Los Angeles newborn photography // ©2017 Sun & Sparrow Los Angeles newborn and family photographers

Throughout the pregnancy, we kept asking ourselves “Will the delivery go safely?  Will our child be healthy?  Are we doing everything right for our child?”  Pam was formerly a nurse in the NICU at UCLA, so she knew all of the scary stories that could possibly exist, hoping that our child wouldn’t fall victim to one.  During every prenatal doctor visit, we would hear news that everything looks fine and our response was always “are you sure?”  Looking back, we definitely might have been more paranoid than we needed to be, but it’s because we wanted so badly for God to grant us a child this time.  As we approached the 36 week mark, our doctor informed us that the baby’s growth had slowed down.  She was in the 19th percentile based on her size.  We were told that if the labor doesn’t happen by Thanksgiving, we would have to seriously consider inducing.  This certainly wasn’t something that we had planned, and caused us a bit of worry.  Our target due date was on Saturday after Thanksgiving and we though taking the baby out early might introduce risks of complications, but since all we wanted was a healthy baby by any means necessary, we opted to trust our doctors.

Thanksgiving came, and still no contractions, so we were quite certain we would check into the hospital later that night.  We spent most of the holiday with Pam’s family then checked into UCLA around 9pm, spending the rest of our Thanksgiving in the hospital.  The labor lasted 36 slow, tortuous hours.  Then, to our surprise, on Saturday morning, our target due date, the doctor told us that it was finally time.  At 10:05am, our little Jenna Audrey Baldivia was born.

We can’t thank the medical staff at UCLA enough for all of their hard work and support during our stay.  Because we were down the hall from Pam’s former unit, we had several of our friends come to visit while we were there.  We even had some familiar faces in the delivery room, which was a bit awkward at first but didn’t matter in the end.  We finally had our baby in our arms, ready to face the world as a family! Thank you Sun & Sparrow for sharing this blessed moment with us, as you did on our wedding day.  We’re so happy to have befriended you through this process and can’t wait to share many more milestones with you down the road.