Smile
October 15, 2010
Posted by Katie
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