Lucy Mae Duck

"In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps."

Proverbs 16:9

Emma had a plan.

After two previous inductions, she desperately wanted to know what it felt like for labor to begin on its own. At 38 weeks, already three centimeters dilated, a membrane sweep brought cramping, scattered contractions, and even the loss of a big piece of her mucus plug. For a little while, it seemed possible.

Maybe Lucy would decide to come before Friday morning. Maybe Emma would get the spontaneous beginning she had hoped for.

And maybe, somehow, there would still be enough time for Jace to make it home.

Jace was deployed with the Navy, aboard a ship thousands of miles away in the Middle East. There were phone calls, video chats, Red Cross conversations, and an entire medical team advocating for his return.

But Friday morning came.

And Lucy stayed put. At 8:00 AM, Emma walked into the hospital to meet her third daughter. Her induction began gently. Labs were drawn, monitors were placed, and because the wireless monitors weren't cooperating, Emma quickly discovered that the freedom of movement she'd hoped for wasn't going to be quite as easy.

Jace joined from the other side of the world.

At 9:45 AM, Emma was still three centimeters. Lucy's head was very low, but her cervix was difficult to assess. Cytotec was chosen to help soften and prepare it. The first dose brought small contractions. Emma moved. She rested. She tried inversions and different positions.

And from his ship, Jace did everything he could to participate. He asked questions. He remembered the birth plan. He reminded Emma of the things she'd told him mattered to her. He encouraged her to stay upright and move when she could. Occasionally, Emma probably wished her loving husband would kindly stop remembering quite so much. 😂

But he was trying. If he couldn't put his hands on her back, he could remember what she wanted. If he couldn't stand beside her, he could still advocate from across an ocean.

Around lunchtime, Emma finally got the salmon she'd been looking forward to.

And for a little while, birth became strangely ordinary. Emma lay in a hospital bed in Texas.

Jace sat aboard a Navy ship in the Middle East. And together, separated by thousands of miles and several time zones, they watched Home Improvement. Later that afternoon, another dose of Cytotec came around 2:30. Contractions began coming every two to five minutes. They were still short, but stronger.

It was nearly midnight where Jace was, so eventually everyone convinced Dad to sleep.

Surely he'd need it. Surely Lucy was coming.

Except Lucy Mae had apparently not been consulted. As labor continued, the problem became clearer. Emma's cervix was softening beautifully, but it remained extremely posterior. Lucy's head was so low and positioned in such a way that it was actually making the cervix difficult to reach.

So began the great campaign to convince Lucy to please move out of the way for approximately five minutes. Inversions.

Position changes. Movement.

And eventually, a Foley balloon.

Emma joked that by the end of all the positions everyone had put her into, she was going to look like Thanksgiving dinner.

But the humor couldn't carry everything.

The Foley placement became one of the hardest moments of the induction.

Pain, exhaustion, medication, frustration and disappointment collided. When fentanyl was introduced, the emotions Emma had been carrying finally came spilling out.

She cried. This wasn't what she'd pictured.

She felt as though she had wasted an entire day. She'd imagined labor progressing. Instead, she'd spent hours working unbelievably hard only to keep hearing that her cervix still couldn't quite be reached.

The balloon was successfully placed. She received another dose of Cytotec and medication to help her rest.

Eventually, the Foley came out.

That meant something had changed.

Based on the size of the balloon, they estimated Emma had reached approximately five centimeters. But her cervix was still so posterior that nobody could assess it well.

Around 3:00 AM, Pitocin began.

Contractions came. Still, Lucy wasn't applying pressure to the portion of the cervix that needed it. A hospitalist was consulted to consider whether Lucy could be manually repositioned. And then came a decision nobody expected: Stop.

Turn everything off. No more pushing Emma's body harder. No rushing toward a cesarean while both Emma and Lucy remained stable.

Give her a shower. Give her food. Give her rest. Place an epidural so the team could finally perform a thorough examination without putting Emma through another miserable procedure. Then, if needed, use Cervidil for up to twelve hours and give the cervix more time to finish what it was trying to do.

After nearly an entire day of trying to make something happen, the new plan was simply:

Wait.

Emma's girls came to see her. They colored. They brought snacks and flowers and mamas favorite drinks. They spent time with their mama. Emma rested. And everyone kept reminding her of something they couldn't prove, but could choose to trust:

Maybe there was a reason everything had slowed down. Maybe this extra time was the time Jace needed to get home. Nobody promised her that. They couldn't.

But after everything they'd tried, Lucy seemed to be saying: Give me a second, please.

And so they did. By that evening, something had changed. Emma was six centimeters dilated. More importantly, the cervix that had spent hours hiding behind Lucy's head had finally moved forward. Lucy was well applied.

The epidural was working. Pitocin was restarted. The team considered breaking Emma's water, but Lucy was pressed so firmly against the membranes that they couldn't get a good grip. So once again, they waited.

And perhaps that was fitting. Because after nearly two days of people trying to figure out what Emma's body and Lucy needed...

they did it themselves.

At 10:00 PM, Emma and her doula were talking. Not about dilation. Not about Pitocin.

Not about the next intervention.

They were talking about everything Emma had just endured. The disappointment.

The things that hadn't gone according to plan.

The strange winding road this birth had taken.

And then…thump. They heard what sounded like Lucy kicking the monitor. A moment passed. Emma stopped.

“I think my water broke.” It had.

Nobody broke it for her. Nobody scheduled the moment. Nobody made Lucy do anything.

After Emma had worked so hard to preserve her membranes and give Lucy every opportunity to position herself, her water released spontaneously. Emma got to feel it happen. Her next cervical check told an entirely different story.

Seven centimeters. Stretching to eight.

Ninety percent effaced.

+1 station. Lucy was coming.

And after making absolutely everyone work for nearly two days to get her into position, Lucy Mae apparently decided she had wasted enough of everyone's time. Thirty-two minutes later, at 10:32 PM on July 25, 2026, Emma's body brought her daughter into the world.

There was hardly any pushing.

Emma reached down and caught Lucy herself. Then she cut her daughter's cord.

Lucy weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 19 inches long.

She came out with beautiful color and immediately showed everyone that she was ready to nurse. She was perfect.

And yet the moment wasn't perfect.

Because there was one person missing.

Jace. For the entire induction there had been a maybe. Maybe he'd make it.

Maybe the Red Cross calls would work.

Maybe his command could get him off the ship. Maybe this strangely long labor was buying exactly enough time. The doctors and nurses fought for him. They spent hours on phone calls explaining how important his presence and support were. But when Lucy arrived, the maybe finally became an answer.

Her daddy wasn't there.

And Emma was allowed to grieve that.

A healthy baby doesn't erase disappointment.

A beautiful delivery doesn't erase the difficult labor that came before it. Catching your own daughter doesn't mean you can't simultaneously ache because your husband wasn't standing beside you to see it.

Emma didn't have to manufacture happiness for anybody. There would be time for joy.

There would be time to process.

There would be time to tell Jace every tiny detail he couldn't witness himself.

And there would be an entire lifetime for him to know his daughter. Because although Jace wasn't physically standing in that delivery room, he had been part of Lucy's birth.

From a ship on the other side of the world, he remembered what Emma wanted.

He asked questions. He advocated. He encouraged. He watched television with his wife while she ate salmon in a hospital bed thousands of miles away. He stayed her husband and Lucy's daddy in every way geography allowed him to be.

And Emma? Emma did something extraordinarily hard. She endured the starts and stops. She changed positions.

She endured the Foley. She cried. She rested.

She started again. She allowed the plan to change over and over and over.

And when the moment finally came, she reached down and caught her own daughter.

Maybe someday Emma will know exactly what this birth meant to her. Maybe she'll see lessons in it that are impossible to see while everything is still fresh. Maybe someday she'll sit beside another young mother whose husband can't be there and know precisely what kind of support that woman needs.

Or maybe some parts of Lucy's birth will simply remain things Emma wishes had been different. They don't have to be redeemed to have mattered. Because the story was never that everything went according to plan.

Quite the opposite. Emma planned. The nurses planned. The midwives planned.

The hospitalist planned. Jace planned from halfway across the world.

Lucy Mae had several apparent plans of her own. 😂 And somewhere within all of those plans was a path nobody could see at the beginning.

“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”

Proverbs 16:9

And on July 25th, after taking everyone down just about every possible road first...

those steps finally led to Lucy Mae. 🥹❤️