I thought you were going to be a boy.

Everybody did.

Except Grandma.

She said that as soon as she got off the plane in Cape Town and saw that I was carrying you all tight and compact in the front, she thought you were a girl.  She said she had carried me and my sister exactly the same way.

The day before you were born, I wondered what we would do the next day.  We didn’t have any plans except to wait for you, and your due date was still three days away.

But I woke up before five that Tuesday morning and thought I was having indigestion.  After a while enduring the discomfort, I woke your dad and told him I thought I was in labor.  He said, “Okay,” and carried on snoring.

I rolled over and tried to sleep some more, but it hurt too much, so I said I thought we should go for a walk, like our doctor friend had suggested.  She had said if the contractions continued even during a walk, then it was probably for real.

They did.

We walked through the neighborhood in the dark in our bath robes and had to stop every few minutes so I could double over from the intensity of the contractions.

Back home, I insisted on washing my hair.  Who knew how long it would be before I could wash my hair again?

So I woke Grandma then showered in spurts, holding the wall during the contractions and then and off we went to the hospital.

You took your sweet time — twelve hours — before you got sick of the effort and panicked the doctors into cutting me open to get you out.

And then there you were — our beautiful girl.

Speaking of birth stories, remember how I told you about the Surprised by Motherhood book club over at Lisa-Jo Baker’s?  Well this is the sixth and final week, and I had the privilege of chatting with Lisa-Jo and September McCarthy about chapters 12 and 13 .. one of which includes a birth story. 

You can find links to all of the videos by clicking here. 

In the video below, we chat about what it’s like to mother a daughter and how we’ve seen God’s love through parenting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4nty-Bg8l8&feature=youtu.be
This is Day 15 of 31 Days of Life in South Africa.  Each of the posts in this series has been written as a five-minute free write.  Check out the others who are also doing 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes by clicking here.