Bobbie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Agh. What a 24 hours. Nothing really horrible has happened, it's just the accumulation of nothing getting done that I needed or wanted to do for the last 24 hours.

As some may know, massive storms hit Houston yesterday afternoon. I was upstairs cleaning when I heard the rain start and within the 15 minutes that I was upstairs, our backyard flooded. I came downstairs to find both dogs standing in several inches of water by the back door, looking as if they had lost their best friend in the world. His Royal Highness walked in at this exact moment and told me not to let them in because they were too wet, I should have let them in 20 minutes earlier. I politely informed him that it had only been raining for 15 minutes and I had been upstairs so I didn't know it was that bad. After a too long conversation that amounted to nothing, he finally agreed to help me dry them off and let them in. I think that snoopy was looking for snorkel gear at this point.

During dinner we lost power and it wasn't the type of loss that just quietly bowed out and stayed off. It was going on/off, on/off, on/off until you were ready to pull your hair out. Every electric appliance was making a loud clicking every time it came back on. It finally went out and stayed out. HRH had to leave for school but the princesses and I had a flashlight and candles. I assured him that it probably wouldn't be out for long and we would be fine.

Three hours later I managed to get the girls to bed peacefully after reading a book by candlelight and layed down to read my own book by candlelight. The lights came back on a few minutes before HRH arrived home from school without the hot fudge sundae I had bribed him to bring home. McDonald's was closed! like they didn't have power or something! He did bring a frosty home from Wendy's but it didn't have hot fudge on it. Pregnancy requires hot fudge on rough days.

HRH and I were both up many times throughout the night because of the storms, dogs, and kids. He attempted to go to work this morning but was back within ten minutes because the roads were flooded. It had rained so much during the night that our baby pool had completely filled up from empty and was running over the top. It is at least 11 inches deep.

The morning we spent watching the news to see all the flooding around us. It's crazy. There is a local park that has a small zoo that the girls love. The news helicopter was flying over it showing the workers trying to get the animals out of the water and into trailers to move them to higher ground. I can't help but think that the extremely large pig they have there didn't have a chance to get out alive. It was up to the workers waists and the pig is shorter than that. All the main streets surrounding us were impassible but our subdivision was spared from flooding.

This afternoon was spent cleaning up a lot of poop, which I will spare you the details of.

Now there's dinner to cook, three other people to clean up after, and four walls surrounding me with a forecast of more rain tonight. agh. It's a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I know we're blessed to have a dry house and dry cars but I choose to wallow in self pity and a bad mood for a few hours. I will remain that way until the hot fudge is found.

Why we chose Home Birth

This is an extremely pro home birth, anti hospital blog today. If you choose to read it, please do not get offended. Everyone chooses their own birth and this is just the beliefs that led me to choose home birth.

Whenever I tell anyone that we had both girls here at our home, we always get a similar response, "wow, you're brave" followed by "what if something would have happened?". First of all, I'm not brave. I'm a chicken, seriously. I can't watch anything scarier than a good romantic comedy and I run faster than the road runner when I see a snake. Bravery has nothing to do with home birth.

I chose home birth because I believe that God gave women a gift of power and strength that no man can understand. That gift is birth.

Almost 7 years ago I was at the hospital for the birth of my first niece. I was so excited and couldn't wait to see her. Something did not seem right to me though. There was no excitement, no one encouraging the women to believe in themselves. There was just medicine and women staying flat on their backs in bed. My brother wasn't involved in the labor, there was no reason to be. My now former sister-in-law had a strong epidural and was laying in bed watching Jerry Springer. I wasn't sure what was missing at the time but I knew that it wasn't what I wanted one day. When I went back the next day to finally be able to hold my niece for the first time she was only brought to the room for a short amount of time and my sister-in-law was offered Vicotin. She could have one or two, whatever she wanted. Once again, I just felt in my heart that I did not want that same experience. I did not want my child taken away to a nursery at all after birth. I didn't want them in the hands of a stranger for the first few hours when I should be the one bonding with them. I wanted to be able to nurse without giving the baby drugs that were in my system. It was a very eye opening experience. By today's standards, it was a great birth with nothing going wrong. But I knew that I just wanted different.

I started researching online different birth options and had my heart set on a birth center birth even before I was married! ha! Birth centers basically give you the same experience as home birth except you are at a facility that is made to look homey but is not your home. In freestanding birth centers, apart from a hospital, there are no drugs or medical interventions. Most hospitals today are calling their birth wings, birth centers. This is no where near the same thing. They may offer you natural birth but they will still have all the medical interventions available and more than ready to be used if the labor is not progressing quick enough. Sorry for the rabbit trail.

I wanted a birth center because I was too chicken to have a baby at my house! I told you I was a chicken.

When we found out that we were pregnant with out first child, Damion humored me by visiting a birth center with me. I poured over literature from the Internet about the pros and cons of a natural birth vs. a hospital birth and then passed that information onto His Royal Highness. We decided to use the birth center at first but later had conflicts with the midwife there and left the center while we were still very early in the pregnancy. The next closest birth center was over an hour away and I didn't want to drive that far in labor. So our only option left was a home birth.

We quickly found our future midwife, Cathy Rude, who gave me my now favorite book named "A Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth" by Henci Goer. I have read this book many times now and I would read it again but someone has my copy. The book confirmed for me what I had felt in my spirit. Basically the book is extremely natural birth and anti hospital. It really is. But it gave me a clear picture of the interventions that hospitals use and I knew that God gave me the power not to need the interventions for a healthy birth. (*note - there are some births that are not health that need the hospital and I am thankful for that option to be there, if needed)

What I have found in research and through friends since this first book is that many times doctors want your birth to be on their time table, and not your bodies time. Not all doctors are this way, but many are. Many times the intervention process begins with a doctor recommending induction because either they will say that the baby is getting too large or you're too close to 40 weeks. Let's remember that it is alright to have your baby at 40 weeks. So they will admit you to the hospital for induction. The second you step into the hospital, you are on a timer. They normally give women 12 hours to have a baby or they will label you "failure to progress" and give you a lovely C-section. Pitocin, the medicine given to stimulate contractions and labor, is a very hard drug that gives you unrealistic contractions. Women will have to have an epidural if you have pitocin. An epidural can many times mess with the babies heart rate, slowing it down a little. This is a cause for concern and can land you in a C-section. If the epidural does not effect the baby than many times the pitocin can be too hard on the baby because of the hard contractions. Again this causes heart problems for the baby or fetal distress. At this point you will either land in a C-section or they will say that the baby has to come out now and you have to push. The epidural can make pushing hard which causes them to use the vacuum or forceps and definitely do a nice episiotomy. If any of this except the epidural sounds appealing, let me know. So then your baby will be delivered and possibly still be sleepy from the epidural. There are times that women enter the hospital, are given and epidural and have a great healthy baby the way that they want to. This is great for them but I've always known that it is not what I wanted.

Think about your friends and how many women are now induced. The numbers are staggering. How many women are threatened with a C-section if they are not progressing fast enough for the hospital? Then look at the numbers of healthy women that have C-sections. The numbers are through the roof. I really can only think of one friend of mine that refused an induction and went into labor naturally within the last two years. I might be wrong, correct me if I am.

I know that God gave me the power to have my children and that doctors weren't needed as long as my pregnancy was healthy and no problems were present during my labor. HRH and myself chose to stay home and birth with midwives. I loved being back in my own bed immediately after labor. I loved knowing that this was my home that I shared with my husband and that this is where our first and second children would be born. Our children were born in the time that my body needed to have them and born so alert. It was a blessed experience. Now I know that if I could do that with God's help, I can knock down the walls of Jericho.

Some great resources to help explore more about natural birth are:
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Birth by Henci Goer (book)
The Business of Being Born by Ricki Lake (DVD)
www.christianmidwife.net - midwifery services of Cathy Rude
www.fruitfulvinemidwifery.com - midwifery services of Natalie Womack
www.houbirth.org

Princess Goofy

Time flies when you're having fun and changing diapers, wiping noses, solving fights, cleaning crayon off the walls, etc....

Clara turns 3 today. I can't believe it that my surprise baby, the one that we definately did not plan or expect to show up, will be three years old! I remember nights with two babies just hoping to get through that one night. Now I can't imagine life without those nights. Here comes the pregnant hormonal water works again. Just a warning.

We found out we were pregnant with Clara when I was already in my second trimester. Yes, we kinda did know but I wasn't ready to face reality yet so I just made a thousand other excuses for the nausea and tiredness. I had an infant at home so those excuses were easy to believe.

Clara had stomach issues and colic that left us totally not knowing how to help her as a baby. It tore our hearts apart to hear her scream and cry when she was in pain. It was such a hard time in our lives. But the second she learned how to smile, the hardness went away.

She has so much life in her. Her chuckle would put Santa Clause to shame and her smile can get her the keys to pretty much anything. She is so goofy and so fun to be around. I can't even find words to express the beautiful clown that she is. You just have to know her.

I never know where I will find her asleep during naptime as she moves all around the upstairs and burrows under covers or drapes. She is obsessed with her frog boots and now her yellow circle shoes (crocs). I have never met a child that loves animals as much as she does but yet is so afraid of real animals. She is best form of complex that I have ever seen. She can have her meltdowns and her rainy days but she bounces back quickly.

So once again, I cannot pick just a few pictures of her. Here's a few pictures of my bald to wild hair beauty, Princess Goofy.....

I hope there isn't really a stairway to heaven.... cause I'll fall down it...

I took pictures of my garden the other day and had planned to put them up this week for you to see. I also had lots of fun crafts planned to show you as I get ready for my girls princess dinosaur birthday party. The felt banner was just begging to be made! But it had to happen...

Last night I decided to do the electric slide all the way down our stairs, from the very top to the very bottom. Ok, so there was nothing electric about it. However the good thing that I found out halfway down is that I can still do the splits. I'm approaching 30, pregnant, and still able to do the splits.

Really though, I'll be OK. The baby seems to be doing great. I just decided to take her on her first slide a few months early. She's kicking like Mia Hamm and moving more every hour.

My knee didn't fare as well. I seem to have torn a little ligament on the side of my knee and will be in a brace and moving slowly for a few weeks. Surgery to fix it is not an option until after the baby is born. However, I know that I will be fine. I know this because I believe that Christ died on the cross for me and for this baby. Belief makes hard things easier. It does not stop the hard times from coming and it doesn't mean that I'll never fall down the stairs again. But I have faith that tells me that the end I'm promised is worth every single step I stumble on upon the way.

So if you want to come help me clean my house before the birthday party this weekend, don't hesitate to call! Actually other people cleaning my house bugs me silly. But I will be accepting donations of cars and large amounts of cash. :)

Hopefully when I can get downstairs to get the camera tomorrow I'll be able to put up the garden pictures. I promise not to fall down them this time.