“For this child I have prayed” – 1 Samuel 1:27

It seems surreal some days that we finally have a precious newborn in our arms. We are just so grateful and over the moon in love with this beautiful gift. Our sweet sweet, Everest.

If it had been according to our own plans, we would have had 4 children earth side by now – our twins along with a two year old (gender unknown) and also a 7 month old – our baby girl Paisley. But life doesn’t always go the way we hope it will and as hard as it was to suffer two painful losses over the past few years, I can’t imagine life without our son Everest in it, whom we otherwise might not have had the chance to know.

In the hours leading up to our daughter Paisley’s birth last March, I was such an emotional mess and had decided I did not want anymore children. But as soon as she was born, as soon as I laid eyes on our sweet girl, so wonderfully and perfectly made, everything changed.  Ron and I both knew that we wanted to try and have another baby as soon as possible. We wanted a big family and it was such a strong desire placed on both of our hearts, more now than ever before.

But the hardest part in moving forward after we had had time to grieve, was not knowing what lay ahead for us. Combatting the fear of losing again was what I battled on a daily basis from the moment we began to try for another baby. Even though I had made the decision to trust the Lord with the future of our family, I had to continually re-surrender it all back to Him. I had to just wake up each day through this pregnancy and make the conscious decision over and over again to give all my fear and anxiety back to Jesus.  And yes, we were blessed almost immediately with conceiving another baby and we’re so thankful for that. But I think about this often… what if the next chapter in our story had gone differently? The reality is that we could have still been trying today or maybe for another 5 years, or what if we had lost again? And again?  Would we still be trusting and praising Jesus through it all? Yes, I absolutely believe we would. And that isn’t to say we wouldn’t have been upset and heartbroken had that been the case. But God used our daughter Paisley to teach us so much during that difficult season….We discovered ourselves what it truly meant to trust and be joyful when to this broken world, there wouldn’t have seemed like a reason to be.  We both gained an entirely new perspective on life and what it means to be parents.  We saw complete strangers question their faith and friends and family come to know Him better.  And we have learned to own our story. The good parts and the bad.

I have learned to now stop and remind myself when I’m walking through a difficult season, that I will get through it with the Lord on my side. That He will hold us up when it’s too much to handle on our own and that we will come out of it stronger. And although I miss my daughter dearly each and every day and wish we had gotten the chance to know her, I’ve truly become grateful for that season in our life. For the way God changed us and used our loss for His glory. 

So here we are today, with three beautiful boys and I can’t imagine it any other way. Everest Isaiah has brought so much joy and healing to our hearts. He is such a precious gift from the Lord and we thank Jesus for him every day. I often just stare at him and can’t believe He is ours. 

So now onto the birth story of our sweet little man… My induction date was set for Tuesday, February 6th. I had requested an induction as we just wanted this baby boy healthy and earth side as soon as we possibly could. So my OB scheduled me in for 38 weeks. It was great to be able to put a date on the calendar that we could all count down to.

But the thing with induction, is that they give you a date but no time so you have to be ready anytime between 7 am and midnight with the odd chance that you may get pushed until the next day if they are too busy. Well apparently it was a BUSY day, because I didn’t get my call until 10 pm at night. The twins were disappointed as they had been waiting all day long for their sibling to arrive and had to go to bed not knowing when he’d be here. But we were happy to get the call before we went to bed and headed across the city to the hospital, ready for a long night ahead.

By the time we got settled in the room with our nurse, ready to begin the process, it was just around 11:30 pm. The resident on call began by breaking my water and gave me the option of starting the oxytocin as well or waiting it out a bit. We opted to start as I was just wanting things to move along as fast as possible by that point. I began to feel the contractions within an hour or so and athough the pain wasn’t all that bad at first, we ordered the epidural so I could get comfy and try and rest a bit through the night. It’s funny how every pregnancy and birthing experience is so different. I just assumed my induction experience would be pretty similar to my past ones but I felt different side effects this time with the epidural. I felt pretty nauseous until my nurse got me some gravol and got extremely itchy at one point through the night as well, it felt like my entire body was on fire. I’d never experienced any of these side effects with past epidurals. Other than that, it seemed to do it’s job and I was able to sleep for short periods of time. Although I was really just too excited to sleep much at all. During an induction, they check to see how dilated you are about every 2 hours. At around 5:45 my night nurse checked me for the last time before she switched shifts and I was approximately 5 cm. We assumed it would be a while before I was ready to birth. But after resting for another hour or so, right as our morning nurse was checking in at 7 am, I began to feel intense pressure as if I needed to push ASAP. I told the nurse what I was feeling and she agreed to check. Sure enough, I was fully dilated. She ran to get the OB and prep everything and it wasn’t long before I started to push. After about 30 minutes (what seemed to me like 3 hours)  Everest Isaiah Young was born at 8:05 a.m., weighing exactly 8 lbs. They laid him on my chest right away and Ron and I just looked at each other and cried and cried. It felt completely surreal that we finally had our baby boy in our arms. All 8 lbs of him. We were in love.

My mom brought the twins to the hospital later that morning to meet their baby brother, the moment I had been looking forward to most. To say they were excited to meet this baby they had been talking to in my belly for months is an understatement. They had been counting down the days for what seemed like forever and it was finally here.

Since everything had gone smoothly and as planned, we were able to take Everest home that evening and by 8 p.m. we were all snuggled up in our living room, loving on our sweet boy. Below is some video footage of the boys meeting him for the first time. I cry every time I watch it. God is so, so good.

Thanks so much for reading!

photos by my dear friend Sophie of Raw Footage Photography.