A long-nurtured, fragile hope, resoundingly answered

I know with my last post I left you with the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers; that wasn't fair and I apologize. In my defence though, these have been momentous days. Huge. Obviously.

I am thrilled relieved overjoyed <apt-words-fail-me-but-here-goes-anyway> here to announce that after a scary final week of pregnancy in which I was monitored for a possible pulmonary embolism and diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, the little seedling made her arrival on a stormy Friday afternoon, at 34 weeks and 2 days, in a c-section delivery that was as close to the ideal birth experience as we could have imagined.

Suddenly she was here, perfect and magnificent and loud.

There were no dramatic tears as in the movies on screen or played in my head; instead, utter, magnificent silence, a deep recognition of the sacred tearing into this profane space where monitors beeped and lights blazed and a medical team diligently went about their work of sewing me up, marking this momentous, earth-shattering event on my body with each stitch.

She pierced the reverie with her screams. H and I were awe-struck. I don't think we quite believed it, any of it; her newness, her pinkness, the proof of how alive she is. The staggering, simple fact of her existence. Still don't.

But she is here.

Even as I type this, my breath still catches realizing it, again.

Her name means hope in Hebrew. At a time when we were close to giving up, she restored ours in multitudes, from the very moment she made her first, unexpected appearance.

I am in love, of course, but it is nothing (everything?) like I thought it would be. There is all the same confusion of emotions - elation, fear, doubt, euphoria, hope, trepidation, joy - of any intense love affair, yet none of the uncertainty, oh no.

We were made for each other.

Friends, thank you for all your thoughts and wishes as we passed those final, nerve-wracking hours. Thank you for wishing and praying for her. Thank you, all this time, for helping us, always, to find our way back to hope.