Birth Day

I will write much, much more later (there is so very much to say as I try to process the enormous and nearly incomprehensible transition we’ve made over the last 48 hours), but for now I just wanted to let everyone know that our little Penguin, Jackson Edward Hitchcock Chaney, made his entry into the world almost two hours into his due date, at 1:45 AM on May 24, after 9 hours of unmedicated labor (only 3 of which were really hard) and about 5 minutes of total insanity that I will call pushing. It all went very fast and was an incredibly different, but equally powerful, experience from our birth with Hudson. This was a gift in many ways, I guess. Jackson looks so much like his big sister Hudson that it is almost breathtaking. This is most certainly a gift. The hours since he was born have been amazing in so many ways. Certainly I no longer harbor any doubts about the heart’s capacity to love and to grapple with extreme contradictions, even as it struggles to resolve them.

On Sunday night, after I’d finished up organizing and tidying Hudson’s and Jackson’s room, I said to Ed that maybe now Jackson would feel like we were really ready for him to come. Then I said, through my tears, that maybe I was the one who felt that way.

I started having contractions on Monday afternoon, within an hour of writing about my experience with their room.

So very much more to say, but I have a little boy to snuggle with and a little girl to grieve right now. I’ve posted a few photos (mostly from crappy phone cameras) until we can get the good ones uploaded.

And I can’t close this post without saying thank you, again, for everyone’s continued love and support, for loving and remembering our girl and loving and celebrating our boy. I don’t know how we’d be surviving this without you.