SNOW!

We got about 4 inches of snow today (so far - it's still coming down). So we just had to bundle up Keziah and let her experience her first snow. Amazingly enough, someone gave us pink baby snow pants as a shower gift. I remember thinking - what are the chances I will use these? (we didn't know we were having a girl and it never snows here!) I am excited that she actually got to wear them. She was very cute. This was also the first day she wore shoes. We didn't stay out long and she is probably too young to really enjoy snow. But mom and dad sure had fun playing in the snow with her!

Now that we are warm and inside, we are enjoying looking at pictures and gazing out the window laughing at the poor souls struggling to get home in this. We live on a really steep hill and there is no way a vehicle without 4-wheel drive can make it up the hill right now. An hour ago I watched a buick struggle up the hill. It kept sliding back a foot for every 2 feet it gained. But it finally made it. But just now we saw people walking up the hill. They had to leave their cars at the bottom of the hill and walk home. Southerners just aren't prepared for this kind of thing! Michael Paul did go out and offer to drive them home in the 4-runner. What a fun day we have had. Going to go enjoy it some more now before it gets dark!

Birthday Math Part II (and other cool math stuff)

As promised in my original "birthday math" post, I am now going to analyze Keziah's birthday (12-28). I have to admit I was at first disappointed in this birthday from a mathematical standpoint. Of course I was super happy about when she came for a dozen other reasons so I did not complain. But looking at 12 and 28 the only cool thing I could really come up with was that they were both divisible by 4 leaving 3 and 7 which are Biblical numbers symbolizing completeness. And this is symbolic for us too as I feel our family is somewhat "complete" now that we have a child (that's not to say we are "one and done" or anything - but just feel more complete now than before is all). So that was kinda cool. But other than that, I really struggled for anything more. 12 and 28 - they weren't perfect squares or cubes. And they didn't make a palindrome or nice equation. Then I stopped looking at the numbers 12 and 28 and looked at the individual digits 1, 2 and 8. The first thing I thought of was obviously that 1 doubled is 2 and 2 cubed is 8. I liked that. But then it hit me that 1, 2 and 8 are all Fibonacci numbers. Now I was finally satisfied. This I like. It ties perfectly into my obsession with the golden mean. Here is a picture of Keziah's nursery wall:

I constructed the golden rectangle with the golden spiral a while back but since we didn't know what we were having, the name hanging in the spiral is a recent addition. Since most of you reading this probably don't care about the math behind the golden mean as much as I do, I'll spare you the long lecture (although the teacher in me would really like to get into it). If you want to learn more click here. I'll sum up how this ties into her birthday. The golden mean is a wonderful ratio that happens to be (1 + squareroot of 5) : 2. The golden rectangle is simply a rectangle whose length and width are in this ratio. (You can construct one with just a compass and straight edge which is how I got it on the wall.) Any time you cut off a square in the rectangle, the resulting rectangle is another golden one. So you can do this ad-infinitum. And if you construct the arcs in all these squares you get the logarithmic spiral known as the golden spiral. So how does this tie into Fibonacci numbers? The Fibonacci Sequence is the sequence of numbers you get by starting with 1 and 1 and then always adding the two previous numbers to get the next one (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34......) Now here is a cool fact: The limit as n approaches infinity of F sub n+1 divided by F sub n is equal to the golden mean. Or to put it in non-mathy language, the ratio of two consecutive Fibonacci numbers approaches the golden ratio the further you get along in the sequence. (There are other connections but that is the simplest one.) Voila! Is that not just the coolest thing ever? So my little one has a "golden" birthday! I'll conclude this post with a picture of my sleeping Keziah with her "bibonacci" bib on that Aunt Julie gave her. (Yes there are enough of us math dorks out there having kids that some company thought to make this.) Do you get the humor?

Adventures in Sleep

Sleep.....ahhhh what is that again? Yes we are all officially sleep deprived. Keziah hates her cradle. As soon as I put her in it she screams in protest. Even if I wait 30 minutes with her asleep in my arms and then lay her very gently in her cradle, she immediately wakes up and screams. So throughout the course of a night we all change positions several times. Last night, for example, I started on the couch with the baby and Michael Paul went to sleep on the living room floor. Then she started crying so baby and I went to the bedroom hoping to let daddy get some sleep in the living room. Last night I felt brave and tried the "cry it out" thing with her in the cradle. One hour later (yes she cried for an hour straight) I gave up on the cradle once again and put her in the bed with me. Ahhhhh sleep finally found us. At some point Michael Paul came to bed but we were all kinda cramped and a little later he moved to the couch. Then after the 5 AM feeding she decided she wanted to be awake so I came to the couch with her and sent Michael Paul to the bed. But he missed me so eventually he joined us on the couch. And throughout all this, our cat, who insists on sleeping with us, followed us back and forth. By morning somehow all 4 of us managed to get some sleep in this position on the couch.

When I woke up and saw how we all looked, I nudged Michael Paul and told him to hold the camera up and snap a picture.

Thanks to my sis-in-law's recent post about babies and sleep, I have a long list of things to try. But as of today, my only successes are baby and me in the bed and send poor daddy to the couch, or wait until 7AM and then everyone is so tired we will sleep no matter where we are - even all of us cramped on the couch.

I Love Faces

Keziah Rain is 3 weeks old today!

Happy Birthday Michael Paul

Today is Michael Paul's birthday. In the craziness of the last three weeks I neglected to get him anything. So I offered to make him a cake of his choice today. He wasn't interested in that so I offered several other desserts. No - he didn't really care about any of those. I started naming other things he loves that I never make for him and this is what he jumped on - Carrot Juice. Seriously, Michael Paul, carrot juice? Yes this was his big birthday treat - freshly juiced carrot juice (thanks to my mother-in-law who let me borrow her juicer.) I would have much rather made a cake. I hate juicing. I hate prepping the food; I hate how loud the juicer is; I hate the clean up; I hate how 5 lbs of carrots makes 2 small glasses of juice and you essentially throw away 80% of the food. So this was somewhat of a sacrifice on my part and definitely a gift to him. He loved it. He has thanked me several times so far this evening. Did I mention his carrot juice came complete with a candle to blow out? Happy 31 Michael Paul!

What's in a Name?

Name's have always been really important to me. I've always found it fascinating that in the Old Testament children were often named something that symbolized what was going on spiritually in the family or even in Israel. Or parents were told by God what the name would be because it meant something that the child would become. All this to say, I wanted a name that meant something to our family. I did not want to pick a name just because I thought it was pretty or popular. And I really wanted a name that somehow pointed to nature.

During our years of infertility I started praying that God would reveal to me the name He wanted me to give our first child. During that journey, there was a point in time in which I became convicted about the particular scripture verses I was seeking out for comfort. I had been dwelling in the verses about suffering and basically feeding my "woe is me" mentality when the Spirit clearly said "read the ends of the stories." I suddenly realized I was reading scriptures for comfort and stopping before the happy ending came - the promised "joy comes in the morning." I guess I was scared to believe God actually had a happy ending for me. One such specific story was Job's. I stopped dwelling in the first 41 chapters and decided to hang out in chapter 42. As hard as it was to believe that things would one day be better than I ever could have imagined, I started to dare to believe that. And that's when one day while reading Job 42:14, I suddenly felt deep deep in my soul that my daughter would be named Keziah like one of Job's daughters whom the Lord blessed him with after all his suffering. I thought it was a beautiful name and when I found out the name came from a spice tree that grows in Israel (it's similar to cinnamon), that was all the confirmation I needed. The name pointed to nature and would always symbolize to our family that joy does come in the morning; God always redeems and gives back abundantly more than satan or the brokenness of our world could ever take away.

Keziah's middle name Rain is also the result of this spiritual journey. "What's true in the spiritual realm is true in the physical realm." I heard that in church once upon a time. I don't exactly have scripture to back it up but it sure has seemed to be true in my life. If I open my eyes and look around - inevitably what is happening that I can see always seems to symbolize the bigger things happening that I can't see. Maybe this is why I see God in nature so much. If you live near me you might recall that 2007 and 2008 were horrible drought years for us. We had like no rain ever. It was constantly on the news about how bad things were for the local farmers. Many counties instituted water conservation laws and fines. The lakes were at all time low levels. It seemed like we were never going to get rain. We were living in a barren land. And I would laugh and tell Michael Paul, "of course - my barrenness is affecting my whole community." The constant dryness and lack of life that I was seeing in nature reminded me that I too was barren and incapable of supporting life. It felt a little like nature was mocking me. And then 2009 came. And rain came ...and came ....and came. It poured. It flooded. It rained almost everyday in February and March. Our basement flooded bad. And it just kept raining. I remember exactly where I was when one day in April, while driving in the pouring rain, my mom called to tell me that our friend Lauren had told her at church that she felt like God told her to tell me I needed to listen to this song. The song was Every Season by Nicole Nordemon. (click here for lyrics) I knew the song well but felt confused as to why it was supposed to bring me comfort. I started crying and telling my mom, "it's not fair - the theme of that song is that spring comes and brings life and makes all things new and it's pouring down rain here but I am still barren so that song obviously does not apply to me." I got very worked up over it. Looking back now I am ashamed of my lack of faith. It is obvious now what the Lord and all of nature was saying to me at that moment. I was pregnant. Not only was the drought over in our land - it was over in me. It was raining and growing life all around me. And I was growing life within me. It didn't take me long after finding out I was pregnant to decide I had to name my child Rain.

We continued to have lots of rain in 2009 and nature continued to symbolize my spiritual journey throughout my pregnancy. Our Irises bloomed all year. Irises typically bloom for a few weeks in the spring and then that's it. But our irises continued to bloom throughout fall. Even after several frosts and freezes we continued to get flowers. The last one lasted until mid-December. We kept taking pictures of them because it was so bizarre. Every time I left my house or looked out the window, nature (God) said, "look ... life ...spring ...life ...rain...I'm bringing you life."

Introducing Keziah Rain

It's a Girl!

Keziah Rain was born December 28, 2009 at 11:26 PM.

7 lbs 10 oz 20 inches

Here is her birth story:

At 2:30 Monday morning, the 28th my water started leaking. But seeing as how it was the middle of the night and this was my first child, I wasn't exactly sure that that was what was going on. I was expecting water breaking to be some huge gushing event that you couldn't miss. It was just a little so I got a towel and went back to bed. I wasn't having any contractions yet so I thought it would be best to get some sleep. Michael Paul woke up and I told him what was going on. He had no problem going back to sleep. I was wide awake with excitement. At 4 AM, my excitement turned to concern because I wasn't having contractions and I knew with water broken I was somewhat on a time schedule to get the baby out. I went to the couch and listened to one of my hypnobabies cd's and meditated on the thought of oxytocin flowing through my body. Within 30 minutes I was having contractions. Now I was at peace enough to go back to sleep. Looking back it seems weird that I needed the contractions for the peace of mind to get some sleep. They weren't very intense and easy to ignore. Michael Paul came out and snuggled with me on the couch for a while. At 7 AM I got up and took a shower and called my midwife. She suggested I go back to bed and call her back at 10 with an update. So I got another little nap. Micahel Paul was still asleep. At 10, I got Michael Paul up and sent him to the post office and bank. I wanted all our weekly errands done so we could relax for the week. Now my contractions were 3 minutes apart but only 30 seconds long and pretty puny. I gave my midwife Claudia another call. She said I wasn't really in active labor yet but she was going to go ahead and come since my waters were broken. She assured me we could relax a bit on the time thing because I was GBS - negative meaning there was not a high risk for infection. In the meantime I made a chicken salad so everyone would have something to eat and called my sister to tell her to get on the road. We put our plastic mattress cover on the bed and got out our birth kit. It was all so exciting. I was mostly able to do things around the house stopping every now and then to breathe through a contraction. At 1 PM Claudia and Natalie (midwife's apprentice) showed up. I was so excited as they started moving all their medical stuff in that my labor pretty much stopped all together. As we chatted and got things organized I realized nothing was really happening anymore. Claudia noticed as well and sent me and Michael Paul out for a long walk. Finally my labor picked back up. Michael Paul was extra chatty as we walked. He is rarely chatty and I usually love it when he is but I remember being annoyed because I wanted to concentrate on my labor picking up. At 4 my sister showed up and again the excitement stalled my labor. At this point I was so thankful we were not at the hospital because I know I would have been on a pitocin drip by now. Claudia and Natalie continued to check the baby's heart tones and my waters. Everything looked great and I continued to be thankful for every moment I had at home in case we had to transfer to the hospital later. As darkness came, we went for yet another long walk. My contractions started to be more and more in my back and Claudia suspected the baby was trying to turn posterior. This annoyed me to no end because she had been in a perfect LOA position for 6 weeks and after our huge breech scare, the last thing I wanted to deal with was a badly positioned baby. Things didn't really change for a few hours and at 9 PM Claudia decided it was time to intervene. She now classified my labor as dysfunctional and told me (very compassionately) that baby needed to be out soon. She asked me a bunch of questions to determine where I was mentally/ emotionally/ spiritually. I wasn't having any mental/ emotional blocks so we decided to do an internal exam. At this point we learned I was only 2 cm, baby was completely posterior, and she found some scar tissue on my cervix. The next thing I knew I started shaking uncontrollably and things got really intense. I screamed for Michael Paul who had decided to eat dinner at this exact moment. I remember Claudia saying "Michael Paul get in here - this is going to get real intense for a moment." After a few minutes Claudia explained everything to me. She was able to break up the scar tissue and after massaging my cervix for a few minutes, I had dilated to 4 cm. She also said she could already stretch me to 8 cm which was really good news. Baby was completely posterior though. Then she started explaining our next course of action (nipple stimulation, pelvic work) but she had to stop talking because I started having long long intense contractions pretty much back to back. The cervix massage was all I needed to be in active labor. The next two hours were kind of a blur. I was in a trance and focusing on my contractions bringing my baby down. I continued to move throughout the house doing lots of pelvic work and mostly laboring on my hands and knees or bent over whatever I could find. Usually when changing rooms/positions I would have a contraction mid-transit and would have to lean on Michael Paul. He spent a lot of time supporting my full body weight as I labored. I am very thankful for his incredibly strong arms! At 11 PM Claudia checked me again and I was 9 cm. I don't remember her checking me but I have this vague memory of her calling out to Natalie to fill the pool. I was so looking forward to a water birth! The next thing I knew I started spontaneously pushing and Claudia told me to do what my body was telling me to do. Eventually they got me on the birthing stool. I looked at my pool which was about 2 inches full of water and said longingly, "my pool." And Claudia said, "forget the pool - you're having a baby!" I continued to push and 25 minutes later she was out. She had 2 nuchal arms so she came out like superman with her arms in front. She seemed to want out and decided to tear (literally - hahaha) her way into the world! We got some incredible pictures of the birth but they are shall we say rated R so I'm not posting them, but here are more tasteful pics from afterwards:

15 minutes old. She really took to nursing and started

right after this pic was taken.

MP cutting the cord. He got a special knife for this honor which will one day be given to Keziah.

If you are wondering what the little red lobster in the background of those pics is- that's the side of my kiddie pool - my unused kiddie pool that has all of 3 inches of water in it now! But I shouldn't complain -I am glad she came pretty fast even if it meant no water birth!

45 minutes old - MP gets Daddy time while I get a shower.

After they got me all cleaned up (and stitched up), they

tucked me into bed and brought me some food. Then

they did a full newborn exam. That's Natalie in the

picture. Keziah hated this and she was ready to nurse

again when it was over. We were happy to learn she's

absolutely perfect!

Aunt Julie

My totally awesome midwife, Claudia

This is Michael Paul's favorite pic so far. He thinks she looks like a muppet and has taken to calling her that.

After we were all tucked in bed (2:30 AM) we called our parents and shared all the news. Claudia and Natalie and my sister cleaned the whole house for me and put all the towels and sheets in the washer before they left. Then Michael Paul got his guitar and played the special lullaby that he composed for her. We prayed together and blessed our new baby and then the three of us drifted off to peaceful sleep. It was a perfect end to a perfect day. I know I have just stuck to the facts because no words could ever begin to describe the emotions of this day - and really that's ok with me.