Our family has added a new sweet member. Millie Mae Jack was born on April 8th at 4:01 pm. It was kind of an interesting day to be born because everyone was excited about a solar eclipse that the US was experiencing. I’m going to try and be a little better about journaling and realized I want Millie to have a journal entry about her birth. When Mom passed away Dad sent out journal entries to each of us that either he or mom had recorded about us. They were such treasured memories. I hope I can be better about journaling for my children's sake. Millie was born screaming. She had opinions right from the start. When they took her out she gave some good screams. Then they took her into another room to measure and clean her up and when the door to the OR would open I could hear her screams from the other room. Once she was swaddled up and Ben put her up to my cheek she calmed down and was calm for us during the rest of the procedure. I absolutely hated the surgery. Didn’t throw up this time, but did still have a mild panic attack when the spinal tap was first taking effect. Experiencing the spinal tap is a great example of the need to speak up for yourself in medical situations. Only I knew how I was feeling and just by telling them I was panicking they were able to give me stuff to help with that. After what feels like an eternity Ben finally came into the room. He distracted me with talk of some man running across Africa or something…just whatever random things he could find in the news and soon we had our baby. It felt like another eternity when Ben went with the baby until he came back. They sewed me up pretty quickly and soon we were wheeled out to the recovery room. One of the doctors told me that I’d healed really well from my previous surgeries. Well thanks, I’ll take any compliment I can get at moments like this. I remembered things getting much better once they could take out my catheter and I could walk around, I didn’t remember it was 12 hrs until they’d do that. So that meant I was stuck in the bed until 4 am, 12 hrs after her birth. Those first 12 hrs were rough. The pain is the freshest, you can’t get out of bed, you’re bleeding onto this pad you’re laying on and don’t feel very clean, you have a catheter in, and ontop of all that Millie was not sleeping well that first night. Ben and I were exhausted. Just trying not to fall asleep while holding her so we didn’t drop her. After those 12 hrs they took out my catheter, I was able to go to the bathroom and clean myself up. Soon after that Millie decided to finally have some good sleep so Ben and I were able to catch up on some sleep in the early hrs of the morning. We were so grateful to Meredith for coming to watch Nelson and Riley while we were in the hospital so Ben could just be there for me instead of trying to get home and watch the other kids at night or something.
Our first impression of Millie was that she was feisty. So it made it easier to decide to name her Millie instead of Amelia. Amelia would be far too proper to scream at any nurse who dared take her temperature. Millie, as is well documented, is an homage to my mom. Her maiden name is Miller. I had been really wanting a name that connected this daughter to my wonderful mother, but I had been really struggling coming up with anything I 100% liked, and if I wasn’t 100% in love I wasn’t going to convince Ben to choose it. When I finally considered mom’s maiden name I immediately came up with Millie and loved it! After presenting 5 or 6 of the names I’d come up with to my sisters and hearing them all love Millie I knew that was going to be her name. It took Ben more time to warm up to it, and I’m not sure if he really ever was thrilled about it, but you know once the name has a baby attached it’s a lot easier to love. Since I felt like I’d kind of pushed the first name on Ben I wanted him to be the one to choose the middle name. We had talked about Jeanine, being mom and my middle name, and it also happens to be the name of Elder Scott’s wife, a couple that we’ve always wanted to emulate in our relationship. To get other ideas he just went through a list of popular middle names. In the end it was between Jeanine, Mae, and Faye. Faye is a name from my family tree and Mae has some beautiful meaning behind it. We decided on Mae. We liked the almost opposite meanings to the name. It can mean bitter, but it can also mean pearl. This baby is definitely a beautiful pearl, but she definitely grew in a bitter time of life. Ben also liked that Mae comes from Mary which can be seen as a connection to Meredith, Ben’s mom’s name.
It has been so sweet having Millie in our lives. Riley and Nelson are both regularly asking to hold her. Nelson still hasn’t attempted to say her name haha. I think he tried one time and then decided that was way too hard so she is still just Baby to him. The other day I heard him saying, “Hi cute baby,” as she was swinging in her swing. Riley loves having a little sister and I just pray that their bond will continue to grow throughout their lives. A sister’s bond is the most special there is. Millie mostly just sleeps still, being just 2 weeks old, but the moments she’s awake seem to be getting more frequent. It’s too hard to predict at this point, but part of me really wants Millie’s hair to end up red like mom’s. :)
