Penelope Grey Maynard was born to my older sister and her husband on April 26, 2018 at 5:29 in the evening. She was 20 inches long and weighed 7 pounds and 5 ounces. It was a very long day and Lauren, my sister, labored for a very long time. Thankfully she allowed me to be there for every second of it and I’m so grateful for that opportunity because it was absolutely incredible. Throughout those grueling 16 and a half hours we all tried to be as helpful as we could but we often found we were simply in the way. One of my favorite parts of the whole day was how I somehow seemed to know exactly what she would need before she even asked for it. Even just lifting her head to speak was too much so I was very glad to be able to save her some trouble. She and I are only 17 months apart and have always been very close. It was not easy to watch her go through labor and I felt pretty helpless at times because there was only so much that we could do to ease her discomfort.

Along the way I was able to take a couple of photos and document the sweet little moments in between all of the stress and pain. In the end she was over the moon in love with that sweet little girl but it’s hard to see the end when the getting there is so difficult. I learned a lot about what mothers (and fathers too; their job is no walk in the park either) go through in order to bring their babies into the world. I also gained a whole new appreciation for the gift of life.

Watching Lauren and Ryan grow as parents now is pretty amazing. So much changes when you have a baby and no two babies are exactly the same so no matter how much advice you are given from professionals and other parents there is still a huge learning curve. There are so many scary and crazy moments when you take your new baby home for the first time. Everything that doesn’t seem normal or that you didn’t read about in a book seems like a potential disaster. So many things are simply unknown. It’s exhausting and terrifying at times… but so worth it. Now they have a tiny human that they are responsible for and that’s heavy… but none of the “bad” takes away from the good. Sure there are sleepless nights, but then she looks at you and you seem to forget how tired you are. There are plenty of frustrating moments, like when she totally blows out a diaper, but then she smiles. She’s fussy, but then you catch a whiff of that strawberry blond hair and who cares how loud she’s crying?

I could go on and on because being an Auntie is pretty awesome so far… but in summation, keep having babies people.