The best of intentions

 From May 6, 2012:

Micah, in his swing, six weeks old.

Micah is now seven weeks old. I told myself that I was going to blog more regularly to help keep our extended family updated on our daily happenings, but you know how that goes. He is a great sleeper (normally). My biggest challenge right now is getting him to nap in his crib. He loves his swing, but I don’t want him to be in the habit of sleeping in it (too late!). Everytime I put him in it, he falls asleep so yesterday I didn’t use it…and he didn’t nap. 😦 From 12:30pm to 12am he only slept about an hour total. Needless to say we were both very tired and running short on patience. Once he finally went to bed for the night, he was fine. I half anticipated him sleeping for a longer than ususual length of time before waking to eat, but no. He is going through his week six growth spurt (not nearly as dramatic as the week two growth spurt) and so he woke up more than usual last night to eat…but he always goes right back to sleep, so no harm done. We got up at 8am and he has yet to really nap today, again, maybe an hour total all day. Eventually he will get so tired that he will have to sleep, swing or no swing, but I don’t feel like I have really accomplished much around the house yesterday or today because I count on his naps for me to have the time for things like hanging out laundry and showering, etc. A lot of other things I can do with him in the Moby, but again, I don’t want him to get used to sleeping with me holding him and he normally falls asleep in the Moby, so I have been avoiding that also. Things like washing dishes is always dificult in the Moby, mainly because I am so short that he ends up bumping against the edge of the counter which is uncomfortable for him. My arms are also short enough that it can be dificult for me to reach the faucet when I have to account for the extra space he creates between me and the sink ( I also had this problem while pregnant with him, go figure.).

So, as I said, yesterday was fairly unproductive. I did wash and hang out a load of diapers (non-negotiable, the diapers MUST be washed!). Instead, while listening to him fuss for three hours straight (no exageration), I discovered some great blogs and spent way more time than I should have reading post after post. Here are a couple of my favorites:

www.raisingarrow.net

www.inashoe.com  this is my personal favorite, because she adds a lot of humor to her writing

www.raisingolives.com

All of these are written by Christian ladies who are wives and moms who homeschool. They have lots of great tips on large family living, homeschooling, cooking, organizing, parenting, etc. I would love for my blog to be half as cool as any one of these! I have found a lot of great motivational and encouraging info. KimC, mother of 10 and author of In a Shoe, has some great posts about procrastination that I really liked. I find it encouraging to know that a mom of such a large family struggles with some of the same things that I do and still makes it work…maybe there is hope for me yet! 🙂

Welcome to the real world

From March 22, 2012:

Micah will be a week old tomorrow. At this time last week I was laboring away at the Birth Center waiting for his arrival. Now he is asleep in his Moses basket in the bedroom, the hubby is at work, Nana is in the dining room and I am blogging. It seems like a lot more than a week has gone by since our adventure began.

Micah is a pretty happy baby. Last night was a big exception, but normally he is very alert with big eyes taking in everything around him. We have adjusted quite well to having him in our home and now it is hard to imagine life without him. I have always been a very heavy sleeper; I can fall asleep anywhere and sleep through anything. So, it really surprised me how quickly I became tuned to him and his schedule. I almost always wake up before he even makes a sound. I am never aware of him waking me, but every time I wake up, he is also just starting to wake up.

Dad had to go back to work yesterday for the first time, which was really hard for him. Micah did not sleep well at all last night so I’m sure he will be exhausted today. Fortunately, Nana has come to visit for a few days and help us out. So, she took Micah for a few hours last night to let us sleep and then she got up and made breakfast for us this morning…I’m going to be spoiled by the time she goes home!

So far, my recovery has gone very smoothly. I am still taking Ibuprofen around the clock, but I have very little soreness and am able to get up and move around quite well. I am still trying to follow the midwife’s orders and limit myself to S.P.E.N.D. : Sleep, Pee, Eat, Nurse and Drink. That is all I am allowed to do for the first two weeks. No cooking, cleaning or driving, just caring for myself and Micah.

Micah’s jaundice is much much better. Sunday, before we left the hospital his billiruben  level was 15.8 so he spent four hours under the light in the nursery. Monday he was down to 13.5 but had lost more weight, so that he was down to 7lbs 8oz, a whole pound less than his birth weight. So, we were supplementing his feedings with expressed breast milk, feeding to him via syringe after he had nursed. Yesterday, we went back to the Birth Center to have him weighed again and he was up to 7lbs 14oz, so we don’t have to supplement anymore, just nurse him when he is hungry. His poop has also transitioned, which is a sign that the billiruben is moving out of his system.

Looking back on our birth experience, Micah and I are both very fortunate that we live in a time of such advanced medical techniques. My c-section was not considered an emergency because both he and I were healthy at the time the surgery was performed. But, the fact of the matter is, without that surgery he and I both would have died. This whole experience has changed my perspective towards medical interventions during birth. I still would have preferred the natural, non medicated birth we had planned. But, as the nurse at the Birth Center put it, hospitals were made for babies like Micah. A lot of people who choose to have a natural birth do so because they are anti-hospital, and I was verging on that myself. Even some of the mid-wives are kinda that way and are very uncomfortable in a hospital setting. The midwife who attended Micah’s birth was the perfect person to see us through this experience. She was a Critical Care Nurse for years before she became a mid-wife, so she is very comfortable in the hospital. She is also very calm, quiet and even tempered. Never once did she become flustered or give any indication that anything was really wrong. She presented our options clearly and gave sound reasoning as to why she thought we should do or not do certain things without ever pressuring us into anything. She supported us in our decisions and talked me through every step with a calm, quiet voice. So, avoid the medical interventions if possible because it is better for both mom and baby, but hospitals were made for babies like Micah, and the medications are there for a reason. For future pregnancies, I would love to try for a VBAC but, if the circumstances do not allow for it, I’m not afraid to accept the help the hospital can provide and have another c-section if necessary to keep me and my baby safe. I have no regrets about the way things went because we had the outcome we wanted all along; healthy mom, healthy baby

Micah’s Story

 

Wow! The past two days have been crazy! I am going to attempt to give as accurate an account of my labor and delivery as possible, but I was pretty woozy for some of it, so the details may not be perfect.

Sunday, March 11th was my due date and came and went with no signs of labor. We spent a lot of time walking in the park, napping and just trying to both rest and convince the baby it was time to come out. Thursday morning I woke up around 4am because I needed to pee (not unusual). When I went to the bathroom I realized I had lost my mucous plug. I went back to bed and almost immediate began having contractions. I had a lot of Braxton Hicks and “pre-labor” contractions, so I knew that this was the real thing! We continued to rest until about 5am when I got up and ate a bagel and called the mid-wife on duty. She told me to take some Benadryl and try to sleep as much as possible. So, I took one Benadryl, followed by a nice relaxing shower and got back in bed. At this point (about 6;30am) my contractions were about 4 minutes apart and about a 7 on a pain scale of 1-10. It quickly became apparent that I was not going to be getting any more sleep, but I stayed in bed and tried to rest and relax as much as I could. We called my doula to give her the heads-up, as well. I got up to go to the bathroom at 7:45am and by getting up and sitting on the toilet my contractions got closer (1-2 mins apart) and stronger. At that point we decided it was time to get our things together and leave for the Birth Center, which is about an hour drive from our house.

We left our house about 8am and arrived at the Birth Center just a little after 9, having informed our parents on the way. The mid-wife examined me upon arrival and found that I was about 3 cm dilated and 75% effaced. We settled in and used a number of different techniques to work through the contractions including: hot shower, lower back massage/pressure, leaning on a ball, and squatting. My contractions were consistently 2 mins (or less) apart and quite intense but I was moaning through them and over-all handling it pretty well. By the afternoon the intensity was increasing so around 12 pm, the mid-wife checked me again and found that I was still only 3 cm dilated but 100% effaced. I was extremely disappointed. Here, I had been working my butt off for 8 hours and had gotten pretty much no where. My contractions continued to intensify in pain so that I was crying and screaming and no longer able to control myself enough to moan through them. It wasn’t long before I told my dear husband, who had been such a great support and source of stability and calmness, that I didn’t think I could do this much longer, especially since we weren’t seeing any progress. He had become so distressed by my complete and utter misery that he was also crying. We agreed that we would wait until 2:30pm, which is when the mid-wife had said she would be back to check me for more progress. I spent this time in the tub, hoping that this would help me relax enough for my body to dilate further. By now, my contractions were still only about 2 mins apart and a definite 10 on the pain scale so that I was begging for help of any kind. When the mid-wife examined me again and found that I was 4 cm, she presented our options.

She expressed that mine was a very difficult labor, even by normal standards and that it wasn’t just me not handling the pain well. The fact that labor started so suddenly and without any real “warm-up” phase had alot to do with it and she suspected that the baby was in the Occipital Posterior position, or “sunny-side up”, meaning that instead of facing my spine, he was facing my stomach which was causing me extreme and almost constant back-pain, even in-between contractions. Her concern was that the extreme pain I was feeling was preventing my body from relaxing enough to allow the contractions to loosen up and dilate my cervix, like they were supposed to. My options for medical pain relief were to either receive an injection of morphine and remain at the Birth Center or to go to the Hospital and receive an epidural. She explained that the morphine would not stop the pain, but that it would remove me from the situation enough that I would, hopefully, be able to tolerate the contractions better. Unfortunately, it would also make me loopy and possibly cause hallucinations, etc.

This was not a decision I was anticipating having to make. We had been planning a non-medicated, out-of-hospital, birth even before I found out I was pregnant. To admit that I couldn’t handle the pain seemed like an admission of failure and weakness on my behalf, but there was no doubt in mind that I needed help. At this point I had been in labor for over 10 hrs with very little to show for it and I was exhausted. After discussing our options, we decided that it was important for me to be fully conscious and aware for the birth so we prepared to transfer to the hospital. Once the decision was made, I couldn’t get there fast enough! It was only about an 8 minute car ride from the birth center, but that meant 4 contractions and me writhing and crying in pain through each one. When we arrived, one of our doulas dropped us off at the front door, but I had another contraction as I was getting out of the car, which left me kneeling on the ground, screaming and crying and generally terrifying everyone else who happened to be entering/exiting the hospital at that time. A hospital employee immediately recognized that I was in labor, brought a wheel chair and rushed me up to Labor and Delivery. The midwife had called ahead, so they were expecting us and got us into a room pretty quickly (2 more contractions) and immediately notified the anesthesiologist that his services were needed ASAP. The nurse started my IV (two more contractions) and explained that I needed to be able to sit still for 10-15 minutes in order for them to administer the epidural. Well, they had by this time witnessed my complete inability to sit or stand still during a contraction (by this point I was begging any and everyone within earshot for help), so they gave me some Fentynal (sp?), a narcotic, which while not taking away the pain, would relax me enough that I should be able to cope better with the pain. Fortunately, it kicked in almost immediately (one more contraction) and I was able to sit on the bed and remain still enough through three more contractions as they administered the spinal and epidural.

They explained to me that the spinal would kick in very quickly and leave me feeling absolutely nothing for about an hour. After that, it would begin to wear off and leave just the epidural working which would allow me to feel pressure from the contractions but not the agonizing pain I had been enduring. They were true to their word and within five minutes I was sitting in bed feeling great and so thankful we had decided to transfer. The nurse put in a catheter while I couldn’t feel it and suggested that I get some sleep. I didn’t need to be told twice! It was now about 3:45pm and I had been awake and laboring for almost 12 hrs. I told my husband and doulas to feel free to go and eat or rest, since I was now feeling great and didn’t need their constant support; then I fell asleep.

At 5pm the midwife checked me again and I was 5 cm dilated, by 7pm I was 8 cm dilated and still feeling good. It was clear that she had been correct in saying that my pain had prevented me from relaxing which prevented my body from being able to dilate. With the epidural and some rest, my body quickly loosened up and dilated. For some reason, my body did not react evenly to the epidural, so that it worked better on my right side than my left and twice I had to have the anesthesiologist give me an extra dose because of pain in my lower left back. I also had a button to press that would release extra medication every 15 mins if I needed it.

By 10:45pm I was fully dilated, the baby’s head was in my pelvis low enough that I could reach in and touch it, so we decided to begin pushing. An unfortunate side-effect of the epidural was that I did not feel any need to push and found it difficult at first to know if I was pushing effectively or not. At 1am, the midwife suggested that I get some pitocin because I had been pushing for a couple of hours and the baby still had not moved any lower. She hoped that the pitocin would help make my contractions stronger and more efficient. It worked and I could now feel to push better and so I got down to business and pushed as much and as long as I could for the next hour. At that time, it was clear that this baby was just not coming out. So, once again we were faced with the difficult decision to have a C-section.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would be willing to even consider a C-section. The mid-wife explained to us that we had exhausted all other options and nothing was happening. If I continued to try and push and nothing happened, I would simply become exhausted and eventually the strain of labor would begin to wear on the baby as well. At that point in time, both the baby and I were healthy and tolerating labor well, we just weren’t progressing and she felt it was time to consider the C-section. So, she called in the OB for a consult and she quickly agreed. It was probably about 2:15am at that point and I had now been in labor for 22 hours.

Again, once the decision was made, I just wanted it over with. The sooner we did this, the sooner I could hold my baby. Surgery prep went very quickly and it wasn’t long before I was shivering on the operating table with a paper sheet in front of my face and my hubby, in scrubs, beside my head. The combination of the medications and my extreme exhaustion meant that I was coming in and out of consciousness, struggling to stay awake enough to see and hear what was going on. At 2:47am, Friday, March 16th, our son, Micah was finally born. He was cleaned up and handed to his father who was able to sit beside me and keep Micah skin-to-skin as the team finished the surgery. I had been told that I could have the baby laid on my chest, skin-to-skin, as well and even try to nurse, but the meds hit me harder than they had anticipated and I did not have sufficient control of my arms to be able to hold him. Instead, they laid him beside my head so I could rub my face against his and kiss him.

I really have no idea how long the surgery lasted because, despite my joy and excitement, I continued to slip in and out of sleep. Once the meds started to wear off a little as they were sewing me up, I was able to focus and talk to some of the doctors and nurses around me. My midwife stayed with me the entire time, observing the surgery and helping with the care of Micah. She was able to answer questions we had and took his picture for the first time. Once we got to recovery, I had sufficient use of my arms that, with help and the support of pillows, I could finally hold him. By 6am he was latched on and nursing; I couldn’t have been happier. My parents were there and were able to come in and see both of us before heading home for the night…I mean morning? It was so confusing having been awake so long, and my days and nights are still mixed up (thus why I am writing this account at 1:45am).

By about 7am, Friday morning, we were assigned a room on the maternity ward and finally able to just sleep. Of course, life with a newborn means that you can never “just sleep.” So, the rest of the day, Friday consisted of nap, feed baby, hold baby until I start to doze off, another nap, repeat. At this point, it looks like we will probably be in the hospital until Sunday or Monday. They took my catheter out around 6pm and I was able to get up and walk around some. Getting up and down is the hardest part, I really don’t have much pain while standing. I am extremely bloated because of all the extra space inside of my belly, my intestines are taking advantage to bloat to enormous proportions, unfortunately. Right now, I am receiving Motrin and Perkacet (sp?) around the clock for pain management and this is working well. As I type this, Micah is asleep in his bassinet and his father is asleep on the couch. I am due for my next 2 hr nap and getting a little bit hungry (for the first time in two days!), so I am going to find something to munch on, and go back to bed.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, prayers and well-wishes. As I said, we hope to be home early next week and will probably begin receiving visitors by Wednesday. I have a projected recovery time of about 6 weeks, so I don’t know that I will feel up to having a lot of people over all at one time, but we do want to show off our handsome little man! Fortunately, I have a lot of family near by and the in-laws will also be visiting soon, so I should have lots of helping hands to take care of things around the house and allow me to focus on healing and taking care of Micah.

I also feel the need to add that, even though this birth was about as far from the birth I had planned as possible, it really was not a bad experience. I had never been to this hospital before, as either visitor or patient, and I have been pleasantly surprised. As it turns out, the C-section was  the best decision to be made under the circumstance. Not only was Micah “sunny-side up,” he was also presenting forehead first and he is a hefty little fellow (8lbs 8oz) and the doctor believes his shoulders may have been too wide for my body anyways. He was very firmly lodged in my pelvis, so that instead of just pulling him out through the C-section incision, they had to have someone help push him out from the other side! But, aside from a bruise on his forehead from being pushed against my pelvic bones, he came through just fine! My nurses have all been great and everyone is very respectful of us. They work very closely with the Birth Center and respect my wishes to have a natural birth and are very kind and understanding, not at all judgemental, as a lot of doctor’s are (“Well, if you had just come to us to start off with…”) So, all-in-all, I can’t complain: I have beautiful, healthy baby boy, I am healthy and recovering well…what more could I ask for?

Tomorrow is the day…hopefully!

Well, tomorrow is the day we have been counting down to and hopefully little Baby White will decide to make his/her appearance. For those of you craving a status update…sorry! Due to our deep desire to have as quite, private and intimate a birth experience as possible, you probably won’t hear anything until we are already home and settled with the new little one. We are doing this for a number of reasons:

 

1. Because I am having the baby at a free standing birth center, not a hospital, we will most likely be home within 6-8 hrs of delivery. Therefore, we see no reason for anyone to visit us at the birth center, and, in fact, would prefer to not have any visitors.

 

2. In order to get off to the best possible start with our little one, it is vitally important that we are free to maintain skin-to-skin contact with the baby as much as possible for the first few weeks (yes, weeks!), but especially the first few hours. This means that even if we have visitors, we will not be allowing others to hold the baby for at least 24 (preferably 48+) hours. This also means that I need to be in a setting in which I am able to remain topless as much as possible, which again means, very few visitors.

 

So, do not expect facebook posts, emails or even phone calls until we are at home and feel ready to receive visitors. We are hoping to avoid hurting any one’s feelings, though some have already made it clear that this really isn’t possible. 😦 Unfortunately, when it comes down to it, the well being of my child is more important to me than a few stepped on toes. Some people feel that we are being a bit extreme and self to keep the baby to ourselves for so long. Please know that all the decisions we have made in this regard are backed by excellent research which shows a significant benefit to the infant when skin-to-skin contact with the parents and especially mom is maintained as much as possible for the first few weeks of life. It promotes better breast feeding, better bonding, better sleep patterns and a stronger feeling of security and calmness. We are not deliberately trying to rob anyone of the joy of meeting or holding the baby, we are simply trying to do what we feel is best for our child. I hope that you, as our friends and family, will try to respect our decisions, whether or not you agree with them. Please, do not be upset or disappointed if you learn about the birth a day or two after the fact. And, please, do not show up unannounced at our house, or you will probably be greeted by a locked door.

 

Our plan at this point is to let our parent’s know when it is clear that the birth is imminent, and then to turn off our phones. We hope that they will see fit to keep the news to themselves until we let them know it is OK to start calling friends and family. At that point, we will probably leave it up to them to inform everyone as we want to be able to devote our entire attention to the baby, not the phone. Depending on the time of day the baby is born, we hope to have 24ish hrs after returning home before receiving our first visitor, this includes grand or great-grandparents. We understand everyone is very excited to meet the new baby, and we can’t wait to share our child with all of you, but we also hope that you understand why we wish to avoid a sudden influx of visitors and well-wishers. So again, please call ahead before coming, and if your call is not answered, assume we are not up to seeing visitors yet.

 

We love each and everyone of you and are very excited to share the baby and this exciting time with everyone, but the welfare of our family is our first priority.

 

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!

 

Our Journey to Parenthood

Perhaps I should have chosen a different title for this post, since I am still pregnant. I guess, I will just have to post a Part 2 after the baby is born to describe the labor and birth. My intention today was to document our journey from newly-weds to expectant parents and to describe my pregnancy up to this point (37 weeks, 2 days).

 

I believe, most of my readers are familiar with our story: how we met, got engaged, etc. For those of you who may not know, here is a brief synopsis:

 

Though he doesn’t remember, we actually met for the first time during Scholar’s Day competition in February 2006. We were both invited to College (purposefully anonymous) to compete for a spot in the Honor’s Program and a scholarship. He was the male recipient of a full-tuition scholarship and I was awarded one of 20 spots in the Honor’s Program and a more modest scholarship.

 

Due to the way the Honor’s Program was (at that time) structured, we had 4 out 5 classes together upon starting school that Fall. Though we didn’t really talk much, we sat at the same table in two classes. The first day of class, we laughed over the fact that everyone at our table had the exact same laptop, and so we all exchanged AOL Instant Messager screen names (IMing was still cool back then).

 

One day over Christmas break, I was particularly bored and he was the only one of my friends who happened to be online at the time. We struck up a conversation which more or less lasted for the next 5 weeks. By the time we got back to school, we were fast friends and very much attracted to each other. A month later, we were “officially” a couple.

 

Looking back I can identify a lot of mistakes we made in the first months of our relationship that set us up for bigger problems down the road. The most notable of which was my impatience and lack of feminine shyness. My mother tried to teach me that lesson as a young girl, to no avail. So, I followed him around and called him on the phone and tried to set up “accidental” meetings all over campus. All of this sounds innocent enough, and I certainly thought it was at the time, but the result was that I was the aggressor in the relationship, leaving him no room to be the leader that he should have been. I set the tone for everything; I even kissed him first (and it was his First Kiss). Now, five years later, we still struggle with this: I want and need him to be a strong leader for our family, but I have a hard time stepping back and giving him the space he needs to make those sorts of decisions. It’s a work in progress. But, despite the silly mistakes we made, we have pretty much been inseparable since January 2007.

 

January 2010, we participated in a short-term mission trip to Kenya with a group from our church. It was an amazing trip! One of the funny little anecdotes from our time there occurred in a small village in Kerio Valley. This is a very rural, tribal area and we were visiting a local market place. We had penetrated further into the Valley than most other Mzungus (white people) had dared to go. So, people would either come up and want to touch our skin or the kids would run away crying because they thought we were ghosts. One of the tribal traditions that is still very prevalent today is the custom of paying a dowry. A young man who wants to marry has to pay a dowry of cattle to his prospective father-in-law. In this way he proves his ability to provide for his new wife. (Most of these cattle are stolen, in a time-honored tradition of cattle rustling). The price depends on the social rank of the young woman’s family, her physical attributes, etc. For this particular tribe, a high-ranked, attractive wife would have cost about 12 cows.

 

So, we are walking through the market with our translator, a gentleman who grew up in Kerio Valley but had moved to the States and is today a College professor, and two young men from the local tribe approach us and begin a lively discussion with him. After much gesticulating, the young men (approx. 18 and wearing only loin cloths) leave looking rather disappointed and huffy. The translator then turns to me and explains that they had just offered to pay him 100 cows for me to marry one of them. He, of course, explained this was not possible. The rest of our group got a big kick out of this and started giving my then boyfriend a hard time about knowing how much I was worth and how much he would have to pay my father, etc.

 

I said all of that so that you will understand this: On May 26th, 2010 I returned from work to find a note and a small stuffed cow. The note started a kind of scavenger hunt all over town where I would find another clue and another cow. In the end, I was led to the Lake where he was waiting on the pier, surrounded by 102 little stuffed cows. He proposed and gave me a ring he had got while we were in Kenya. Nine weeks later we were married at the same Lake.

 

When we first got married, I had been on Yaz birth control pill for a couple of years to treat my PMDD (premenstrual disphoric disorder). We knew that we wanted kids, but agreed that I would stay on the pill for a while. However, after getting married, I heard a radio interview of Steve and Candace Waters concerning their book, “Start Your Family: Divine Inspiration for Having Babies.” This really got me to thinking and I looked up some of the Scripture that they had referenced in the interview. The most pertinent of which was Psalm 127 &128:

 

“Unless the LORD builds the house,

the builders labor in vain.

Unless the LORD watches over the city,

the guards stand watch in vain.

² In vain you rise early

and stay up late,

toiling for food to eat—

for he grants sleep to^[a] those he loves.

³ Children are a heritage from the LORD,

offspring a reward from him.

⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior

are children born in one’s youth.

⁵ Blessed is the man

whose quiver is full of them.

They will not be put to shame

when they contend with their opponents in court.”

 

^“1 Blessed are all who fear the LORD,

who walk in obedience to him.

² You will eat the fruit of your labor;

blessings and prosperity will be yours.

³ Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

within your house;

your children will be like olive shoots

around your table.

⁴ Yes, this will be the blessing

for the man who fears the LORD.

⁵ May the LORD bless you from Zion;

may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem

all the days of your life.

⁶ May you live to see your children’s children—

peace be on Israel. ”

 

After reading and praying over these verses, we came to the conclusion that if God grants children as a blessing to those who fear and serve Him, then any effort on our behalf to prevent pregnancy or to limit the number of children we have, is basically saying, “We don’t need/want your blessings, God. Why don’t you bless us some other way.” It is the epitome of hubris to assume that I know better than God what is needed in my life. And so, we discontinued any form of birth control or family planning and committed to just live life as a married couple and to joyfully accept any and all children He chooses to bless us with.

 

This is how we came to conceive our first child sometime in late June 2011. I got a positive result on a home pregnancy test on July 13th. I had already identified a free standing birth center as the place where I wished to give birth, so I began my prenatal care there in August. We had two ultra-sounds done, one to confirm my due date (I have irregular cycles, so there was some question as to when I had conceived) and another at 19 weeks for the Fetal Body Scan. Both came back perfectly normal and confirmed an Estimated Due Date of March 11th 2012. We chose not to learn the gender.

 

God has richly blessed us over the past 9 months. I never had any morning sickness; my worst pregnancy side-effect has been the heartburn. At the time we found out I was pregnant, we only had one part-time job between the two of us. Since then, he has received a promotion to manager and acquired a second job. I work with my mother and have reaped rich benefits from that arrangement, not the least of which is a very flexible schedule. If I didn’t feel well, I could easily stay home, most employers would not have been so understanding. As well, I will be able to stay at home with the baby, while working on the computer from home and only coming in to the shop a couple of days a week. Whether or not these things were a direct reward for our faithfulness in being willing to accept any and all children God chooses to give us and not allowing our fear or practical minds to overrule our faith, I really can’t say. But, we choose to give thanks for all of these blessings, big and small and to acknowledge God as the source of all good things, including this baby.

 

As of right now, I am 37 weeks and 2 days pregnant. The baby is head down and has been since about 28 weeks. The head has already dropped into position for delivery; now it’s just a waiting game. I will post a detailed description of the labor and delivery, once our little one is here. For now, prayers are appreciated. I have no fear or nervousness concerning the labor (most people don’t believe me, but it’s true). As a woman, God engineered my body specifically for this purpose, and I am confident in that knowledge. Specific prayer requests are for: patience, strength and endurance, for both me and him.

 

Until next time…

Back in Business!

This lazy housewife is back…and not so lazy! There has been a lot going on since my last post. At the end of May (has it only been two months?!), my husband and I packed up and moved. The house we moved into is an older home which needed/needs a good bit of work and we have spent most of the last two months trying to get clean, running water in our house. I am proud to say that we can now flush the toilets, shower and wash dishes. In the midst of all of that, there was the not so minor consideration of finances and trying to find jobs. Then, just when it looked like things were settling down, we found out….I’m pregnant! Needless to say, we are absolutely thrilled, but this has been a VERY busy summer. I am now working with my mom part time and helping to manage the website for her business which you can find a link to here: quiltslikecrazy.com

Between that and babysitting and trying to get the house ready for our little one next spring…I don’t have time to be lazy, though I do normally manage to work in a nice afternoon nap…I am pregnant, afterall!

Settled At Last

Finally! …that must be what all my readers are saying after such a long gap between posts. At least, that is what they would be saying, if I had readers who noticed the long gap between posts….Oh, well!

 

We are more or less settled into the new, old house. (New to us but built in the 60’s.) It has been quite a journey with many ups and downs, (and we still have water problems!), but we are enjoying being back close to the city. The first thing I did upon returning was to renew my Tae Kwon Do training and I am loving it. My husband, likewise, began training for the first time and is always asking me questions about technique and form and timing, etc. We are hoping to get a stoop built on the side of the house and fence in the back yard for our girls, this weekend. There is still one bedroom that needs to be unpacked and organized, but the majority of the house is put together the way we want it. I am planning on getting some chickens as soon as we get the fence up. Also, I have been riding my horses some and trying to get in the habit of grooming them regularly. They deperately need the exercise and grooming. The farrier is coming next week and I hope they behave, but both of them have cracks in their hooves which need to be fixed before they can be ridden much.

Between the house and all the work on the well we have been doing, I haven’t had as much time as I had hoped to spend on my hobbies. I have completed a quilt top this month and just need to baste and quilt it. I plan on sending it to my Great-grandmother for her birthday in October. I have also cut the fabric for a quilt for my nephew and was even able to make progress on a king size quilt I started peicing 4 years ago and haven’t yet finished. I have another queen size that is just waiting to be quilted also and I have no idea where I will find the time to do all of this. Of course, it would be easier if my sewing machine would cooperate, but it’s on the fritz again and I keep threatening to buy a new one. My husband just started a new job and I have been talking with a number of perspective clients of my own, as well, so hopefully I will be able to afford a new machine sometime soon.

That’s all for now.

The final days

Well, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Friday, we will be getting a moving van to move all of our earthly possessions. This is my first real move. I lived in the same house all of my life until going to college. While in college I made a lot of little moves from one dorm room to another. But now that we are married, living in a house and some what settled, it feels different. All of this has happened so fast, I still haven’t decided how I really feel about it. I don’t know if I will believe it’s happening until we are unloading the furniture at the new house this weekend. Right now, I feel in limbo between here and there. I believe that this is for the best, but the transition period could be years long. So, I don’t know the next time I will post on here. As of right now, we don’t have internet at the new house and I’m not sure when we will get it.Till then, farewell!

 

Packing and all that jazz

When I began this blog, I had intended to write much more often than I have. Of course, life got in the way and it has been almost a month since my last post. A lot has happened lately which has had me pretty busy. My husband and I have decided to move and have been trying to get all of the details worked out. We are hoping to be mostly settled by the end of May. Along with that decision, I have been traveling a good bit back and forth from our current house, to the new location. The weekend of April 16th, I had done this, driving over two hundred miles one way, and my car broke down about 20 miles from home. After having it towed, we spent about $450 to get it running again. The next weeekend, I made the same trip, in the same car, and once again, began having problems just a few miles from home on the return trip. This time we were able to get home without having it towed. My car was in the shop all this past week and we spent another $370. I now have my car back and it seems to be running better than ever; hopefully it will stay that way.

 

My husband and I packed our first box on Saturday and now have a small pile in the corner of our living room. People keep asking me if I am excited about the move, the answer is, not really. I am ambivilant. I expected to be really sad at the thought of leaving this beautiful area I have called home for almost 5 years and all the friends that I have made in that time. But, I also thought I would be more excited about the move and all the opportunities it will open up for us. And I’m not. It felt good to pack those boxes and feel like I’m starting this, so that it will be over with quicker. I dread the actual moving process, even more so as we will have to rent a moving van this time. I am looking forward to having a yard for our girls, having the opportunity for my husband and I to get reinvolved in our chosen sports and the ability to see and visit family more often. I am not looking forward to all the driving I will be doing in the next month to get everything set up prior to the move, or having to look for jobs and a new church. In some ways I wish the month were over already and everything were done, because I’m impatient to be settled. But I also feel like a month isn’t nearly enough time for me to do everything that I would like to do.

 

So, that is where my life is right now. We are trying to make the most of our time left here before moving, while at the same time I have been spending 4 days out of the week at our new location. We are both still working here until the end of the month and trying to apply and interview for jobs there, while packing and cleaning in both locations. If anyone who knows us personally has any questions about where we are moving, please don’t post them here as I choose to keep this anonymous and open to the general public. If you don’t know yet, you will soon.

vigor and strength

Hello to my faithful followers…all two of you! 🙂 I haven’t posted in a while…been sick and busy and traveling, but I’m here now and feeling better, thank you Lord!

 

Proverbs 31: 17 “She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks.”

 

I have talked before about my lack of motivation and inherent laziness, so I won’t harp on that again. Though, this verse, once again, points out that a wife of noble character should go about her work with a sense of purpose and not complaining. Working vigorously does not mean that you get up and start a load of dishes then sit down on the computer for two hours as a break from the “work” you just did…yes, I am guilty!  This is a no-excuses kind of work ethic, where laundry isn’t something you dread, it is a God-given calling, to care for your family to the best of your ability. This, in and of itself, is serving God because God puts a high value on family. But I said I wasn’t going to talk about that…

 

“…her arms are strong for her tasks.” This is the part of the verse that gets me. We have a lot of preconceptions about the women of the Bible and what it would be like to live in that time period. Women had no rights. They couldn’t own property, they couldn’t work outside the house (other than prostitution) and they had to do a lot of “women’s work” with no help from the men. I don’t know about you, but I very much appreciate my husband’s willingness to clean a bathroom or hang out a load of clothes or clean up after dinner. I think we tend to see the women of the Bible as people to be pitied. But this verse tells me, that although they may not have had the right to vote, or even to speak to a non-related male in public, they were not weak women.

You don’t have to watch much TV (and I don’t) to see a commercial for “scrubless” bathroom cleaner, or some new product that does “twice the work in half the time.” We are a culture where time is money and we don’t want to spend any more time doing something than we have to. About a month ago I decided I was going to scrub my kitchen floors. I got down on my hands and knees and went to town. About ten minutes into it, my knees hurt from the hard floor and my arms were sore from scrubbing. As I recounted this to a friend later that day she asked me why I would do such a thing, I sweep and mop…why would I want to waste all that time scrubbing? My answer…because I had never done it before. I felt better for having done it, more satisfied with the cleanliness of my kitchen, even if she couldn’t tell the difference. But my arms were not “strong for my task” because I have a Swiffer mop and a Dyson vacuum and all these products and commercials telling me that I shouldn’t put any more effort or energy into cleaning or cooking than absolutely necessary. Frankly, I disagree. There is a level of satisfaction you get from doing something the “old fashioned way” that you don’t get after vacuuming. I will continue to scrub my floors…but I’m not throwing away my Swiffer either…

 

I fear that we as a culture are looking for a time and energy saving way to God as well. We like the 10 minute devotionals we can read over breakfast and then we are done for the day. If you are looking for something more; a deeper knowledge of God and His word, then I highly recommend Kay Arthur’s Inductive Bible Study series. There are different types of studies, some require 30 mins a day and some an hour or more. I have completed one and working on a second and very much enjoy it. I find the rewards worth the time required.

 

No shortcuts. Only one way to God…Jesus.