photos from my fourth labor

Our sweet daughter number four is five months old. I'm thinking today about how it's almost Valentine's Day, and that last Valentine's Day we announced that I was pregnant. Five years ago on Valentine's Day we had a newborn who was hospitalized for a few days with bronchiolitis (she's been through some tough experiences including a broken femur last year). Twenty-two years ago on Valentine's Day my husband and I met! . . .

I'd forgotten about these photos from the days before Fourth Girl was born. I had used the camera on D's old phone that we also had the contraction-timing app on. Then I was happy to find the photos during a road trip last weekend. I fell in love with the ones of my belly with the baby lower (I don't like the word "dropped" very much) as she was working on coming out. 

We almost had a home birth and it was wonderful. I just wouldn't use that word to describe the c-section, but they wouldn't let us take pictures until the baby was born anyway. My doula sent me the last photo, showing D and me soon after we arrived at the hospital. This baby is a perfect baby. And my recovery was good -- yay placenta encapsulation!

38 weeks (compare to below):

A little past 39 weeks and in labor, less than two days before the birth:

About 12 and a 1/2 hours before the birth:

In triage. I love him for the way he supported me that week.

beautiful quotes

Probably my favorite part of Elder Holland's April 2016 LDS General Conference talk (which I've listened to a few times including yesterday) was:

If we give our heart to God, if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, if we do the best we can to live the gospel, then tomorrow—and every other day—is ultimately going to be magnificent, even if we don’t always recognize it as such. Why? Because our Heavenly Father wants it to be! He wants to bless us. A rewarding, abundant, and eternal life is the very object of His merciful plan for His children! It is a plan predicated on the truth “that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

Then this morning before 1:00 church, I listened for the third time to Sister Neill F. Marriott's talk from the General Women's Session that was part of the same conference. Actually, I had searched on the Gospel Library app for the word "baby" and found the talk.

Let me interrupt myself.  

About those New Year's Resolutions . . . I am trying to improve with them. #5 and #7 are already done. But the one about getting up by 7 a.m. has been hard. Why? Because I'm pregnant! I could have just over two weeks left (that's when my guess date is). I love pregnancy and I feel like once she's born -- a fourth girl! -- I might miss having her inside moving around. We're all really excited to meet her, though!

January 2, a few days before my expected period (but I knew that I was pregnant)

So that's why I want to keep hearing or reading positive thoughts and stories about pregnancy, birth, and newborns.

Here's what Sister Marriott said:

Mothers literally make room in their bodies to nurture an unborn baby—and hopefully a place in their hearts as they raise them—but nurturing is not limited to bearing children. Eve was called a “mother” before she had children. I believe that “to mother” means “to give life.” Think of the many ways you give life. It could mean giving emotional life to the hopeless or spiritual life to the doubter. With the help of the Holy Ghost, we can create an emotionally healing place for the discriminated against, the rejected, and the stranger. In these tender yet powerful ways, we build the kingdom of God.

first blog post of 2016

Happy New Year! It's finally the year that I was going to marry my friend who I did marry almost twelve years ago. He had asked in high school, "Hey, if you're not married by 2016, will you marry me?"

It has been snowing ALL DAY here and hasn't stopped. It's so beautiful. We had a great Christmas season and enjoyed the December snow too.

I have been outside for a total of about two minutes. We stayed home from church because of First Girl feeling sick. (She is mostly better by now but starting Friday night she didn't feel like eating.) They've watched some Veggie Tales, and we had the TV off for a while, I played some Primary songs on the piano and sang along, we read a kind of long book together, and we saw some Mormon Channel videos on YouTube. Two out of three kids had baths; the other will need one also. The four-year-old hurt the six-year-old's feelings so I helped with that. I think we should probably call grandparents, after dinner. Oh, but a lot of clean clothing still isn't put away. I can do both at the same time.

I wasn't sure how to begin this blog post. Maybe I feel like I did then. I wasn't sure what this blog would turn out to be.

I think I want to have few if any public photos of our kids now.

What do I do with what's here already? I began blogging in 2007. I could slowly use the best posts to make digital scrapbooks that I would print, and delete them from Blogger. I don't want to change it to private.


Basically, I need to figure things out, how I can best spend my time. The ones I need to communicate and share with most are my family and close relatives. I have an email draft to finish that is a simple letter and photos for our parents and siblings to see. I have other places where I share photos now, but not publicly. And if I wanted to back up with Flickr again like I did a long time ago (I think mainly in 2009), that sounds like work and I would need a new login or account. I started a private Instagram account in October, and I use Facebook.

These are the measurable goals (resolutions) I came up with for 2016:

1. Turn off the lights to sleep by 11:00 p.m., and closer to 10:30 might be best. This is hard for me. 
2. Wake up by 7:00 and do first things first. But 5:30 is too early.
3. Start and end the day with personal prayer.
4. Read / feast / ponder from the Book of Mormon daily -- the verses on @bofm365. I feel peace every time. I'm glad that my husband is going to do it too!
5. Read more books this year than I did the last couple of years. (Only six in 2015.)
6. Work on postpartum doula certification for at least one hour a week.
7. Publish recipes on my whole foods plant-based blog.

That's probably enough to work on. :-) And that's how I will spend some of my time. I bought a little composition book to keep track of spiritual goals such as "✓ morning kneeling prayer".  I could get another little book for the other goals. 

Things are going well for our family. We'll be able to pay off most of our debt this year and we are so grateful. I / we will definitely spend time with new friends here too. I am looking forward to a vegan potluck next week.

I did not quite finish 360 BYU devotionals by the end of 2015 but I listened to 347! It was 360, not 365, because the idea came to me on January 5th and 360 is a nice round number. I am continuing until I have finished that goal. I listen while I get dressed, make meals, do chores, etc.

something good happened.

I'm going to get back to blogging here a little more often than once every four months. I like to share goodness online publicly, not just on my private social media accounts.

Well, if you know me and/or my little family you know we had a big change recently!

At the beginning of July, my husband had been working at a retail store for three years and a shop manager for one of those years. It wasn't as great as we had thought it would be, and he had been very down for a few months (real depression but also just hard stuff that I'm not going into detail about). . . . Then something good happened. Okay, most things were already good, especially from my perspective. This is us honoring the fact that we had met TWENTY years earlier:

And that same week my sister let me be in the room when her third baby was born! It was the first time I had seen a human birth in person:

Those were in February, just before the most difficult months. Then we enjoyed two of D's other siblings' weddings in May and July. (His brother who is four years younger than him got married last September, so all three weddings were within less than a year. Now all but the youngest are married).


But this was extra good for D and me, and such a relief long-term. Here it is: he got an email congratulating him because the Army was considering him for an AGR position -- Active Guard and Reserve. He's been in the United States Army Reserve since before we got married. Almost everyone in a Reserve unit works two days a month and two or more weeks in the summer, but a few soldiers need to run and plan things full time. We didn't want to get our hopes up about the position (the salary would be much higher), but he felt like it was really going to happen.

A month later, on August 4th, he got the orders! On August 21st, movers boxed and took almost all of our possessions ("household goods "). That was different and kind nice, especially that the Army paid for it. That week we also had going-away parties: a Watermelon Party for our kids and their friends, and an adults-only party with our family and close friends plus our oldest girl. We spent August 26th and 27th driving a total of 750 miles to our destination, with our whole family and suitcases in a PT cruiser, which is not a big vehicle.

We used exactly ten hotel nights, of the ten that the Army reimburses, while he worked short days and we looked for a home to rent. (We saw the outside of over 30 homes, and the inside of  few. I think we signed the papers for our home on September 3rd. We started living in it on September 6th.) Here are photos of the girls doing laundry with me in the hotel, but usually it was my husband who did it. I can't remember why.

 

And a fun picture from the day we left the hotel:

We started living in this townhouse the day before Labor Day . . . and finally received our first paycheck besides travel pay on September 15th, and our household goods back on September 21st. We had been using air mattresses after our hotel living ended, so we were excited to have our own beds back. Oh, and we bought a nice futon since our other couch had to go to the landfill. Another exciting thing was being able to use our real dishes and have more than one pan.

This has been such a huge blessing for my husband's mental health, for our finances, etc. "Better than [we] deserve" as Dave Ramsey says. We've already started to pay off our credit card debt, more than just ten dollars above the minimum payment. It is a career, which he has wanted for years, and it's easier and more suitable for him than the retail store was.

We had thought that we would be in our previous place (our 7th home; a condo we moved to a while after I made this list) for at least two years. It was only one year, but that's okay because we like our 8th home too. We're probably going to need to move every three to five years as long as he's AGR. "Come what may, and love it," right? :-) This townhouse is perfect for us: nobody living below (or above) us! a garage! our own little fenced backyard! the church is close enough to walk to, and so are some places to shop! The neighbors are nice, the layout is better, and it's a lot newer. We have an end unit, and we have almost never heard the neighbors who are to the east; even then I barely could hear their child crying or whatever.

The other change I'm grateful for is that we decided to do a trial year of homeschool. I was interested in doing it for over a year and last year was too soon for us. This August, I found out about a homeschooling conference (an LDS one) happening in our new city starting just the day after we would arrive. The mom I talked to who had organized it let D and me, and the kids, come for free. We attended it for a couple hours Friday night and longer on Saturday. Yeah, the kids got bored, but a corner with toys, coloring stuff, and other children was helpful. Anyway, we had had a few short "practice days" of school before moving, and then started to really do it with a routine and curriculum on September 8th. I'm so thankful for my husband unpacking and assembling our things while I was teaching -- the Army gives you ten days off to get settled. I'm glad that we started even when not having Internet yet was a challenge. We had to be in my closet to use the connection from the church, on our tablet and/or my phone. So then it got much better with our own Internet, and our computer back. I love teaching our kids and not having them gone from 8:30-3:15! It has been fun to learn/relearn some things along with them. They have more time to be creative . . . I like everything about it. The Family School is excellent. Another family in the townhouses homeschools too, and we have had one play date with their boys so far after the day she came over to meet us. It's funny that we met through a facebook group instead of the little neighborhood. They attend a different Christian church. During the play date I was home by myself, which is always nice. . . .

When we had been going to our new ward for a couple of weeks both S and L got invited to birthday parties on the same day. This picture shows the ballerina that L decorated at Avery's party.

my friend Andrea

Last week I found something in my old Bible -- the one I got when I was ten and that I want to get the inserts from to transfer to my new one. What I found was the program for my friend Andrea's funeral. I saw that she passed away July 22nd, three years ago. Her husband had checked on her when she was asleep, but her spirit was gone. . . . I have memories of her in Young Women with me on Sundays and on Tuesday nights -- a rock climbing activity stands out to me -- and at camps. I think "service" when I think of her; we served each other. She needed a lot of service from her family because she was born with spina bifida and had to use a wheelchair. One way she served was with her great smile.

See? Great smile.

I love the way she kept in touch with everybody after high school. I mean everybody, because it seems that she was friends with all types of people. She called me regularly to chat from about 2004 on. I learned at her funeral that she had about 200 friends that she called probably at least once a month, but I felt special to her. I didn't always know what to talk about when she called, and she sometimes asked me questions that were hard to answer and explain, like about what it was like being pregnant and being a mom (I don't remember specifics). She said that she wanted to know because she wouldn't be able to be a mom. I remember telling her one evening that I was making bean burgers, and she had never heard of bean burgers but didn't say anything negative. She wanted to understand people, I think, and she is an example of how to listen and "love thy neighbor as thyself." She was a sweetheart and so is the man she married.

I also think about the fact that three years before Andrea passed away, her brother did. I attended his funeral to show support to her. I felt the Spirit and love very strongly at both funerals. Her parents are sure going to have a wonderful reunion after many years apart from their kids. (They lost another son, too, and I actually don't know that story but I think he might have been stillborn.)

It was neat that on July 22nd a familiar song came and played in my mind -- a song that Kenneth Cope wrote about a different girl named Andrea. I think my friend Andrea saw beyond the stars, too. I'm looking forward to seeing her run or do cartwheels or whatever she wants when she is resurrected, with a laugh and a smile on her face!

You can hear part of the song here: http://kennethcope.com/albums/stories-from-edens-garden/

ANDREA

(written by Kenneth Cope)

—for Andrea Goodman and family—

Andrea—you wear the smile of paradise

Andrea—you see beyond the stars

Ever reminding me that angels aren’t that far

My Andrea

Andrea—you wear the wings of innocence

It’s like you don’t belong here on the ground

But then there might be some of us who’d never reach the clouds

Without Andrea

And if day turns into gray

If hope hides far away

I know an angel I can go to for a smile

And that haze that has me blind

Will fade from my mind

Just from the thought of you

My Andrea

Andrea—you’re hoping for a better world

You long to be with Jesus in the sky

And I believe you’re going to see what you desire

My Andrea

Andrea—we feared that we had lost you

Gone without a chance to say “Good-bye”

But thanks to God you’ve come back to stay a while

My Andrea

And if day turns into gray

If hope hides far away

I know an angel I can go to for a smile

And that haze that has me blind

Will fade from my mind

Just from the thought of you

My Andrea

When day turns into gray

When hope hides far away

Then I remember how I feel when you are near

And my heart starts to rise

And light fills these eyes

All from the thought of you

From the love of you

My Andrea

Andrea—teach me the smile of paradise

© 1998 Mohrgüd Music (BMI)