Nora's Birth Story

Introducing . . . Nora Allison. This sweet bundle joined our family on October 4th. She couldn't possibly be more adored by her brothers, sisters, and parents. 

    As her mother, I particularly feel that Nora is a blessing from heaven. You see, we were feeling pretty content (and at times, overwhelmed) with our family of seven. Five kids kept us busy as can be, and with three boys and two girls, I thought we really had the perfect family. Then, one day just over a year ago, when I was praying about something completely unrelated, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that there was one more baby waiting to join our family.

    Although I immediately knew that we would do what Heavenly Father wanted, I will admit that I spent a few weeks asking Him if He was sure, if I had heard correctly, if there wasn't some mistake. I felt inadequate. I was scared. I wondered how we could make room in our lives for a baby. But there was no mistake. Time after time when I asked, I felt a warmth and a peace that only comes from the Lord. I knew we needed to take a leap of faith and have another baby. I knew that we would be blessed by this child and would always be grateful that we had listened to the promptings of the Holy Ghost to expand our family. But I still didn't know HOW it was going to work.

    Throughout my pregnancy, I will admit that I mostly tried to not think of what life would be like when she was born. Not because I didn't want her, but because I still wasn't sure about the how. But I knew that it would be okay.

    Towards the end, I needed lots of help. My blood pressure started rising and my doctor told me to cut back my activities. Each week when I saw him, he told me to cut back some more. Thankfully, unlike two previous pregnancies when high blood pressure had been an issue, this time the baby seemed unaffected by it. Friends and family reached out to me and insisted they help. At first it was hard to accept, but I knew I needed to do what was best for the baby and my own health, and had to humble myself.

    Then, three weeks and two days before she was due, I had a miserable night. My blood pressure had been harder to control, even with rest, for the past three days, and on this night, I could barely sleep because I kept having contractions. I knew I needed to get checked out at the hospital-- they aren't really keen on having a woman with 5 previous C-sections labor because of the risk of uterine rupture-- but I had also been through this kind of thing before. I knew that I would get to the hospital and my contractions would stop, my blood pressure would drop, and after several hours they would send me home. So I waited for morning. After I dropped my kids off at school and preschool, I headed in to get checked out. Things felt different and I fully expected to deliver our baby sooner than her scheduled delivery date which was still over two weeks away.

    Sure enough, my contractions stopped cold as soon as they began monitoring me and my blood pressure dropped after about half an hour of resting. The nurses assured me that I'd be going home soon, but that my doctor had ordered some labs just to be sure. I am sure they get plenty of women coming in with a few weeks to go in their pregnancy, desperate to find a reason to deliver early and have pregnancy over with, but  I am not one of those women. I knew that Nora was going to make her entrance sooner rather than later.

    The labs came back with results that landed me an overnight in the hospital while they ran more tests. It seemed that my kidneys were struggling and that the PIH was affecting me, even though the baby appeared to be fine. They gave me one of those nifty steroid shots that help the baby's lungs just in case, and I spent the next several hours figuring out the logistics of my family's needs with mommy in the hospital. Even though they were saying I would be in for 24 hours, I went ahead and made arrangements for help with kids, meals, etc, through the end of the week, feeling like it would be easy to cancel if needed. (Wouldn't you know it, my mom was out of town, visiting my brother and his wife and newest baby.) Thankfully, I had many people offer to help and had it all figured out by dinner time.

    The next day, after more labs, my amazing Dr. S. and I agreed that we were not going to wait for Nora's scheduled c-section, still two weeks away. We decided to wait one more day to give the steroids the best effect, and scheduled the c-section for 5pm the following day.

     The next evening we welcomed our sweet baby into the world. It took the doctors quite a while to work through all my scar tissue after so many surgeries; we were all bantering about needing a saw and talking in a relaxed way. When they got to my uterus, I heard the tone of my doctor's voice change. 

"Have you been having contractions, Michal?" 

"I had them the day and night before I checked into the hospital, but they have mostly gone away since I've been in bed here," I replied.

"I think we are delivering this baby on the right day," he said, sounding somewhat solemn.

    Apparently, my uterus was so thin that he proceeded to open it with his finger, not even needing a tool. When he did so, it sort of fell apart. My friend, Kristen, who was there and who is a L&D nurse, said after one look at it, she was sure that I would need a hysterectomy on the spot, because they would never get that fragile, spent organ sewn together again. Miraculously, they were able to stitch up the silvery tissue just as it needed to be. We all felt that it was God's hand that prevented my uterus from rupturing earlier, during my contractions (which would have been extremely serious and life threatening to both Nora and me), and that allowed me to avoid hemorrhaging or a hysterectomy.

    I am so grateful for this sweet little girl in my life. I am grateful for the Lord's tender mercies in sparing her life and mine, as well as for the many, many people He has prompted to bless us with help over the past months. 

    

    Our life is crazy with six kids, to be sure, but blessed and wonderful. I love being a mother, even though it pushes me to my very limits sometimes; even though I make mistakes and have to apologize to my children; even though it wreaks havoc on my sleep, my body, and my patience. It is the best choice that I have ever made and I am so thankful that I have the opportunity to be a mother to these six wonderful kids. 

Must-Haves

In each of my pregnancies, there have been Must-Haves. When I was expecting Kimball, I wanted carne asada tacos and Jamba Juice. With Henry it was carne asada and ice cream. (I generally have a thing for red meat in pregnancy--it must be anemia!)

Poor Ian--as a third pregnancy, I can't remember what I wanted, except for sleep. It was neither as unforgettable as my first two experiences nor recent enough for me to recall. Stinks to be the middle child, doesn't it?

While I was pregnant with Bronwen, I couldn't eat enough mangoes. I bought them by the case at Costco and glowered at my children if they asked for one. They were mine, all mine!

With this baby, although I did go through a hamburgers stint, I have mostly been craving sugar and then chasing it down with Tums. Not since my first pregnancy have I consumed so many antacids. Actually, with babies 2-4 I was able to control most of my heartburn by getting regular adjustments from my darling chiropractor husband. But this time I'm either not getting in to see him often enough or my body is returning to it's old ways too quickly, for the respite from heartburn lasts only a day or so after an adjustment before I am back to popping my Tums. Or maybe it's because of all the sugar!

Here's what I'm having with my Tums today.

Click here for the recipe.

I'm looking forward to giving up my Tums addiction in 27 days, although by the time they starve me at the hospital for two days I'll probably embrace the idea of a little heartburn. Did you know that not only do you have to come in for a C-section fasting, but after that they only give you ice chips, then liquids, then garbage like jell-o???? And this to a woman whose milk supply is supposed to be coming in. I'll admit that last time I lied about my bodily functions a wee bit (since they use those as milestones to determine when you get real food.) A girl can only live on liquids for so long.

What can't you live without when you're pregnant?

Naming Nightmares

Our firstborn son and daughter were more or less named before they were conceived. In a way, I thought that was a little boring and took some of the fun out of pregnancies (at the time), but I always forget what a wrestle it is to name a baby if you don't have something solid in your mind. Naming a child feels like such a responsibility and expresses something about you and about them. There are so many associations with names out there, both good and bad, and they vary from person to person.

For example, one of the contenders for Ian's name was Owen. I'd say it was in our top four, which was as close as we could get to naming him until he was a few hours old. But about two weeks before he was born, we watched an episode of Criminal Minds, which is a detective show about serial killers.(In general, this is not a great show for mothers to watch, and I have learned to avoid it, as it gives me more things to worry about in the middle of the night.) This particular story was about an 11-year-old boy who was a pathological serial killer. And his name was Owen. By the end of the night, the name was scratched from our list.

What's hard is that family members also feel the need to remind you of their own associations with a name. Another of my favorites for Ian was Mason, which reminded me of the years that I spent working in the bakery of a wonderful family. It is also a German name, and Jared has German blood; as we like to give our children a name consistent with their heritage, it worked. But it was also the last name of somebody's ex-husband and brought a shudder to Jared's parents every time it was mentioned. (Incidentally, now it is a favorite with a couple of my brothers and will probably be used at some point by one of them, so they are probably glad that we didn't use it.)

Now I have no regrets about letting go of those names. Ian is Ian and I can't imagine him as anything else. But once again we are struggling to find a name that clicks for our coming little girl. We want it to be a classic, but one that is not over-used. We want it to match our heritage, which means English, Scottish,Welsh, Danish, Norwegian, or German. There are a few family names that we really like and her middle name will definitely be a family name, like all of her other siblings.

The front-runner for a long time was Lucy, which also happens to be the name of one of my great-grandmothers. But once we found out we were having a girl, it somehow didn't seem right. And we don't LOVE it with our last name. It may stick around as a middle name, but it is off the first name list.

Other top names include Margaret, (my grandmother's name,) and Violet, (Jared's great-grandmother's name). But we differ a bit on what we would call Margaret. Jared likes Meg, which I don't really mind, but this weekend we discovered that Meg is the name of the vixen-n0t-quite-heroine in Disney's Hercules, and I'm kinda turned off to it at the moment. I'm not saying I couldn't get over it, but let's just say that she's no one whom I want my daughter emulating.

So we started perusing web lists of names this weekend, and I'm going to share some of our favorites with you. I've decided that I like positive feedback on names-- if you think one of them is hideous, please keep that to yourself or gossip about it to your sister, but don't tell me! I'll put up a poll in the sidebar and you can vote for as many of them as you like. This doesn't mean that we'll use the most popular one, but I'm interested at this point in knowing which names you all like.

As Bronwen's name is Welsh, we've looked a lot at Welsh names and a few that we like are: Eleri (Ell-er-eye), Meredith, Aerwen (Air-wen), and Sabrina. Other Gaelic names that pique our interest are Rowan, Maren, and Regan. Old-fashioned names (besides Margaret and Violet, which are still on the list,) are Eleanor, Helen, and Maeve (May-vee).

There's a good chance that she'll come home being named Margaret, but she may have a name that isn't even on this list, as nothing has clicked to the point of calling the baby by a certain name, even though I've tried it out for a day or two with a couple of them.

So, give me some (positive) feedback. Do you like any of these names? And please warn me if you already know three children under 4 with one of these names. We'd like to NOT choose a future top ten name, even though it doesn't need to be previously unheard-of.

Caution: Wide Load

It's baby number five and *SURPRISE* I am showing earlier and bigger than ever before. Yesterday I hit a pregnancy milestone that in previous pregnancies hasn't hit until month 7 at least: I misjudged the size of my round belly and bumped into something. I did this not once, but twice.

As I entered the building to my ob/gyn's office yesterday, I took the corner too quickly and bumped my belly right into the side of the sliding glass doors. Quickly, I looked around to see if anyone had seen my clumsiness. Thankfully, the only person in the lobby was a woman busy trying to keep her two year old from climbing in the elevator, and she took no notice of me. I thought to myself, "Already? This is happening to me already?"

Then, only a few minutes later, after leaving a special little something behind in a cup for the medical assistant to inspect, I exited the office's bathroom and bonked my belly with the door. Really? Twice in an hour? This is getting embarrassing.

And with a little more than 3 months to go, hopefully I'll still fit behind the steering wheel in month 9. Anyone interested in shuttling my kids to swimming lessons this June?

Over the Hill

If you want to feel great about how gracefully you are aging; if you want to believe that there is nothing scary or old about getting closer to 40 with every birthday; if you want to be able to live on less than 10 hours of sleep a night without turning into the Wicked Witch of the East, I highly recommend that you reconsider having a baby after you've turned 35.

I'm not saying that I would have done it differently, but I was unprepared for being treated like a senior citizen by my doctor's office. I should have seen it coming; certainly I've read all the pregnancy books several times over (during my first 3 pregnancies--I'm not even sure where they are now). I knew that having a baby after 35 pushed you into the high risk category. But somehow I thought that number just meant that the farther past 35 a woman was, the more . . . what? More likely yukky things can happen to you like gestational diabetes, preenclampsia, and a ridiculously huge belly compared to the 24 year olds!

I started catching on when I called my doctor's office to set up my first prenatal appointment. Not only do I abhor making phone calls that involve committing to something else on the calendar, but I also didn't want this pregnancy to seem like it was taking forever, so I didn't get around to calling them until I was 8 weeks pregnant. Okay, 8 1/2 weeks. But since I have typically not been seen until 11 or 12 weeks, I wasn't concerned.

The girl on the other end of the phone practically went into hysterics. Apparently since I was now of "Advanced Maternal Age," they wanted to see me much earlier. At 8 1/2 weeks, in fact. Did I expect them to fit me in that day or something? I assured her that I did not and that I had no desire to put their office into a tailspin with the terrible news of my pregnancy.

After talking her down off the ledge, I figured out that this very important appointment that HAD to be done at 8 1/2 weeks if we wanted to avoid a nuclear holocaust was an appointment with the geneticist. Basically, it is standard procedure to check for all sorts of genetic abnormalities at this time, just in case. I knew that just in case meant just in case I wanted to terminate the pregnancy, so I assured her that I didn't need to have this particular test-- that we would not be taking any action in the event of a genetic abnormality anyway, so why waste everybody's time?

Although my doctor continues to act as cool as a cucumber about the entire thing, the rest of his staff continue to try to force extra testing on me, all the while shaking their heads and wondering why anyone would take such crazy risks, especially when we already have four kids at home.

The real reason that I think it stinks to be pregnant and 35? There are exactly 8 women in my ward (congregation) who are pregnant this spring. One of them is due long past me, also with her 5th. The others? They are all young, cute, petite 20-somethings having their first or second baby. They look adorable, radiant, and tiny with a little baby bump. I'm sure they won't agree, but they do. Oh yeah, and they are mostly due BEFORE me--but you'd never guess it in a line-up!

But at the same time, it struck me the other day how blessed I am to be taking part with Heavenly Father in the creation of one of His children; that it is a great privilege to sacrifice my comforts to give life and a family and opportunity to a sweet little girl who will call me Mommy.

Yes, motherhood (and pregnancy) requires lots of work, sacrifice, and sleep-deprivation, often with little thanks. But it is all worth it. It is a HUGE part of why we are here and of how He intends to help us become like Him. And in spite of the aches, pains, nausea, fatigue, extra tests, and looks of shock on people's faces when they realize that I'm pregnant AGAIN, I wouldn't change it for the world.

Doctors and Parasites

So, I finally saw the doctor today about this parasite that's been taking all the joy out of eating and sucking my energy dry for the past few months. Apparently, there's something in the water around here, because I know lots of other people with similar symptoms right now. He said that there is nothing to worry about, that this will run it's course. The lack of appetite will wear off (frankly, it did about two weeks ago, just in time for New Year's Resolutions) and the fatigue may or may not linger. I can expect to carry this parasite around with me for another 5 or 6 months. Jared & I have decided if it's going to hang around so long, we might as well name it and make it a part of our family.

Yes, it's true. We have entered unchartered territory. The territory where people look at you like you are a freak when they find out that you are going to have 5 kids. I'm pretty sure that qualifies us for the circus, the nuthouse, or at least a reality show on TLC. A family with 4 kids around here is uncommon but not unheard of--plus, the last time I was pregnant, most people assumed that we were just "trying one last time for a girl"--their words, not mine. Now I can be that crazy Mormon-homeschooling-mom-with-all-those-kids. (Who am I kidding--that was probably me long ago anyway.)

All kidding aside, we feel so blessed and grateful that the Lord is sending another one of his children to join our family, probably in the first few days of July. (I have scheduled c-sections, but sometimes they decide to come before their scheduled and approved date.) Our children could not be more excited, and I'm sure you'll hear in future posts about their fabulous naming ideas. To make things even better, my sister is expecting and due 3 weeks before me, so we'll have close cousins!

Are we crazy? Sometimes. (And more often when I'm pregnant.) But I have a conviction that the Lord wants me to be a mother to these children and that He is making me into the woman that He knows I can be. I'm far from perfect, but with His help, I can do anything He asks.

The picture is me with Kimball in the NICU, a few days after he was born. He probably weighed 3 lbs and a couple of ounces here. We don't want to do it that way again if we have our choice (which we don't).