Convoluted Emotional Implications, Part One:

When we first moved here (I'm going waaay back to the beginning) our intention was to rent very short-term and try to be in a house by the time Jamie was born. As we began our search, we quickly realized that it would take an act of God to get things moving that fast. We began to resign ourselves to cramming three kids into this tiny apartment. Or at least, J did. Right up till the last minute I was still holding out hope that we'd somehow make it in time.

Most of you know that a few short weeks before we moved, our friends suddenly and unexpectedly lost their baby girl to an unknown virus. Also, my sister had just had a baby and sent her husband back to Iraq for the final months of his deployment. Picking up stakes and moving away when all of them were in such pain and sorrow was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I felt as though I had abandoned some of the people closest to me in a time when they needed me the most. I think it's an "oldest child" issue...

J and I lived in Virginia for over 20 years. It was home. Moving here-- leaving the only home our kids and our marriage had ever known-- was very hard. It wasn't a move we "chose". We left out of financial necessity. We came here specifically because we felt it was where the Lord was leading us and we've continued to feel that it was the right choice to make, but it was/is still a hard one.

So the last months of my pregnancy were fraught with emotions-- above and beyond the normal pregnancy hormone emotions. To say the least. During the day on Friday, as I progressed through the early stages of what turned out to finally be "real labor", it all came crashing down on me. For about two hours, right before the midwife came, I cried with each ctx. And cried. And cried. I think that's what made J decide to call them.

I cried because I couldn't go outside and walk around in my own yard. I cried because Judah and Sofi had no one that they knew to come and care for them (although people from church offered, Judah was still so shy and fearful at that point that we decided to keep them with us). I cried because my mom couldn't be there. I cried, remembering Gwen's tiny little perfect body that looked just like she had the last time I held her, only she wasn't there anymore... I cried thinking about not being able to sit and nurse Jamie while Susi nursed Gracie and we joked about who's baby was fatter. I cried when the midwife came in and set up the stuff because I didn't want to have my baby here, in this strange place, with all these strangers around (one of the assistants I had never even met), in this cramped place where we couldn't even walk from one side of the room to the other without crawling over equipment and furniture.

As I look back on those afternoon hours, I think I really just talked myself out of having that baby right then. I wanted so badly NOT to do it that way, that I simply didn't.

So then, at 8:00, everything just stopped. The midwife checked me-- 2 cm. Everyone packed up and left and J went to lie down to try to get some sleep.