Seven weeks ago I was still trying to imagine what his little face would look like, and how unconditional love for my child would change me.

Now that he’s here, I’ve stared at him for so long his face is always in my brain, like a light imprint that shows up when you close your eyes . And I can tell you that all of the blood, sweat and tears it took to get him here was worth every minute.

The story to getting Jackson starts in 2012 when we first decided we were ready for kids. Before that time I knew I was too selfish to have a baby and I was good with waiting. Once we decided it was time, it was scary but very exciting.

Within the two years of believing for this little one we experienced great loss. Standing in faith to bring a baby into this world regardless of what my body was telling me was the hardest walk I’ve ever had to walk. But I thank God for His Word and the story of Abraham. Because if Sara can have a baby in her old age, I knew nothing was impossible! And praise God He never fails.

Fast all the way forward past a some pretty heavy fruit cravings and a much anticipated baby belly, to two days before Jackson was born. I was scheduled to have an induction on Thursday, July 30th, but I wasn’t dilating very fast so they wanted me to come in the day before that on Wednesday. Our bags had been packed and next to the front door for almost a week and a half so needless to say, we were ready with a capital READY.

With the car loaded, our little dog taken care of and literally every detail at both our jobs wrapped up, Dayton hits the button to close the trunk and we are on our way. As he’s doing that, my phone rings and I have the craziest most unexpected phone call of my life – the hospital is full, too many people went into labor in the last 12 hours, they’re postponing inductions.

We unpack the car and go back in the house. One of us may or may not have cried.

Later on we laughed because most of the time people’s delivery stories include not being ready and rushing out the door, but ours includes being overly ready and then getting rejected from the hospital. Alanis Morissette can write her another irony song.

It wasn’t until noon the next day that there was finally a room available at the hospital and we could go in. Sparing you a large load of details…they broke my water at midnight on Thursday and Jackson arrived at 10:26 am on Friday. I hard-core pushed with every contraction for a total of 3 hours.

Just the other day we got the bill for the epidural. My husband asked if I would pay that amount again. I said, “Don’t tell the doctor, but I would pay twice that.”

I remember thinking at one point that I was going to be pushing for the rest of my life. I thought, “This is it. Everyone will go about their lives and I will forever be in this room trying to get this baby out.” Spoiler alert: I’m not pushing any more – Jackson finally made it out. We both had to take some time to recover from the whole labor process, but thankfully we are all doing just fine.

He has a lot of hair and some major cheeks. Needless to say, I’ve spent the majority of my maternity leave just staring at him :)

A big thanks to both Southern Roots Photography and Taryn Yager Photography for these awesome pictures!

To read about my pregnancy, click here, here, here, and here!