Warning: Contains Graphic Birth Photos!!
Jodie and I wrote our versions of this day separately, yet they seem to just go together! We decided to combine the two different perspectives into one miraculous story…
The date is the 24th April. I am 13 days overdue and have an appointment with the obstetrician in the morning to discuss the babies wellbeing. I am avoiding being induced. Continue reading
My dear little son,
I sit here and write this, and you are lying stretched out on the bed beside me fast asleep. You’re only five days old. The love I have for you is so huge, and yet so undeserved. It has been causing me to reflect on how it is possible for God to have had so much love for us, even before we acknowledge Him. How we don’t earn His love in any way. You haven’t given me anything yet. To bring you into the world brought me certain amounts of pain, and these first few days haven’t been comfortable. My breasts ache and everytime you feed I’m pretty much in agony, but it’s all worth it. It’s worth it just to have you exist. Nathan is at an age where he has just started announcing, I love you when we say it to him. He is helping me out and he is obedient, and all of those things bring a smile to my face. But I have the same love for you as I do for him. God’s love for every single human being is even more unthinkable than that. Both for those that love Him and for those who don’t yet acknowledge Him.
I feel like we have been on a huge journey with you my boy. I’m sure could write a novel about your story this far. My faith has been increased more than I thought possible through all of the events of your life, starting at the very beginning. Your daddy and I desperately wanted you to join us. I wanted Nathan to have a sibling close in age to him. God had been challenging me throughout my previous pregnancy about trusting Him with my family. With the timing of my family. Nathan was a joyful, unexpected surprise. The concept of ‘unplanned’ had begun to bug me. God is in absolute control of our bodies, and of our lives. We had given Him over everything, and I was led to think that should probably include our family as well.
But there was a big question in my heart about timing. It was more a doubt I guess. Seriously, if we just throw our trust into God’s ability to plan our family, then of course we will have another baby straight away. I definitely doubted God’s ability to space our children out. But I felt very strongly led to put that into God’s hands. So we did. After Nathan was born, we didn’t try to stop falling pregnant. I was happy to have two children close together, so it wasn’t as strong a faith thing for me. But month after month went by and we didn’t fall pregnant. And I was in shock to be honest. God could actually space these kids out!
At one point, just before Nathan turned one, we thought we may be pregnant again. We had an early ultrasound, and instead of the little baby that we expected, they found cysts on my ovaries. After more tests, I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). It explained a lot and looking back I could see symptoms from many years back. It is also one of the biggest causes of infertility in women. It suddenly made me think twice about the unacknowledged miracle that Nathan was, and threw my doubting God into a completely different direction. Now it became about whether God COULD bring us another child.
Looking at it now, I can see that it just may be a tool that God is using to space our family. Or that God called us to put our faith in Him regarding our family knowing that there would only be a limited number of times a year that we could be blessed with another child.
More months passed and my doctor raised the possibility of using drugs to try and conceive. I had spoken to many women who had the same condition, one in particular who had fallen pregnant with her first unexpectedly, and then conceived her second after some time with this medication. Her story was very similar to mine. I felt torn. I know that God works through the medical system. But I also knew that He had specifically led us to trust in His timing. So I battled it through, talking it out with Tim, and made the decision to leave it in God’s hands. That was not an easy decision to make, sadly. I wish that it had been easier, and I had been more willing to completely abandon myself and trust Him.
God always comes through. It was only about a week after I had made this firm decision that we went on a church camp. During one service, I prayed for healing over my body. I prayed for God’s will to be done concerning our family, and I got a strong sense of peace. I was convinced that I was well.
You were conceived either on that camp, or a few days after. I don’t think that was a mistake. That was God stretching me and increasing my faith. That was God’s timing.
During the first few weeks of my pregnancy, I was very anxious. Statistically my rates of miscarriage were higher, and the devil wasn’t allowing me to forget it. I had painful cramping for weeks and weeks, and it felt like an eternity, but we finally got through that stage.
You are staring up at me right now, with your hand on your ear looking blissfully content. I am so blessed to be your mum!
When I was six months pregnant with you we went as leaders to a youth conference. It was a great time, and I spent a lot of it praying about you, and the little champion you will one day become. Dedicating your life to God and just beginning to sow some prayer time into you. I got a strong sense that the spirit of God would be upon your life. During that time, your daddy and I started talking about Aunty Rosy and her death, and we made a decision to start looking at it and dealing with it again.
At one stage while I was driving home with a car full of youth girls, I got teary thinking about Rosy. It had been a while since I had cried like that. No more than ten minutes afterwards, we had to stop to help with an accident. It was God’s incredible timing. I stayed with a teenage girl, a similar age to Rosy, while she struggled to hold onto life. I prayed like crazy and I begged God to intervene. It wasn’t His will. She died while I was holding her hand. I prayed for God to raise her from the dead. He didn’t. Not this time. But I felt like it was a privilege to have been there. To have had that opportunity.
One day, when I pray, the dead will rise. Because the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead lives in me. And you my son, shall have a double blessing of that. You too, will see the dead rise. I believe it. That’s why I called you Elisha. It’s what God has been doing in my heart over the time I was pregnant with you.
The pregnancy progressed, and my tummy was still pretty small. A few weeks of reduced measurements, and my general uneasiness over your growth caused us to have a growth ultrasound done. It wasn’t good. Most of your measurements were normal, but your stomach showed reduced growth. Essentially your belly was sacrificing itself for your head to try and maintain normal brain function. At the same time, my health looked like it was deteriorating. My blood pressure was high and my blood tests weren’t normal. My midwife put me on a high protein diet and we tried hard to try and correct the issue, or at least make it not so severe. I had to be at the hospital every few days to have monitoring done. On one trip I had the CD player up, and I was singing ‘My God is Able.’
God is with us.
He will go before.
He will never fail us.
And I just felt such a peace about everything.
We had another scan just over a week later, and miraculously it showed that everything was fine. There was no way that the first scan could have been that wrong, but also no way that you could have fixed yourself that quickly. God’s hand was all over it. It was yet another miracle to add to the growing list surrounding your existence. My health slowly improved, though I didn’t feel one hundred percent until after you were born.
Your Grammy has said that it feels like the devil is trying all of his tricks to stop your life before you even get a chance, and it definitely feels like that.
My pregnancy neared my due date, and we expected you to come. Nathan was a week early, and looked very over cooked. But it came and went, and there was no sign of you coming any time soon.
We had a fire on the block that Grammy & Grampy had just bought. It threatened the house and burnt through several of the paddocks. I was helping them, along with daddy, try to put the fire out, but it was a lost cause. At one point I found myself trapped in the smoke and I couldn’t get fresh air. It was actually really scary. I had a cough from all of the smoke that was around and the fire brigade called a paramedic to take me to Laidley Hospital just to check your heart rate and make sure you weren’t affected. God proved His faithfulness again. The fire came right up to the house, but the house wasn’t burnt and none of us were hurt. It was a rather stressful event and I was quite surprised that it wasn’t enough to send me into labour.
Nathan is sitting here playing over your head with a rattle. He has so much love for you!
We approached the two week overdue mark, and I definitely didn’t want an induction. I balanced the risks of an induction versus the risks of being overdue, and decided very strongly that the risks of induction were stronger. There is no increased risk until the 42 week mark anyway, so I was praying that you would come before then and I wouldn’t have to worry about what to do if I went over that. I had an appointment booked for Tuesday, 13 days over, at the hospital to have an ultrasound and discuss the options with an obstetrician. I didn’t make that appointment. You were born instead! But that’s a whole other story.
I love you my son. I’ve loved you before you were born, before you were conceived. But your God loves you more.
So, we had hoped to come home from Perth into an almost ready house…. As anyone who has built or renovated a house would know, nothing ever happens as planned! We did however get out of the rental by the time we left for Perth!
We got home to no working cars, Sara’s dad had taken ours up to North QLD for the school holidays as his car had stopped working when he went to leave. So the first few days were spent fixing cars. At least they were easy fixes, just inconvenient. We ordered the acrylic for our Bathroom, and before we knew it, it was time for our Church camp. After an amazing, but busy, weekend of Church camp, we are finally back into working on the house, and things have moved quickly!
More and more of the walls have been prepared for painting, but there are still more to do. We still need to prepare all the windows as well. The bathroom has been progressing steadily, and finally we have a flushing toilet, with a toilet seat! (Apparently our previous toilet, without seat, with bucket flush, didn’t count). The cold water is now running, and the hot water system frame is ready for installing. Once the hot water system is installed then we’ll have running hot water too! The solar panels are installed, but until the power meter is changed for a smart meter, we can’t use them. 🙁 The bathroom acrylic for the shower/bath has been cut and is ready to install, so soon we’ll get an idea of what it looks like, we’re a little worried the colour won’t be as bright as we thought, but until we can take the protective covers off the acrylic, we can’t tell!
Having power (without having to start a generator) has been amazing, and now having running water at the turn of a tap, is almost equally as amazing! We’ve also fox proofed the chook pen, although it’s only a small one for now, and Molly who is supposed to guard them, has been trying to eat them!
Nathan has been growing in to such a little boy, its awesome to watch. He now talks lots, although still likes to parrot everything you say. He loves Elisha, and tries to help us look after him. Elisha has really started to develop his character, and no longer looks like a little newborn. He laughs and gurgles and is just so cute. He often gets passed around from girl to girl, especially at church and worship group. Sometimes we have to use excuses to get him back! He’s not letting us have as much sleep as we’d like, but at least we are getting more than a few months back.
It’s been a busy day for me, and I’m tired, so that’s all for now. We’ll try to keep the blog updated more often!
So, the next part of our Crazy Adventure (life) starts.
Our new place (Part of Sara’s parents new place) hasn’t yet got power connected (the pole is in place), no doors yet, and still has lots to be done. But today we informed our realestate that we’d be out of our house in 2 weeks time. Yep, in 2 weeks we’ll have packed everything up, moved it all to the new place, and be living… somewhere.
We actually have 4 weeks to get stuff finished. In 2 weeks we head to Perth for Helene’s wedding, and all my exams. It turned out easier to do my exams in Perth, than to fly after 2 exams, arrive in time for the wedding, then do my last exam on the Monday, all in a very short space of time.
So, that means we have 4 weeks to finish our “house”. The best way to think of the house is to divide it up into it’s parts. It’s being built out of old arm barracks, so we are taking 3 “rooms” and building a house inside them. Each room is approximately 30 square meters, although one is bigger. The bigger of the 3 rooms is what we are calling the common room. It’ll have a kitchen, lounge and dining room all in one, and can be used by everyone at the new place. So when people are around for worship group or someone staying in the crisis accommodation they’ll use that room for kitchen/lounge/dining. This room now has a ceiling, and the kitchen is in there waiting to be put in. A bit of work on the walls still has to happen, and a coat of paint before the kitchen can be put in properly. Oh, and there is a hole in the floor where we’ve taken out an old entranceway and we’ll rebuild the floor so you’ll never know it was different.
The next room down, with a door into the dining area, is split into 2 rooms. One side is a bathroom and laundry, fairly spacious compared with our current place, and this will be the “common” bathroom for our side. The “complex” is rather big, so it’ll be the common bathroom for people on our side of the complex. The other half of this room is our lounge room. Probably a similar size to our current one. This room has a ceiling, and also has the wall frames up, the bathtub frame in (waiting for plumbing to be finished before it gets permanently locked in), a toilet (without cistern atm), the laundry cupboard, bench and tub, and the internal sliding door. Still to be done includes painting, plumbing, doors between the lounge and other areas, and wall paneling.
The next room down is divided into 2. One of these is our bedroom, and one is the kids room. It was going to be divided into 3, so I’d get a study, but it’s been changed into 2 now, with my study being part of our bedroom but kinda around the corner. It works out better and is more flexible for the future. This room currently has nothing, just the door frame from the lounge, and the outside door that was already there. The old ceiling came down today in preparation for the new one, and until today, it housed our kitchen as it was one of the first rooms that was watertight when the new roof was done.
The reason there aren’t any pictures of the layout for you, is each time I do them up, the plan gets changed! So I figure I’ll wait until the wall frames are in, and then at least the plan is more fixed in place.
So in the next 4 weeks, we have ceilings, painting, plumbing, walls, kitchens, doors and plenty more to do! And I’ve no idea when the floors will get done!
Today as a test we started stripping the paint off a window for cleaning it up and repainting. The outside of some windows is very weathered so needs a decent sanding back once all the paint has been stripped. Surprisingly, once sanded the beautiful silky oak wood colour came through really nicely. The windows were previously painted white, but it looks like we much just varnish/oil the windows and go for the beautiful wood colour. This has made me very excited, as we have hardwood floors that will polish up beautifully (similar colour to Jarrah), VJ ceilings, and traditional VJ walling (half way up the existing walls) and VJ paneling for all new walls. So while the ceilings and walls will be painted, the floors and windows (and maybe door frames) will be beautiful woody colours!
So thats just the craziness of the new house! We still have the craziness of packing up and cleaning the old place, doing uni assignments (I’ve got one left this semester) and studying for exams! But lifes an Adventure, and we like crazy adventures, boring adventures are just so boring!
And I’ve not even started on the kids. Elisha has put on so much weight, he’s now around 11 lbs, looking so much bigger than when he was born. We aren’t getting great nights of sleep, but he’s getting better at sleeping longer. Nathan is talking heaps, and loves doing his sight cards. Molly (the dog) has already moved to the new place, and for some reason is very lonely and has tried everything she can to get back home here. She’s chased Sara (and Me) down the driveway a few times, she sneaks into peoples cars and hides there all day hoping they won’t notice her at home time. But other than that, she loves the block, has plenty of room to run around, wildlife to discover, and motorbikes to run with. I’m really enjoying having her there and can understand how people working/living out in rural places end up with a dog as their best friend. She’s generally not fussed with all the building noises, and often comes in to see what we are doing. If you hadn’t noticed, life at the moment involves the new place a lot, we are there almost everyday. Nathan loves playing there, and we have many cute photos of him trying to help with the building. He’s learnt how to hammer in nails with a real hammer, as well as how to hit himself in the head with the hammer. He’s learnt that shoes are important on a building site, although he hasn’t dropped anything on his feet yet. He tries to help Sara with denailing salvaged wood, and he knows that the fire is not to be played with, although that’s taken some teaching as early on he threw his shoes in the fire! He’s no longer as scared when the aircompressor turns on, and he’s learnt to be scared of snakes (that’s an inbuilt fear I’m sure), even if they are friendly carpet pythons. And best of all, he gets to see “bikes” up close (motorbike), which he’s developed a keen ear for hearing from a long way off, and points them out when we are driving along.
Thats all for now, more to come soon.
