It's a girl: Miracle on March 11

Spectrum, by Jen Ransom

I was just a little bit frantic at work last week, attempting to make deadline while anticipating a phone call that would require me to drop everything and drive into Anchorage. I'm sure my editor is thankful that the call came in at 5 a.m. Thursday morning and not two hours before deadline two days before. I headed into Anchorage with coffee in hand, and six and a half hours later, I witnessed the birth of a baby girl named Lilleigh.

Shaun and I have been best friends since fourth grade. We have lived through forts, boys, college, my marriage and her engagement. I was with Shaun the night she conceived; it was the fourth of July and her fianc/, Kurt, had spent an obnoxious amount of money to get a beer through a bar patron who was at the front of a long line of drinkers. On the way home, Shaun and I must have sounded like a couple of clucking hens, berating Kurt for such a foolish action. Somehow, after we went our separate ways, Shaun and Kurt must have made up. Now that Lilleigh is born, I am so thankful for Kurt's transgression, without that, we might not have this little miracle in our lives.

Shaun ranted and raved throughout the labor, sometimes asking for ice chips with a please and other times demanding them with a couple of curse words thrown in the mix. She hurt, a lot, and I stood over her, wishing I could somehow bear some of the pain. At 11:28 a.m. Lilleigh was born, and Shaun began to cry as her daughter was placed on her chest. It was almost unreal to see the amount of love Shaun had for someone she had just barely met. Even more so, it was strange for me to feel the same love for her child as I do for Shaun. I knew I would feel something, but loving Lilleigh so strongly from the moment she was born was unexpected.

It's strange for me to think back to when Shaun and I were playing on Mount Marathon, building creek dams and eating carrots out of my neighbor's garden. I can remember the first night we got to dance with a boy -- it was junior high and Shaun danced with a boy named Joe, I danced with a boy named Jack, whom I eventually married. Now, as Shaun and I officially enter adulthood -- her with a child, myself trying -- we are suddenly the ones watching a childhood unfold, instead of being watched ourselves. Looking back, it seems my childhood went by entirely too fast, I'm sure Lilleigh's will go by even faster.

Jen Ransom is a business reporter at the Frontiersman.