Not sure where the rest of her family is…

No, not me, silly!

My friend Emily had a baby girl on Sunday.  The road to this little one’s arrival is a wonderful one, I think. 

Welcoming this new baby first required facing a hurdle not unlike the one John and I faced.  But God made a way and that obstacle was overcome.  Then a period of long-suffering and patience-building ensued.  Emily committed herself to prayer in this time and God used that time to grow fruit.  Last winter her prayers were answered and a new baby was expected. 

To say the pregnancy was rife with trials is putting it too mildly.  Multiple trips to the hospital and significant pain dotted the middle months.  I am not exaggerating what-so-ever when I tell you that it is a miracle Emily is alive, much less her little girl.  At one point gross prematurity was predicted, if not fetal loss entirely.  Many prayers were said, and many, many times they were answered. 

The last month or so was a relief on the point that the little girl she carried had reached viability.  However new pains and concerns arose and the activities of daily living were tiresome.  Two weeks ago, at about 38½ weeks the doctor mentioned the option of induction.  Emily said it was hard to say no given her tremendous discomfort, but she did.  She spent more time praying for the LORD to reveal His plan and His timing to her.  She waited out the weekend and saw the doctor again on Monday at 39w1d.  In significant pain, the doctor again offered her induction.  It was much harder this time to say, “No,”  as she was being encouraged heavily on many sides to embrace this option.  It is only fair to point out she was also encouraged heavily to wait on God.  She wasn’t quite there yet and again declined and continued to pray that she would know God’s plan and that she would be able to wait for His timing.  Thursday afternoon, a week after the first offer for an induction her doctor called her at home and told her she was on a wait list to be induced Saturday morning.  At this point Emily conceded.  She hadn’t called the doctor, after all.  He called her.  Perhaps the LORD was working this way.

Saturday morning she called at 7:00 A.M., but was told they didn’t have a place for her to come in at that time.  Okay.  All those prayers for God’s will must be at play here, right?  Still, it was hard for her to hear.  She was instructed to call back at 10:00 A.M.  Again at ten she called, and this time she was told it wouldn’t be Saturday, but to call again Sunday morning at 10:00 A.M.  Okay?  Again, this must be according to the LORD.  It had been prayerfully handed over to Him to author His plan for this baby’s arrival.  Being that there was no baby coming on Saturday, I headed into work for the evening shift.

Early Sunday morning, at 12:30 A.M. (a/k/a late Saturday night) I crawled into bed after work.  At 2:30 A.M. the phone rang.  Emily had had some irregular but strong contractions and was heading to the hospital.  In a blur of activity I somehow dressed (including my stockings!), got my contacts in, combed my hair, and gathered my iPod, cell phone, camera, and money for the parking garage.  I was at the hospital by 3:10 A.M. and sat in the maternity waiting room awaiting admission.  Some lines were crossed and the minutes seemed like hours.  I was admitted after iPod to iPad conversation got me in there.  In what can only be described as a dream labor, Emily delivered her daughter at 4:12 A.M.  She had no moments of panicked begging to go home or irrational pleading for drugs.  Just a new baby girl.

Anna came on her due date.  Without intervention.  In a dream labor.  No drugs.  No epidural.  No artificial rupture of membranes.  Au natural.  And as I said, ON HER DUE DATE!

I’m excited about the testimony she has on waiting on the LORD.  I’m excited her doctor got to see her baby make it past all the dire predictions.  I’m excited that Emily gets to look at this little girl and see the fruit of her trust in God.

On another note —- it was WILD for me to be there.  I’ve been to a number of deliveries.  Um, all mine.  To be there for another person’s baby being born was incredible.  I will sort of admit I wish I hadn’t seen it when I am so close to delivering myself.  It was, um, a little gross.  And it reminded me of some of those painful bits I’d happily repressed.  😉  And, frankly, I had no idea my body did THAT.  But it was out of this world and I am so grateful I got to be there.

Two hours of sleep and all. 

♥

After our second pregnancy loss in March I was DEVASTATED.  When the grief wasn’t swallowing me whole the panic that Johanna was getting older and older knocked the wind out of my sails!  I prayed every day that God would take the longing out of my heart, but that never seemed to happen.

There were no answers as to why we’d lost two babies.  My blood work was fine.  My awesome and gentle OB/GYN just encouraged us not to give up our hope, but did remind me that my eggs were now over 40 years old and their health could be deteriorating.  We knew to the core of our beings that we would not pursue Artificial Reproductive Technologies.  It wasn’t for us.  But I wasn’t quite ready to give up all hope. 

From things I had picked up along the way on some message boards and websites I had read I knew some people considered acupuncture a natural way to encourage pregnancy.  Still the words Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) seemed to scream FALSE GODS to me as a Christian.  And frankly, as a nurse the words PHONY BALONEY came to mind.  I quietly prayed about it and gathered some research including getting a very popular book from the library, and I asked the LORD to let me know His heart.  John was more open to it than I was on the medical end of things, and didn’t think I’d have a problem not engaging in Eastern religions.

This is what happened next — having said NOTHING to ANYONE out of the blue one day a fellow Christian homeschool mom AND Physicians’ Assistant asked if I had ever considered acupuncture.  I was astonished.  Out of nowhere I suddenly had encouragement to try it from both a sister-in-Christ and a health care provider!

I admit that while I was willing and interested in trying Traditional Chinese Medicine I was only interested in a very AMERICAN-style setting.  I wanted there to be no language barrier, I wanted a more clinical environment, and I wanted a reference.  Out of the blue I remembered how when I went to a chiropractor to try to get Johanna to turn from a breech position I thought I saw business cards for acupuncture.  I contacted that very nice chiropractor and she gave me a quick referral to a place that ended up being perfect.  It was a “Healing Arts” center (a/k/a spa setting) affiliated with a well-established fertility specialty office.  I met Heather the very end of March and decided to go ahead with the TCM.

This is where I admit it was a little hard for my Western Medicine brain to embrace all that TCM had to offer.  But, I figured none of it could hurt.  But she assessed things like my radial pulses in both arms taking six different measurements and evaluated my tongue.  She diagnosed me with Spleen Deficiency and prescribed certain herbs and diet changes along with the needle treatments.

I will spare you week-by-week details.  They aren’t that exciting.  The goal was to encourage my body to make healthier eggs.  Here is what I can tell you:

• I was able to pay for it with our HSA.  It ended up costing about $63 a treatment, three times a month.
• I took one kind of herbal supplement three times a day certain weeks of my cycle and a different one another week.
• I reduced the gluten, dairy and *gasp* spicy foods in my diet.  (Okay – I confess – I probably only dropped the first two areas by 60% – just too hard to cook different foods for this family.) 
• I cut out raw vegetables – TCM feels your body works harder to digest raw veggies and that steals blood flow from reproductive organs.
• I omitted icy cold beverages from my diet.  I drank room temperature water which I actually ended up liking a LOT.
• I cut out my pop a LOT.  I didn’t give up Pepsi altogether, but I went down to almost none.
• I lost a lot of weight!  Almost 10 pounds.
• I learned to like tea.  I drank some Fertilitea twice daily the last month and it was actually yummy.
• The needle therapy was incredibly relaxing.  Wow.  I loved it!  I brought my iPod and streamed in Family Life Network.
• There was no evidence at all of Eastern religion either being practiced or promoted.  It was a little more warm-and-fuzzy than I am used to with my Western medicine mind, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
• I think it was worth it and I would strongly encourage ANYONE who was trying to conceive without success for more than say, six months, to give it a try!

And – after three months of treatments I found out I was expecting twins.  Did it work? Who knows? Did it hurt any? Um, nope.  It seemed at first like it was VERY effective.  😉

You all know that we lost one of precious babies somewhere between 7 and 10 weeks.  But by God’s mercy we still have a baby growing and we pray and pray that my egg was healthy enough to not only survive, but that it divided well and that our baby will not have great deficits physically or cognitively.  Feel free to pray that along side us!!

Interesting aside… after I found out I was pregnant and met with the OB/GYN he was all for the acupuncture and loved hearing about my good outcome.  He acknowledged that the research went from saying it definitely helped to saying it was not effective at all.  But he didn’t believe it was in anyway harmful and said, “The Chinese have been using it for 4,000 years, they have more experience than we do in the West.”  Heh.  Maybe I should have asked him FIRST?  😉

My dear, sweet blog.  Where have you been?  I miss you.  And my bloggy friends – I miss YOU even more.

Every day I blog in my mind a dozen or more times.  I long to record the days of our lives, the silly comments, the struggles and the experiences we are having.  And yet when school work is FINALLY done for the day, the last thing I want to do is sit at a computer!

What makes me sad is that I had hoped to share a number of experience I have had with this pregnancy to help me remember.  And I want to do it before I forget completely!  I thought once I “went public” I’d settle in and share one or two stories a week…

That is never gonna happen.

But I do want to blog about my acupuncture!  I am going to make myself do that RIGHT now… under a different heading. 

Tuesday was busy for Riffy.  And those of us who love her.

She had her first session with her speech pathologist.  Mrs. Chapman, the same “speech teacher” Tabitha had, was assigned for our family again.  That in itself was a huge God blessing!  She is a great lady and amazingly enough has provided care for two other families in our church as well!  Go figure!

The difference between toddler speech sessions and pre-schooler speech sessions is that the parent also has to participate. She comes Tuesdays from 10:15 – 11:15.  Meanwhile, piano lessons go on for the big four from 9:30 – 11:30.  (Make a note: don’t call me on Tuesday. Heh.)   Johanna LOVED Mrs. Chapman’s games and Tabitha participated a bunch, too, helping to play with Johanna and entice her to not wander away to see what the kids are doing.  In and of itself, the hour-long speech work-out tired her. 

But people, the day was not over yet.  Not by a long-shot.

After nap (where she may or may not have actually napped…) she hung out with us in the kitchen as I was working on stuffed shells.  I was exhausted.  Tuesdays are just hard days here.  The kids started to play Nerf Guns was and she started to enjoy the chasing and screaming, too.  One of my kids turned quickly and she was right behind them and the long plastic rifle connected with her face.

Blood.

Screaming.

Tears and tear and tears (from multiple kids).

And a split lip. 

Two freeze-pops on the lip as I tried to assess it, call John, call my mom, call my sister, call my friend… to decide where to go and what to do.  Decided against ED.  Phew.  I prefer Urgent Care by a longshot.

She was in really good spirits for the hour-plus we were there.  Daddy met us.  He thought it looked fine.  Doctor agreed.  And because I think they try to make you feel better about dropping $100 on “nothing,” told me signs and symptoms of concussion I could watch for.  I interrupted and told him she was #5 and we were fine with the diagnosis. 

She acted like it didn’t bother her, really.

Home.  Ate our stuffed shells (thanks Kelly for finishing the prep and cooking!!) and I was ready to call it a day.  Heh! I was ready to call it a week! But it was only Tuesday.

She started to cry like crazy at bedtime when I think the day caught up with her.

It was much uglier Wednesday.

 

But not nearly as bad as Marie’s circa 2005…

We’re a fun family that thankfully has very good medical insurance!

Once in a while, science is a LOT of fun…

We made edible cells.  Well, a kid might eat it.  I was not tempted.

We poured our cytoplasm (Jell-O) into the membranes (ceramic bowl) on Friday. 

And never got back to it until this afternoon…

We used Whoppers as the nucleus, jelly beans as the “mighty” mitochondria, Skittles as lysosomes, Smarties as Golgi bodies, Fruit Roll-Up as endoplasmic reticulum, Nerds as ribosomes, and cake sprinkles as centrioles. 

Stewart remembered what each cell feature did and as my seventh grader, that was what I was going for. Nigel remembered the job of a few of them, and Marie and Tab knew a couple. All age-appropriate.

Their cells were not all that pretty, and we had trouble fitting some of the stuff in.  Thankfully, God designed our bodies to replicate, replicate, replicate and we are not responsible for it ourselves.  I’m glad He’s in charge. 

Oh – don’t ask how much I spent on candy Friday night.  *sigh*