Mommy Brain

Yes, you guessed it – this is another long birth story post. Jonathan turned eight on the 18th, and in searching through my archives I found that I have never recorded his birth story. So, for posterity’s sake – and the few of you who enjoy reading this kind of post – here goes.

Jonathan was due on September 18th, and I went in the day before for one of those once-a-week check-ups that you have at the end of a pregnancy. My blood pressure was sky high, so they took urine and blood and sent me to the hospital for a non-stress test. I had pre-eclampsia when I was pregnant with Natalie, so that was always a concern with fmy other pregnancies.

While I was at the hospital, we determined that the baby was fine, head down, ready to be born. We were expecting a boy, but keeping an open mind because ultrasound isn’t foolproof. The doctor called the hospital and said that my blood and urine were full of the stuff they look for in pre-eclampsia, and told the OB nurse not to let me leave.

We were living with my parents at the time, but my mom was on a missions trip to Israel. Thinking back, I have no idea who was watching Natalie and Noah. It could’ve been my Dad or it could’ve been my youngest sister, Marni, who still lived at home; I’m not sure. Someone was with them, so I didn’t need to worry, and someone also brought me my bag and some reading material. I called Kevin at work and told him I wasn’t coming home and that he needed to take the next day off, since the doctor wanted to start me on Pitocin in the morning to induce labor.

The nurse inserted something into my cervix to help it efface and dilate. Okay, this is the part that is going to be hard to write without getting really, really mad. I had a different doctor then. Now, I have a wonderful doctor. The kids love him, I love him, and I trust him. He comes into the story again later, but the doctor that I had seen all through my pregnancy was, well, I’ll call her Dr. B. No, that won’t work, cause my current doctor is also Dr. B. I’ll call her Dr. X.

The stuff they put into my cervix caused me to start having contractions, so they put my on a monitor to watch the baby’s heart rate. With each and every contraction – and these were extremely mild contractions – his heart rate dipped. The nurses contacted Dr. X, and she said to remove the insert, and she’d see me in the morning. I then attempted to sleep, even though I continued to have mild contractions off and on all night. And, to be honest, who can sleep in the hospital unless you’re on some really good pain meds?

In the morning, they hooked me up to Pitocin. It didn’t take long for my contractions to start in pretty strong. Kevin came in as soon as the Pitocin took effect, and was with me for the rest of it. Again, with every contraction, Jonathan’s heart rate dropped significantly. Dr. X expressed some concern, but then brushed it off as “probably normal.” As labor intensified and his heart rate continuted to dip, Kevin asked her if maybe we should be considering a c-section if the baby couldn’t handle labor. She basically ignored his suggestion and said everything was fine.

When I was dialated far enough to get my epidural, Dr. X tried to talk me into having an intrathecal instead. I had one of those during my labor with Noah. Like an epidural, it takes away the pain of the contractions, but it doesn’t numb you so that you can feel to push. Kevin asked if an intrathecal would be the right kind of anesthesia if we ended up needing a cesarean. She said, “No, but that won’t be an issue.” At that point, Kevin was mad and insisted that I get an epidural, because then if I did need a c-section, they could just turn it up or give me another dose.

The epidural took effect and I had a short amount of time when I was feeling no pain, and then I was dilated to a 10. Dr. X said it was time to push with the next contraction. The contraction came, I pushed, and Jonathan’s heart stopped. Completely stopped – no reading at all, not even on the internal monitor.

At that point, Dr. X yelled, “We need a c-section team – NOW!” and gave me an injection to stop my labor. Since we were at a small, rural hospital, the doctor who was on-call for c-sections was not actually at the hospital, and had to be called in. I turned on my side, and Jonathan’s heart started beating, but it was only beating about 75 beats per minute, which is lower than normal.

Kevin wasn’t allowed in the operating room since it was an emergency and there wasn’t time to get him scrubbed and gowned. He was so worried, but the hospital chaplain, a wonderful man named Bruce, came and sat with him through the whole thing.

Twenty-five minutes from when Dr. X called for a c-section team, Jonathan was born. A nurse later told me this was the fastest time they had ever clocked for a c-section. The surgery itself was a blur – lots of pulling and tuggin and me crying and praying and praying and crying. Remember Dr. B? He was the doctor who came in to perform the surgery and deliver Jonathan. He told me Jonathan was born, and that the cord had been wrapped around his neck. I didn’t hear anything else. It was a minute or two until Jonathan finally pinked up and started crying. A minute doesn’t seem like a very long time, unless it’s a minute in which you are wondering if your baby is going to live.

As soon as Jonathan started crying, I started sobbing, and continued while they sewed me up. I was in shock: exhausted because I had labored all day, and when the epidural wore off, I hurt. A lot.

I held Jonathan, and then they took him into the nursery to monitor him for a while. I was moved into my room, and given an IV of Demoral, which I could administer to myself by the push of a button. What we didn’t know, though, was that Demoral doesn’t work for me a bit. I kept telling the nurse I didn’t think I was getting any medicine, and she looked and said, “Yes, you are, it should be working.” But it wasn’t. A different nurse came on shift, and she came in to massage my uterus and change my sheets, and when she touched me I burst into tears and started moaning from the pain. At that point, they believed me that the the Demoral wasn’t working, and they switched me to morphine. Ah, bliss.

The woman in the room next door was being induced, and she progressed so fast they didn’t have time to move her to a delivery room. She screamed and screamed as her baby was born, and since I was on morphine it was kind of like a bad hallucination. Very surreal.

On day two, I switched to oral pain meds – I think it was hydrocodone. It was at that point that I realized I had a horrible headache. When I was laying flat, I was fine. When I stood up, it was excruciating. I know now that this is the main symptom of an epidural headache, which occurs when the anesthesiologist goofs and makes a small tear in your spinal sac, causing a leak of spinal fluid. So instead of your brain floating nicely above your spine, it settles down onto your spine, and causes the worst headache you can possibly imagine.

Dr. X did not diagnose it as an epidural headache and prescribe complete bed rest and a blood patch to fix the tear. No, she said it was probably just hormones, and had me stay over one more night, then sent me home. It wasn’t until months later that we realized how badly she had goofed, that if she had kept me there and treated me right away, the chances of treatment working were much greater.

This began three months of complete agony. I would literally crawl to the bathroom, cause standing up hurt too badly. Finally, Kevin took me to the ER, where he told them he had been doing some online research and that he thought I had an epidural headache. The doctor at the ER attempted a blood patch, which is a very fun procedure where they take a vial of blood from your arm and then inject it into the epidural site, in the hope that it will clot over the tear and seal it up. Because your back doesn’t like things being injected into your spinal sac, it siezes up with cramping that feels like back labor. Unfortunately, the anesthesiologist didn’t have much experience with this procedure, and so sent me home right afterward instead of having me lay flat for a couple hours. He also said that the procedure doesn’t always work, and if it didn’t, that it would eventually heal on its own, and lots of caffeine is the best treatment for the pain.

The blood patch didn’t work, so I started drinking tons of coffee and Pepsi, and taking Excedrin with caffeine. Which made it real fun trying to sleep when my newborn was sleeping. Oh, I almost forgot – Noah was only 15 months old at the time Jonathan was born. Natalie was not quite three. So I had a 2 1/2 year old, a 1 1/2 year old, and a newborn – and I thought I was dying. It was not a good time.

Kevin was wonderful. He would come home from work, eat dinner, and then go to bed. I would put the kids to bed and give Jonathan his 10 or 11 o’clock feeding, then go to bed. If any of the kids got up in the middle of the night – which of course Jonathan did, around 2 a.m., and often stayed awake for a couple hours – he would get up. I was very glad I had decided not to nurse because of the c-section recovery.

After two and a half months, my doctor sent me down to Spokane to have another blood patch done by an anesthesiologist who was experienced with the procedure. I’m not sure if this one worked, or if my spinal sac started to heal itself, but a few weeks later, the headache was gone.

You want to know the really sad part? I liked Dr. X. She may have been incompetent, but she was a really nice person, and I was so emotionally addicted to people’s approval at the time, that I was too afraid to hurt her feelings. I kept seeing her.

It took her misdiagnosing tension headaches as a sinus infection and putting me on unnecessary antibiotics for three months for me to realize that Kevin was right and I needed to switch doctors. When I started seeing Dr. B as my primary care physician, I told him about the dips in Jonathan’s heart rate during labor and asked what he would have done. He said he didn’t like to second-guess other doctors, but he would not have let labor progress that far with the baby obviously not tolerating it.

Because of the epidural headache, I feel like I missed out on Jonathan’s newborn days. It all seems like a haze in my memory. I do remember switching to Playtex nursers instead of regular bottles because he was so gassy. And after that he was a really happy baby. And a roly poly one! He weighed 20 pounds by 6 months – he had three rolls on each thigh!

And now he is 8. It is so hard to believe. Jonathan Nathanael. Kevin picked his name while I was still pregnant. Both names mean “gift from God.” And after he was born, we truly understood how true that was. He could have died during birth. If the c-section team hadn’t gotten there in record time, who knows? But they did, and he lived. And I thank God for the gift that he is.

Jonathan is all boy. He loves fishing and camping and shooting his BB gun. He likes to wrestle and tell boy jokes. He is a great reader, but hates writing. He likes to get his hands on things and take them apart and put them back together. He’s got a mischievous grin and a twinkle in his eye, and the girls are already noticing him. Lord have mercy!

I love you, Jonathan! I am so happy that God gave us the gift of you.

We’re enjoying a date night. The three boys are having a slumber party at Michelle’s with her boys, and Natalie is staying the weekend with Grandmama and Papa. We went out to dinner at a new restaurant in town – wonderful food, good wine – and now he’s playing a game online and I am enjoying some blogging time before I go curl up in the corner of the couch and read the night away.

I finished getting everything ready for Monday, so we’re all set to start year six of our homeschooling adventure. Six years – that just blows me away! I finally feel like I (sort of) know what I’m doing, too.

I’ve been collecting links for so long, with no time to post them, so I’ve got a bunch!

~Amazon has posted their “Best Books of the Year So Far” lists for fiction, children and teens, and non-fiction. Have you read any of them? I haven’t, but I usually get to the newest “it” book a few years late.

~ Katy at Fallible often cracks me up, but I laughed so hard I snorted at “Talk Dirtily to Me.” It’s a must-read if you are an aspiring writer.

~ All of you Austenites, click over here and enter the Jane Austen Book Club contest. Grand prize is a trip to the UK to tour Austen-related sites.

~ For those of you following the election, here are a few videos from my favorite candidate, Ron Paul: on entitlements, on the IRS, on monetary policy, on the second amendment, on healthcare, and on civil liberties. Also, here’s a video of media clips about Dr. Paul that shows that he has strong grass roots support, in spite of the fact that the mainstream media continues to ignore him.

~ If you ever had the pants scared off you in church by all those “Mark of the Beast” movies, like the ones I remember seeing in junior high, you’ll find this video very funny.

~ Lawanda posted this funny video of a Dad’s Lullaby set to Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

~ Melanie Hauser’s “Saying Goodbye, at the Grocery Store” is poignant and wonderful.

~ Christopher Walken is one of Kevin’s favorite actors, and this video of him cooking chicken with pears in his own kitchen is priceless. He is such a strange guy. Great actor, but strange guy.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope you all have wonderful weekends planned!

We skipped church this morning in order to hold a burial service for our hamster, Lucy. Last night, Kevin was cleaning the cage and noticed that she didn’t seem well. She was sluggish, her eyes only half-open, and when Kevin gave her a carrot stick she barely touched it. Usually she stuffs it into her cheek and carries it up to the top of her cage, which was her favorite place. Noah was still up, and I am very glad, because he was closest to Lucy of all the kids, and this gave him some time to adjust to the fact that Lucy wasn’t doing well.

At four thirty this morning, Noah came into our room crying and said that Lucy was dead. We went out to check on her, and Kevin said she was still breathing, but barely. She wasn’t moving at all. We sat on the couch with Noah and talked about all of our funny memories of Lucy and waited while she died about fifteen minutes later.

This morning, Kevin and the boys dug a grave under the climbing tree in the back yard and buried Lucy. Noah and Jonathan have taken it the hardest and there have been many tears. This is really the first time they’ve been faced with the reality of death – such a hard lesson for a child to learn.

Josiah, my 5-year-old, wasn’t quite grasping the reality, he kept saying that Lucy was sleeping for a long time. I was finally able to explain to him that she was gone.

As a mom, you always wish you could shelter your kids from any painful experiences, but you can’t. All I could do was hold Noah as he sobbed, cry with him, and tell him that the hurt would get less and less as the days go by.

Parenting is hard.

It’s been so long since I’ve done a links post – they are stacking up in my favorites folder!

~Check out this hilarious video on age-related memory loss at Karen‘s.

~Here’s a Q&A with the producers of Lost about this year’s finale and next season – which we have to wait a long, long time for!

Okay, this is really funny, but I just realized I posted those links a couple weeks ago. Since that is fitting after posting a video on memory loss, I’m leaving them!

Okay, these ones are new. I think.

~There are a couple new comics up at Schools Are For Fish.

~Barnes & Noble has a summer reading program for the kiddies. They can win free books!

~Two less days to wait for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!

~Sherry at Semicolon has an interesting post discussing charcter names on Lost.

~Here’s a list of The Best Novels You’re Never Read.

~I could totally relate to this Momsense video after last week’s adventure with six kids.

~This video shows Matt Damon doing a dead-on impression of Matthew McConaughey.

Whew – that’s it! I don’t have time for a real post – I’m heading to Michelle’s in a few minutes for a girl’s night: Catch and Release on DVD, M&Ms, red wine, and lots of conversation. Have a great weekend, everyone!

My last post was very one-sided and born out of frustration. So in the interest of painting a complete picture:

You know you’re the mother of a 10-year-old girl when…

…you have someone to watch mushy movies and Scottish TV shows with. (Without eye-rolling or questions like, “Doesn’t anyone die in this movie?”)

…you have someone to talk to about your feelings.

…you have someone who sings her way through her days.

…you have someone who shares your love of Nancy Drew.

…you have someone to roll your eyes with when your sons are making bodily function noises.

And believe me, I could go on. Fortunately, this list is much longer than the previous one. I definitely wouldn’t trade her for anything.

…you wake up with the Hannah Montana song If We Were a Movie running through your head.

…If we were a movie,
You’d be the right guy
and I’d be the best friend
that you’d fall in love with.
In the end, we’d be laughing,
watching the sunset.
Fade to black,
show the names,
play the happy song…

…you answer many questions beginning with “How old do I have to be to __________________?” Fill in the blank with: watch this movie, wear makeup outside the house, shave my legs, wear high heels, etc.

…the words “I just feel like crying and I don’t know why!” strike terror in your heart because they’re coming out of her mouth and not yours.

…you’re the best mom in the world and you’re ruining her life – all in the same day.

And so it begins. God, give me strength.

It’s still Friday here – only 7:00 p.m. – so I’m not too late. We had a good day today – most of our schoolwork was finished, so just some reading, a trip to the library and housework. Then a fun playdate with Michelle and her boys. Tomorrow we’re having a girls’ afternoon out – lattes and browsing at a local store called (what else) Books ‘n’ Coffee, and more window-shopping at the new kitchen store. All while the husbands take the kids swimming. Something about January/mid-winter brings out the emotional roller-coaster – so I’m planning to really enjoy some time for myself.

~Opinion Journal ran a series on intelligence, No Child Left Behind, and the necessity (or not) of college that is a must-read. A Circle of Quiet pointed me to the links.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

~I’ve enjoyed Melanie Hauser’s blog The Refrigerator Door ever since I read her book Confessions of Super Mom last year, but the post Memoirs of an Invisible Mom is especially worth reading – she’s hilarious!

~Michelle introduced me to The Rebelution, a blog written by Alex and Brett Harris, two homeschooled Christian teenage boys. Their series The Myth of Adolescence should be read by all parents. Be sure to follow the link at the end of the post to the next part – and then keep doing that. The whole series is extremely well-written and gives much food for thought. Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite:

“David Farragut, the U.S. Navy’s first admiral, became a midshipman on the warship Essex at the age of 10. At the age of 12, a mere boy by modern standards, Farragut was given command of his first ship, sailing a capture vessel, crew, and prisoners, back to the U.S. after a successful battle. Young David was given responsibility at an early age, and he rose to the occasion.

The father of our country, George Washington, though never thought to be particularly bright by his peers, began to master geometry, trigonometry, and surveying when he would have been a 5th or 6th grader in our day and ceased his formal education at 14 years of age. At the age of 16 he was named official surveyor for Culpepper County, Virginia. For the next three years, Washington earned nearly $100,000 a year (in modern purchasing power). By the age of 21, he had leveraged his knowledge of the surrounding land, along with his income, to acquire 2,300 acres of prime Virginian land.

These examples astound us in our day and age, but this is because we view life through an extra social category called ‘adolescence’, a category that would have been completely foreign to men and women just 100 years ago. Prior to the late 1800s there were only 3 categories of age: childhood, adulthood, and old age. It was only with the coming of the early labor movement with its progressive child labor laws, coupled with new compulsory schooling laws, that a new category, called adolescence, was invented. Coined by G. Stanley Hall, who is often considered the father of American psychology, ‘adolescence’ identified the artificial zone between childhood and adulthood when young people ceased to be children, but were no longer permitted by law to assume the normal responsibilities of adulthood, such as entering into a trade or finding gainful employment. Consequently, marriage and family had to be delayed as well, and so we invented ‘the teenager’, an unfortunate creature who had all the yearnings and capabilities of an adult, but none of the freedoms or responsibilities.”

I was reminded of this series again when my issue of Focus on the Family magazine came and I read this:

“For Mike, a typical Monday evening begins with “Monday Night Football.” After the game, he plays Xbox, surfs the Internet and text messages some friends. Mike’s dad worries about his eating habits and insists he come home at a decent hour when going out with friends. None of this is so bad until you realize that Mike is 39, not married, and not planning to be.

“I know that I’m not living the traditional ‘American dream,’” Mike says. “But this arrangement is working pretty well for me.”

Karen is a Christian professional, focusing on her career and hobbies. A chemical engineer, she landed an enviable job with a pharmaceutical lab shortly after finishing her bachelor’s degree. When the company offered to pay the majority of tuition toward a master’s degree, the next four years of her life were, as Karen puts it, “pretty much set.” While her career goals are admirable, she has little regard for marriage and shuns the responsibilities that come with raising a family.

Mike and Karen are part of a growing demographic. According to their age, they’re adults. But their attitudes are more typical of people 10 or 20 years younger. It used to be called arrested adolescence. Today, it is increasingly being called adultescence.”

quoted from 30 Going on 18 by Alex McFarland, Focus on the Family Magazine, February 2007

Let me know what you think on this issue – I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, about what I expect of my kids. Do I expect enough? Do I expect too much? How do we train our kids to be responsible adults who follow God’s plan for their lives in a world that completely disregards all of that? And even more, a world that expects – even encourages – adolescent rebellion and delayed adulthood?

~After the day I had on Tuesday, the post Peace Isn’t a Place at The Sacred Everyday was just what I needed.

~Andrea pointed me to this artists’ website: Just Coffee Art. Their chosen medium is coffee – nothing else.

~I saw this Snapshot Meme at Randi’s place and thought it looked like fun:

Reading: Still making my way through An Irish Christmas Feast and Education of a Wandering Man as well as all the others listed on my sidebar.

Music in my Head: Chris Rice’s song Clumsy

Drinking: Nothing right now, but I treated myself to a decaf latte today.

Wishing: That our current thaw would last, and last, and last…

Considering: Which church to visit on Sunday.

Feeling: Tired, but good.

Goals: To finish the two above-mentioned books this weekend.

To do list: Fold the laundry that I shoved in my bedroom when we had our playdate this afternoon.

Hours spent in bathtub last night: I take showers.

Things accomplished: Made it through the week!

Have a great weekend!

It’s Friday – (east-coast time, anyway, I still have a few hours) – and time for another list of links for your entertainment and edification.

~First, this video of a young man playing Pachelbel’s Canon on the electric guitar. This guy is extremely talented – almost makes me wish we had his version at our wedding instead of the lovely strings recording we used.

~Show this video to your daughters and to your sons. Explain to them what true beauty is – and isn’t. I think the new Dove ad campaign about beauty is terrific. I may not fully understand their motives, but being realistic about beauty is a good thing any way you look at it. I’ve seen this video linked several places now, but the hat tip goes to Lisa Samson’s site, where I heard about it first.

~Looking for another addictive and time-wasting game? Try Line-Rider. Andrea got me stuck on this one. And for something else that’s creative and just as addictive, try the Snowflake Maker.

~Did you know that only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World still exists? And that there is a foundation established to name the new Seven Wonders? You can vote on your choices here. This would make a great geography unit study!

~This news story amazed me. What a picture of forgiveness and mercy in action.

~Here’s a great post from Randi on what else we can learn from the Amish.

~This link is a pdf of Mars Hill Church‘s October newsletter. (I’ve posted links to their sermons before – good teaching there.) There’s a great article on Halloween by Pastor James Harleman. He explains that everything we’ve been told about the satanic origins of the holiday isn’t necessarily true. Not that he finds much good about Halloween in general, either, but as Christians we should be making our decision regarding whether to celebrate or not as informed people, not just because we’ve heard “this-and-that” from “so-and-so”.

“One of the most interesting anecdotes I found in
researching the history of Halloween is that the one activity
many churches do engage in at replacement events like
church “Harvest Festivals” is perhaps the one most easily
linked to paganism. Bobbing or “Ducking” for apples was
actually a divination ritual related to love and fertility.”

“As Christmas and Easter have overrun and co-opted various trappings, however, there is for Christians a clear,
central focus on Jesus’ incarnation. Halloween may not be
inherently evil, but it also has no central, specific focus on
the Lord we love. Whether we see Halloween as pagan
practices, Catholic traditions, or good old American, candy-coated commercialism, none of these offers great inspiration
to participate.

At Mars Hill Church, we don’t believe in the deities
worshipped by the Celts or the rituals used to appease or
summon them. We do, however, recognize that there are evil
spirits that confuse and lead people astray from relationship
with the one true God. We recognize that the Bible calls
all Christians “saints” and don’t believe in the Catholic
extra-biblical concepts of sainthood or purgatory. Many of
the ideas and rituals that have contributed to the Halloween
mish-mash aren’t congruent with our beliefs. However, setting
aside times to remember or honor those we love that
have passed away (hopefully to be with our Savior Jesus) is
not a bad idea. On a less somber level, wearing Spider-man
costumes, making funny faces on vegetables, and engaging
in neighborhood activities where one can both give and
receive hospitality is not something we oppose. Fictional
fantasy tales of monsters and elves – even scary ones
– are not wholly inappropriate either, whether punctuated
on this particular weekend or sprinkled throughout the year
in classic tales from authors including Tolkien and Lewis.

We regard Halloween as a second-hand issue and ask that
every Christian examine their response to the modern-day
Halloween celebration in our culture.”

“For those who have shunned
Halloween because they were simply told it
was evil, or for those who have participated and never
bothered to weigh its appropriateness, your pastors would
encourage the employment of godly wisdom, discernment,
and a sense of our shared mission as Christians. Our abstinence
or participation in regard to Halloween should not be
derived from fear, misinformation, or pressure but rather from
a sincere love of Jesus; every response to our culture and its
festivals is a way to point to the God we love and serve.

Lastly, for parents, don’t forget that gluttony is a sin. Careful not to force your kids to learn the hard way: lying on an altar of plastic wrap and tin-foil, holding their bulbous stomachs. If you participate in Halloween, it might be the perfect time to introduce the concept of moderation.”

The Halloween article is on page 14, and there’s also more great reading if you’ve got the time.

~Last, but certainly not least, the 42nd Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Homeschooling Hacks. I contributed my “day in my life” post – extended version. Lots of other good reading over there.

Well, that’s all for this week. Have a wonderful weekend!

I have a ton of links to share today, and I was going to put them all in neat little categories, but I don’t have time. So here they are, all hodge podge and pell mell:

~Karen Edmisten has a great post about enjoying our children and appreciating the ages they are right now.

~When I first heard that John Mark Karr was being extradited to the US in spite of the fact that his confession and his whereabouts during the murder were being called into question, my first thought was: if he’s not quilty of JonBenet’s murder, we will have brought a known pedophile to the US and then he will go free. Well, they now know that he did not kill JonBenet Ramsey. Karr will be charged with possession of child p*rnography in California, which carries a maximum sentence of 1 year. One year. And then he will be free. Do you think Thailand will take him back? I don’t.

~Angie Hunt linked to a great hurricane animation that demonstrates the wind speeds and damages incurred by hurricanes, showing the increase in intensity as they progress from a category 1 to a category 5. Makes me glad I live inland.

~How would you like to be baptised in the name of the Mother, the Child, and the Womb? Or maybe the Rock, the Redeemer, and the Friend? Well, if some Persbyterian churches have their way, you’ll be able to. Have they forgotten this: “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” – Exodus 20:7. Saw the article linked at Mark Driscoll’s blog.

~Christianity Today posted an interview with Mike Rich, the screenwriter for The Nativity Story. He’s the same guy who wrote the screenplays for The Rookie, Radio, and Miracle. I’ve never seen Miracle, but we really enjoyed The Rookie and Radio. I am very excited to see The Nativity Story when it comes out in December.

~When you search Books at Google, you can now view the full text of any books that are in the public domain. Just click “Full View Books” before you hit “Search.”

~Carolyn at Guilt Free Homeschooling has a great post on Redeeming a Disaster Day. I haven’t needed it so far this year (we only started on Monday), but I’ll be saving it for later.

~I assume this cartoon is supposed to be slamming homeschooling, but I think it backfires. What do you think?

Whew! That’s it for today’s links. I have two reviews to write and Laney tagged me for the 50 things meme, which I haven’t forgotten, but some of those questions are hard! Have a great weekend.

My little girl turns nine today. I’ve been meaning for the past few years to get down on paper what giving birth to Natalie was like, so I’m going to do it here. For those of you who hate to listen to other women’s birthing stories, you can skip this post and not hurt my feelings at all, I promise.

Natalie is our oldest. We conceived her right around our first anniversary – most likely on a weekend getaway to Long Beach, Washington. Kevin and I were living in Vancouver, Washington at the time. We were both working full time. On a Monday morning a couple weeks after our anniversary celebration, I woke up with what I thought was a bout of the stomach flu. I stayed home from work, and when Kevin came home that night, he asked me, “Aren’t you late?” Realization dawned, and he ran to the drug store for a home pregnancy test. Yes, he’s a wonderful guy.

When the two little pink lines appeared, we were ecstatic. We even have a picture in Nan’s baby book of Kevin holding up the positive test. Well, I can’t keep a secret worth beans, and certainly not news of this magnitude, so I picked up the phone to call my Mom and Dad. My two youngest sisters were still living at home at the time. Their line was busy. Oh, well, I thought, I’ll call my oldest younger sister. She was living in Boise with her new husband. Another busy signal. Realization dawned – they were talking to each other! And continued to do so for another hour, while I fumed with no one to share our news with. I even tried our best friends in Vancouver, but they weren’t home.

Finally I got through, and I had each member of the family get on the phone individually to tell them. Kevin still teases me over this. Getting to share good news is part of the joy, right? And I had to hear each of their reactions. My parents were pretty happy – this would be their first grandchild.

My pregnancy was pretty by-the-book. I had lots of morning sickness the first three months; it eased up some after that. I craved Taco Bell bean burritos, so I was lucky to have one fairly close that was open late – and a husband who would do late night fast-food runs for me.

About halfway through, we found out we were having a girl. I was very surprised. For some reason I had thought this baby was a boy, so it took a while to sink in. I knew I’d be okay – I had three sisters after all. I knew girls.

When I was seven-and-a-half months along, I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. Kevin and I had been out shopping and I decided to check my blood pressure because my hands had gotten puffy. Sure enough, my pressure was up. A trip to my OB/GYN the next day and a month and a half of bed rest followed. Lots of time to read and cross-stitch and watch movies, between phone calls from my replacement at work wondering how to do this or that.

My due date was December 23rd, but my doctor decided to induce on December 12th. She told me to eat a big breakfast, since that might be my last chance for a good meal for a while. My mom and youngest sister came into town the day before. Marni, my sister, would be staying with us to watch Natalie when I went back to work half-days for a few months so that we could afford to move. The morning of the 12th we all headed to Shari’s for breakfast and then it was off to the hospital. They hooked me up to the pitocin, and we waited. And waited. And waited some more. I have a cute picture of my sis sitting at a table in my hospital room, chin in her hand, looking bored out of her mind.

Things weren’t quite so boring by four-thirty p.m. The nurse had turned the pitocin up several times with no effect and so had cranked it up even more. Labor started, hard and fast. Contractions every two minutes, lasting a minute long. (I thought this was normal until I had my son without pitocin and found out what labor is supposed to be like.)

Let me back up and say that I had the labor nurse from hell. I’m not kidding. She came into the room when she started her shift and said, “I don’t feel good. I should’ve stayed home.” That should have been my signal to demand another nurse, but I was young and naive and so didn’t speak up.

After a couple of hours of hard labor, I asked for drugs. Anything. Please. I’m not super-mom, I know. I loved my epidural. The nurse informed me I could have an epidural when I had reached 4 centimeters dilated. I asked her to check me. She said, “No, these contractions aren’t hard enough to be doing anything.” I think there were two reasons she thought this. I was hooked up to a uterine monitor to track my contractions, but I was also laying on my side and the monitor wasn’t accurately recording the strength. Second, I wasn’t screaming my head off. I was breathing and praying through my contractions, with occasional moans.

Around 11 p.m. I was told that if I hadn’t progressed in the next half hour they would turn off the pitocin, let me sleep, and try again in the morning. How did they know I hadn’t progressed when they refused to check my cervix? A very good question. I started praying for 11:30 so that the pain would stop.

At 11:25 or so, my water broke. The nurse finally checked my cervix, and I was dilated to an 8. She also put an internal monitor in my uterus, and my contractions were off the charts. She didn’t believe me when I told her that they hadn’t changed a bit since they began – they started off that strong.

My doctor came in at this point, and saw that my blood pressure was up to 180 over 113. She yelled at my nurse to get me some pain relief now. The anesthesiologist – my new best friend – came in and administered the epidural, and I felt blissful. I wanted to sleep. Just as I dozed off, they checked my cervix, which was at a 10, and informed me it was time to push.

I pushed for 45 minutes, probably due to the fact that the epidural kept me from feeling much and that I had no idea which muscles I was supposed to be pushing with. Once my doctor explained, out popped our little girl. The doctor explained that she looked like a little peanut, which became her nickname for a while. Natalie Shannon was born around 1 a.m., which put her birthday on Friday the 13th. She weighed in at 4 pounds 12 ounces and was 18 inches long. She was perfectly formed, but extremely tiny due to a small placenta. Her first name means “Christmas child” and her middle name is my maiden name.

I was pretty much in shock and unable to feel anything until the doctor turned to Kevin and said, “Would you like to hold your daughter?” I started crying. She was so beautiful. They cleaned her up and stitched me up and brought me a limp turkey sandwich which tasted like heaven. Kevin stayed for a while and then headed home for some sleep.

Then I was alone with her. The delivery room had a rocking chair, and the lights were dim, and I held my daughter and talked to her and sang to her for the first time. And fell in love with her.

She was supposed to room with me, but after a few hours they saw that she was too small to keep herself warm. They put her in the neo-natal ICU. The next five days were rough. She was too small to nurse, and had very little sucking reflex. They put an IV in to keep her hydrated and fed, and the only vein big enough was in her scalp. She looked so tiny and helpless in the isolette. Her smallness was even more evident due to the fact that the baby in the isolette next to her was 13 pounds! Born on the same day, and yet she looked like a 4 or 5 month old, at least.

I was discharged from the hospital two days after Natalie was born, as soon as my doctor was sure my blood pressure was returning to normal. The hospital had free rooms available for parents whose children were patients, so I just moved a few halls over. Because Natalie was not able to suck hard enough to nurse, I went through an elaborate ritual every two hours. This required walking to the NICU, which was on a different floor. I then changed her, weighed her, nursed for 10 minutes on each side, and weighed her again. If she had not taken in at least 2 ounces – which she rarely did – I then had to finger-feed her with the milk I had pumped after the previous feeding. Finger-feeding involved a tube taped to my finger and a syringe filled with breast milk. I placed my finger in her mouth, and each time I felt her suck, I depressed the syringe to give her some milk. This way she would learn that she had to suck to get the milk, unlike a bottle. After I gave her enough milk to make a total of 2 ounces, I then pumped my milk for the next feeding.

In between, I tried to sleep or walked to the cafeteria for a meal. Kevin came every night after work, and my mom and sister visited every day. After the third day of all this walking around, my blood pressure went up again and my ankles looked like they belonged to an elephant. I talked to one of the OB nurses, who said I should stay off my feet as much as possible. Yeah, right. My baby was on a different floor, and I needed to go to her every two hours.

After five days, Natalie was taking in two ounces with each feeding – still using the finger syringe – and we were able to take her home. We rented a hospital-grade breast pump and baby scale that showed ounces and I continued the same routine every two hours. After a week, I was so exhausted that I switched to bottle-feeding her my breast milk. I was then able to get at least a little sleep. And at three-and-a-half weeks, when she had gained some weight and strength, I tried nursing again and she took like a champ.

When Natalie and I arrived home from the hospital, Kevin had decorated with a little table-top tree and some garland. We have a picture of Natalie in her infant seat beneath our tree. Our Christmas gift.

Nine years later, Natalie still brings us so much joy. She has turned into quite the young lady. I’m so glad God gave us our girl first. Three boys followed, and I love them fiercely, but it’s so nice to have a girl to share my beloved books with, and to cry during movies with.

Happy Birthday, Natalie! Mommy and Daddy love you very much and we’re so proud of you.