The Partridge in the Pear Tree, baby edition

This version could be more aptly named
The Stork in the Family Tree...


In the first month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
Let's have a baby; how hard can it be??

In the second month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
I'll watch the kids and give you two free hours to sleep in.

In the third month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
You threw up three times in front of your mother in law?!?

In the fourth month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
I've gone through four baskets of dirty laundry and I still have no pants...?

In the fifth month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
The ultrasound says it's our FIFTH GOLDEN-HAIRED BOY!
... Four baskets of laundry
... Three hurlings
... Two free hours of sleep
... Let's have a baby; how hard can it be?

In the sixth month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
You started a garden, cleaned my car, and painted the bathroom; I wish this would last!

In the seventh month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
We need a bigger house, new car, more bunk beds, and a lot more money!

In the eighth month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
Do you know how Jonah's whale felt now?

In the ninth month of pregnancy, my true love said to me,
What were we thinking?!?

... Eight ton pregnant whale
... Seven panicked minutes
... Six month pregnancy glow
... FIVE GOLDEN-HAIRED BOYS!
... Four baskets of laundry
... Three hurlings
... Two free hours of sleep
... Let's have a baby, how hard can it be??

The directions don't say how to fit two sets of bunk beds and a crib in this room...

Margins of Blessing

Sometimes, this bearing and raising of boys is tiring.  Sometimes.  Sometimes the four year old drops a dozen eggs on the floor the day we get them from a friend's backyard chickens.  Sometimes the five year old digs holes in the lawn and fills them with gravel from the driveway - in the pouring rain.  Sometimes I have to fight to convince well-meaning folks that this whole bearing and raising of boys is a blessing, even when I'm tired of doing it myself.
Because sometimes I am tired.
But always, always, I know I am blessed.  Always.

The baby in my stretching tummy is around 32 weeks old now.  He kicks and wiggles and hiccups.  His brothers can feel him moving; they delight in the fact he'll push back when they lay a hand against my shirt.
This pregnancy has been boring compared to the last one, 2 and a half years ago now.  That baby didn't kick so much.  We didn't know what his life would be like after he emerged into daylight for the first time.  No one could say if his body would function or if his brain would work.  The second half of his pregnancy was full of ultrasounds and meetings with specialists.  The first weeks of his life were busy with back and brain surgeries, MRIs and testing, and lots of interaction with doctors with strings of letters after their names.

Comparatively, this pregnancy has been dull.  The only issue has been the placenta growing low on the uterus.  Usually, it plugs in higher up, safely out of the way.  This placenta isn't blocking the exit, but it's right at the door at the bottom.  They say I have marginal placenta previa.

I've been hoping to avoid a c-section.  I've been through natural labor and birth three times and had a surgically-removed baby once.  Having major abdominal surgery means a long recovery time.  After a c-section, I won't be doing much cooking or cleaning or driving.  And I won't be able to pick up my little two and a half year old - the one who can't stand, or walk, or climb.  (At least not yet.)

(Disclaimer: this picture is actually from my pregnancy with Ben.  There are none yet of me currently with child... But you get the idea.)

Sometimes I think the doctors believe I'm crazy for wanting another baby after having one with disabilities (and after having 3 kids before that.)  Sometimes I'm convinced they just want the easiest option for them, forgetting (or not knowing) the blessing of these children.  They subtly recommend abortion if the fetus appears to have complications.  They mention often the option of tying my tubes so as to avoid any risk in the future.  They push to plan a c-section since I had one the last time.  Sometimes, I disagree with these intelligent and capable people who've studied birth and babies for many more years than I even attended school in total.  Sometimes.

They said this week that they want to schedule an early c-section (when the baby's around 37 weeks' big.)  They want to do an amniocentesis before it, to check the baby's lung development.  And I know there's a risk, if I go into labor, that the placenta could separate from the wall it's attached to.  If the bleeding from it was significant, it could be deadly.  But that risk is slight, considering the position of the placenta.  The hospital is minutes from my house.  I've gotten a bit more used to doctors giving me worst case scenario in the past couple years, no matter how slight the risk.
But sometimes, I don't know what to do.

I know only one thing that always works.
Would you pray with me?

Pray that as the uterus grows larger that the placenta would be pulled up and further out of the way so that bleeding won't be a concern.
Pray that I would be wise to decide if a c-section is necessary.  There is pressure to agree to it, but if it's not necessary, it doesn't seem advantageous to me in the long run.  


It's a little thing, in some ways.  Good doctors have perfected ways to get a baby out safely.  I am so thankful.  I also know that much of the time, babies have popped out au natural and healthy, and have for thousands of years.  I want to do what is best.  

But I could always use a little prayer.  Help!

Blood lines

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood..."  Leviticus 17:11


There's foreign matter floating around in my blood.  And I don't mean the caffeine (though there is that too.)  It is completely separate from me, unique.  It's DNA.  And it's not mine.
It belongs to another human being with a different genetic makeup.
Scientists have discovered that they can actually separate this DNA from my own blood plasma and map it out.  They can tell if certain chromosomes are abnormal.  They can tell from others the physical traits of person - all without even seeing the person's body.
In fact, no one has ever seen this person's body.  It is only 11 weeks old.  It's about the size of a plum.
It has a heart.
It has eyes.
It has fingers and toes.
It moves.
It feels.
It has its own blood.
It has life, all its own.

New life, discovered.

By 10 weeks, there was enough personal DNA bits, probably from the placenta through natural breakdown of cells in circulation, in my blood, that some intelligent fellow somewhere thought he could track it down.
So he does, for a living.
Just like some space scientist is searching for evidence of DNA on Mars.
Just like some forensic scientist is searching for evidence of DNA at crime scenes.
It will prove life was there.

As incredible as it is that they can map out exactly a tiny being's DNA, it can still only tell the tiniest part of the life story.
The test doesn't measure that life's virtuoso talent on piano.
It can't foresee that life's genius to invent the technology that comes after the iphone.
It has no bearing on the life's ability to empower hopeless individuals.
The life could be the next President, or the best listener on the planet.
It could be the life who cures AIDS, or best chess player.
It has the potential to be the next poet laureate, or have the eyes to see those who are truly hurting inside and know what they need.
The life has to go on living before any of that becomes obvious.

But you're curious.  What did this test show?
The DNA of this particular life didn't show abnormalities for any of the chromosomes they examined.
It did notice the Y chromosome, however.

Of course.
Boy number 5.  Appearance expected around the end of August.  


And you thought your kids got under your skin.  Mine's in my blood!  :)

The Chicken or the Egg

Yes.  I am pregnant.
It happens.
Regularly, it seems.
(Though actually I had nearly five months when I was neither pregnant nor nursing this time.  Previous record was about two months, and I had an early miscarriage in the middle of that.  But that's another story...)
So we are excited.  I know I am very blessed.  I am also sick, hormonal, and exhausted.
And in the midst of all the congratulations, I sometimes get the (not unexpected, yet often subliminal) question, "Why?!?"

The fifth child elicits that type of reaction naturally in our modern American culture.  More so if they're all six years old or less.  More so if mom is only 5 feet tall and tries to avoid wearing obvious "mom jeans."  More so if folks know you only have a two bedroom house.  Much more so if you have a toddler in a wheelchair.
I'm fairly used to the reaction by now.  Sometimes I smile, a bit, and feel like I'm the bearer of a great secret.  Those folks who look at me with consternation, amazement, or pity, they simply must not know the worth I find in these treasures.

For the record, I am aware, childbearing and raising, especially in quantities, is hard.  It is expensive.  It is tiring, frustrating, thankless, often demeaning; sometimes it seems flat out impossible.  And that's just before daylight hits.  The gentleman in the grocery store commenting "You sure are busy!" isn't telling me something I didn't know.  I'd like to answer, sometimes, "Oh, wow, I didn't realize!  I am busy, aren't I!  Thanks for pointing that out!"

But the question is understandable.

"Why?"

But part of the answer is simple chemistry.  My husband and I seem to just think baby, and they appear on an ultrasound.  We seem to be ridiculously fertile.  We are young and healthy.  We could try to shirk this, but we're choosing to treat it as a blessing, the miracle of life.  Because the Bible says it is.  And there are plenty for whom childbearing isn't such an easy option.  I must consider it the good hand of God, as Mary did, when the angel told her she was having baby Jesus.  She was young, unmarried, poor, and alone.  It would cost her reputation, it would cause her husband a great deal of difficulty (and patience before his marriage was consummated), require a frantic flight at midnight to another country, and ultimately break her heart as she watched her Child be murdered.  But at the news - she praised God.
Along with that, the method we use for birth control is - leaving God in control of birth.  No hormones.  No surgery.  And, dare I say it, no random chance.  At the risk of too much info, the plus side of having a "cycle," is just that.  A cycle.  Fairly predictable.  As Ecclesiastes notes, "there is a time for everything..."  Much of the month, it is quite unlikely you will make a baby.  You can get fairly familiar with the times you could.  And if you hit that particular time, what's the worst thing that will happen?  Oops.  The miracle of life.

Part of the answer is probably my pride.  When baby number four was born with Spina Bifida, it became obvious that, while he would have some difficulty with his lower body for the rest of his life, and probably surgery from time to time, he wasn't going to require 'round the clock care particularly more than any child.  I didn't want the simple fact that he can't currently hike a mountain be the deciding factor to end our kid-having.  And I don't want him to think that his disability somehow disables us from giving him a younger sibling.  He's a regular kid; he just happens to not feel his feet or bladder.  Plus we'd probably spoil him if he remained the youngest.  He already gets away with crashing into people's shins with his wheelchair more than he should...

The fastest way to get spaghetti to your tummy should mean bypassing the mouth and esophagus completely.  The logic of a two year old.

Also, well, we have four boys.  You can't say yet that we're not giving a girl a chance :)  But having a complete soccer team in the same genre would certainly be more convenient, cheaper with hand-me-downs, and I'm all for it - either way.

Finally, honestly, why will we have another baby?  Because I was once that person in the grocery store who looked at the tired mom with her snotty brood in mismatched puddle boots and thought, "Why?"
Two or maybe three children, spaced comfortably years apart, sounded like a practical, workable way to ensure progeny.
But.
But God had other plans than mine.  (He often does, I've found.)

The first baby sunk me.  I didn't get what it would be like to go from working a full-time job, trying to finish my degree, and being a young, upwardly mobile couple, to being a stay-at-home mom budgeting on my husband's income.  I was lonely.  The baby cried at odd hours, for no reasonable purpose that I could see.  As he didn't come with a manual, I read all the books I could get my hands on, and they often offered conflicting advice.  Feed on demand; feed on strict schedule.  Wear your baby always; always put them down in their own crib.  Feed them cereal around 4 months; start them instead on finger foods when they're closer to a year.  Before kids, I might have thought parenting was just another notch on the growing up belt.  I started to realize it wasn't that easy.
Then baby number two surprised me with his unplanned (by me) existence.
If you asked me the age old question - which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I'd probably say the eggs.  When I saw each teeny little heart beating on grainy black and white screens, I cried.  Yes, I loved them and knew I was honored to be made a mommy.  But I turned into such a chicken at the thought of having a little one.  Then two little ones within a year and a half.  And then three within the next year and a half.
By the third baby, mamma chicken was starting to catch on.

These parenting shoes are big ones, Momma.  Won't you put them on?

God's plans are better.
He used us not just to make new life exist, but He used all that new life to renew my own.
But I had more to learn.
Baby number four arrived with the aid of the doctor's scalpel.  He met the knife personally twice in his first two weeks of life, with his spine and his brain.
Chicken mommy was learning.
I am learning still that God loves to use these burpy, sticky creatures to refine mother herself.

I planned to go into nursing, acting as an angel of mercy for others during their brief stay in a hospital.
Instead, I am into nursing babies, acting as their very life sustenance during their year long stint as an infant.
I planned to space my children, so each would have at least a couple years of mom's specific attention.
Instead, they came at year and a half intervals, so each had a close sibling to give them special companionship.
I planned to sleep, expecting to need the energy to pour into each day with zeal and excitement.
Instead, I spent many of the wee hours with a warm cuddly dependent life, learning to pour great zeal into prayer for energy to do what was truly essential to life and godliness each day.
I planned to invest and save healthy amounts for each child's further education and interests.
Instead, in the moments when we didn't know where the weekly grocery money would come from, I learned to invest in their daily life through the library, good friend groups, healthy food, prayer, discipline and cuddles, and trust that God would supply their needs even as He always had my own.
I planned to be sufficient for the job of parenting.
Instead, I was - I am - constantly humbled to realize what a weighty and precious work this is, raising each fragile life to know he is made in the image of his Creator.  I realize how insufficient I am.  But God loves to use the most unlikely of creatures to prove His own sufficiency.
He used a donkey once to speak to a man and save his life.
I guess He can use a chicken too.

A chicken with all day morning sickness.  May my soul magnify the Lord.  Bring it.