Prayers during labor

Wedding shower favors. Wedding favors. Baby shower favors. Gift bags at birthdays. You can spend a ton of money on these things! But there are so many cute ideas out there! I pinned a few ideas on Pinterest as we got closer to our baby shower that I thought about doing.

I had criteria though:
-It had to be inexpensive
-It had to be somewhat homemade
-It had to be something that everyone would use and not just leave on the table or throw away

Given our desire to have a natural birth, (and the fact we had a breech baby) we knew we would need some prayers. After giving it some thought I decided I wanted to do candles and ask everyone to light the candle and say a prayer for us when we went into labor.

I wrote two different poems to put on the bags:

Thank you for coming to share in our joy
We can't wait to welcome our new girl or boy
Here is a candle or you to light
Once the stork begins its flight
With the flicker of the flame
Please say a prayer in our family's name


Thank you for coming to share in our joy
We can't wait to welcome our new girl or boy
Here is a candle for you today
To light when baby is on its way
When you light it's flickering flame
Say a prayer in our family's name.


One of the issues I had as we got closer and closer to labor was that I wanted prayers- but didn't want a bunch of people to camp out at the hospital. I wanted my parents to be one of the first people to meet our baby. I think this was even more important to me because we didn't know what we were having- and I didn't want others to know before 'grandma and grandpa'

So my solution- the over planner in me wrote up a text we would send and who we would send it to and at what time (in the hopes my mom and dad could get there)

"Heather is in labor! Please light the candles you received at the baby shower and keep us in your thoughts and prayers! We ask that you please wait to hear from us before coming to the hospital (if you plan to) We will contact our family and friends to come see baby once mommy and daddy have had family bonding time with our new bundle of joy."

Did this go out?

Nope!

I have no idea who knew we were in labor. Matt called my parents and his parents. And I asked him to text a few people - I don't know what he said!

There wasn't really time to think- let alone send out texts.

My parents obviously didn't get there in time. We called them and told them that Ella was a girl and sent them a picture. There were tears. And they did get to come and see their grand daughter (after a snowstorm).

I can't remember who saw Ella first. It doesn't matter in the long run. She was here, she was healthy, we were in love!

We posted the next day on Facebook that she was here.

Ten little fingers
Ten little toes
One little heart
One little nose
Simply precious and oh so sweet
We have a baby GIRL we would like you to meet!

We didn't have many visitors at the hospital or once we got home- I liked it just being our little family. But now 6 weeks out- I'm ready to get back to life and being around people.