Gabriel Joins the Family

“Mom, I’d say there is a sixty percent chance that I’m going into labor tonight.” I felt awful as I lay on the bed in my cozy Texas house talking to my mom who was driving down a California freeway with my dad and my college roommate and her husband. It was fifteen days before Gabriel’s due by date, and I felt… off. The energy that sustained me most of my pregnancy, allowing me to run, teach, and keep up with Felicity, had disappeared. Even with the litany of tasks to accomplish I just wanted to lay in bed—my stomach was queasy. Our unfinished remodel of the children’s room, the rehearsal in anticipation of my students’ state competition, my own baby shower, and prep to take leave from teaching American lit marched through my mind as I considered the real possibility that Gabriel was coming sooner rather than later. I wasn’t sure that I was ready.

That Saturday night, after I spoke to my mom, the contractions stopped. I felt…almost normal. Sunday I rested and wondered and went to my baby shower. Somewhere between Saturday and Sunday my expectations shifted. Gabriel might come soon, and if he did, it would be all right. Sunday night my water broke.

Gabriel Lewis made his advent into the world early Monday morning, November 6^th. The state One Act competition for my students was ten days later. Both doctors said that I could go—to the state competition that is. Laying in the hospital bed, in the evening with the low light, crumply sheets, sterile pillows, and my son cuddled next to me, I wanted to leave the building. I wanted to go to the competition. I wanted to bounce back to my normal self with one effortless leap.

But what is normal? On the fifth normal was Nathan, Felicity, and me, our little home, some time with students, bed time stories, adventures with Felicity, life with Nathan. On the sixth normal changed.

Like the evening in which my uncertainty about Gabriel’s advent changed to peace that he might come, I need to realize that in the rush of new and old things that now occupy my life that it will be all right. That although expectations shift and I might feel off, that it is ok.

I didn’t go to the state competition. Instead I stayed home and held my little guy.

A couple days after Gabriel was born, Nathan and I sat and the couch, looking at Gabriel in his baby swing. It was the most ordinary moment to have him there in the living room, to have him part of the Mueller family. Gabriel in our lives, is something I would never change. We are blessed and it is all right if I need to rest a little more before trying to run again.

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