"Mommy, what are those marks on your tummy?"

Keeping it real

My sweet five year old was kissing his newest sibling good night and asked me question I've been waiting for, "Mommy, what are those marks on your tummy?"
"Those are from having so many babies. Mommy loves those marks. I love having all of you guys!"
"Those are from having so many kids?"
"Yes, Zach. They are Mommies reminders of you guys. They are special."

Battle scars. Those "marks" are battle scars. My husband once told me that as he has "grown up" in fatherhood and husband-hood, he has come to see the changes motherhood has caused to me as sacrifice. I have stretch marks everywhere. They won't fade enough for me, but that doesn't matter. They are reminders of how blessed I have been. If my husband doesn't find them gross and ugly, why should I worry.

Diabetic Mother With "Many" Children

I am a diabetic. I have been since I was 9 year old. That's 18 years. It has been a very hard thing, but I think it can also be viewed as a blessing. I struggle everyday, but the Lord is good and has blessings in this struggle, I'm sure.

I am a mother. I have been for nearly 6 years now. I have had 5 children. My first birth had to be planned to ensure the pediatric hospital that was attached to hospital I was delivering at would have the needed staff on hand. That meant a cardiologist, pediatric cardio-thorasic surgeon, and a number of other staff. I was induced and hated it. I was exhausted and threw up the entire labor and delivery process. My next three were all c-sections because #2 was breech and 11 pounds, #3 was 12 pounds, and #4 was 11 pounds again. My 5th baby was a c-section due to head size (45.2 weeks at time of delivery). :)

I recently had an online conversation with another diabetic I've been friends with for years. She has one daughter and wants to start trying for another one. Her doctors told her they would not give their blessing until her A1C is 7 or below. I had three babies with A1C numbers of 9 or over, thanks to doctors fighting for control of my diabetes. I gave her my advice and blessing, pledging my undying support for her no matter what she decided. She lacks all support except from her husband. Heartbreaking...absolutely heartbreaking. 

That conversation brought to my attention how blessed I truly am. I told the doctors to, basically, go screw themselves and had babies as God has seen fit. He has been so good to me and blessed me with my children. I would consider my children blessings even with birth defects. That fact alone is a gift from God. He allowed me to get diabetes, which I hate, but He has blessed me even with this disease. He took my heart and changed it to trust Him with our family size and fertility. In that step of faith, He met me and my husband and has blessed us, just because He's so good.

We are all at different places in our faith. Not everyone is at a place to trust the Lord with their family size. Not everyone is at a place to stop going to the doctor or to give up medicine (like me, I am not at the place right now and I may never be). The beautiful thing about God is that He meets us where we are. Right now, our family doesn't regularly attend church, but the Lord is always in our hearts, on our lips, and in our lives. Prayer and worship are in our daily life. The Lord understands our situation and blesses us where we are. He meets us where we are. 

My friend, I know you are not at a place to simply let go and trust God, but I pray that He will bless you as you seek Him more and trust His will, even in small ways. Small ways build up to big ways. Trusting God with one pregnancy and one babies's life has lead us to trust Him with our family size and  to five amazing babies! I pray for you daily and my heartbreaks that you are so alone in this moment. From 1200 miles away, let me hug you and love you when you need support. I only have my husband's support as well. It is tough, but you can do it. Have faith, and if you cannot, I will have faith for you. I'm praying for you!

A Shout Out To My Husband

I LOVE YOU!
WORLD, I LOVE MY HUSBAND!

P.S. you look nice in your uniform
That is all. :)

The New Normal

I have five children now. Life is the same as it was before my fifth baby's birth. The only real difference is that I have a baby strapped to me most of the day and I am co-sleeping again and nursing all the time. I nursed Ziva (21 months old) until she was 19 months old, so I nursed almost all of my pregnancy so nursing hasn't really changed. 

Rhett -  2 Days Old

The new normal is better than I could have ever imagined. My baby nurses like a champ, sleeps like a champ as well, and is well loved by all his family. His siblings fight over who gets to hold him and who gets to watch him while Mama runs to the restroom. I sit, watching my kids, all five,  and am completely blown away by God's grace and mercy. He has blessed me more than anyone in my life ever imagine and certainly more than I could have hoped. 

Ziva, the little Mama in our house

We haven't gotten back to homeschooling yet because we've had Grandma and Gran here back to back and nothing gets done when we have family visiting. It's okay. I'm not going to waste their time with family pushing reading and math because I'm told it's more important. We see them for a short time each year. We'll just push school into the summer. 

My cooking has...suffered. We are eating a lot of processed stuff mainly because I've gotten some sweet deals on it and I need the ease of it. Slowly but surely I am getting back to our natural, unprocessed way of life. The real kickoff for that is Thanksgiving. Nothing processed will be at our meal. I cannot wait! We have Gran visiting us (my mother-in-law) and there is a huge surprise in store as well! I am so excited! I hope to have my camera out so I can share photos with you when the surprise is revealed. Did I say I'm so excited?

Daddy playing ball with the boys while Mommy heals

My husband's career has also finally seen progress. He reports to his new unit soon and will finally know what's going on with potential deployments, promotion potential, and reenlistment. After 2 years of training and 3 years of waiting, we are seeing progress! I am praising the Lord for every great thing He has blessed us with. It doesn't seem like much to people in our lives, but it's important to us.

As far as post baby life for me, it's been great. I healed fast. I feel great. I felt great about a week after. I've pushed myself faster, further, and harder after this c-section. At the same time, if I hurt, I stopped. It's been so nice and such a blessing.

Our new normal is great. It's blessed by the Lord and I haven't been this content or happy with life ever.  My husband is seeing success at work, which is a blessing for everyone. The kids are being kids and are blessing me at every turn, even in their anger, exhaustion, and fighting. God is so good to me!

Rhett Laze's Birth Story

Rhett Laze - Two Days Old

My fifth child, my third son, was born on October 24, 2013. Why has it taken so long to write a birth story? Well, I haven't been overwhelmed by having a fifth really. I've been overwhelmed by people visiting!  It has been such a gift but has made blogging rather difficult. I think blogging can take a back seat for now.

So here is the birth story I wrote when he was two weeks old that has just been waiting to get posted:

On October 24, 2013, our family welcomed our youngest sweet one into the world. His name is Rhett and he was born at 11:44pm via c-section. His birth was not how I had hoped it would be or planned, but God has blessed us and I am overjoyed to have him in our lives. He is a gift from God and so was his birth. This is not a story about a natural birth or the VBA3C I had been praying for, and I do feel a bit defeated in that. Defeated is a strong enough word...I feel like I failed and made the wrong choice. Even though I have such strong feeling of second guessing my choice, it is a beautiful story nonetheless. 

On Friday, October 18, my contractions began coming regularly every 10 minutes, but they were still nothing I noticed. I had a doctors appointment and non stress test on Tuesday (the 15), and was checked for dilation and found no progress (3cm and 75% effaced). I was a bit disappointed, but at least that gave us a point to know when "change" happened. I set my deadline for a VBA3C for Saturday (October 19). Well, unfortunately for me, Saturday came and went. I pushed it till Sunday and then that flew by as well. It was so difficult to see those deadlines come and go. I was saddened and frustrated. I began my struggle to find peace. 

The morning of October 23, my contractions picked up in intensity. I could no long ignore them, but I could easily work through them, making dinner, doing bed time with my four children, hanging out with my husband, and cleaning. They were still ten minutes apart, nothing new. October 24, I had a non stress test again that morning and they registered very strongly on the monitor, but since they weren't new and baby was doing well through them, I was sent home.  I sent my husband a text saying it was his turn to try inducing labor…and we all know what that means. ;-)  We were on a time table, he was leaving for training in a few days and wanted to witness this little one's birth. He's missed two out of the first four, he didn't want to miss the fifth. So, we tried our natural induction when I got home from the doctor and I wound up with bloody show later, but nothing I was concerned about. Nothing that screamed "Lady! You're in labor!"

My contractions continued, I timed them for an hour, 5 minutes apart, but then I stopped because I got busy with dinner and playing with the kids. They would get closer together then get further apart all the time, I wasn't in labor. Well, when dinner and dinner clean up was done, I sat down and found that they were still 5 minutes apart. Decision time, my husband had to work in the morning, do we go in early enough so if it's a false alarm we can still make it home for a few hours of sleep or do I wait until the morning to see if I'm in labor. I wasn't convinced, but my husband was anxious to get this baby here. At 6:30pm, I was convinced, we sent grandma to the store while we got ready. 7pm, we were out the door and ready to have a baby…well, he was hopeful, I was less than convinced. On the way we chatted, we laughed, we were becoming very convinced that this was not labor. It wasn't painful at all, in fact, I didn't even notice more the contractions. I almost had him turn around, but we had committed to going and getting check. We got to the hospital, parked in the parking ramp and waddled my butt up to L&D just before 9pm. I checked in but there were so many women in the rooms there, I had to wait to be triaged for 20 minutes or so. No big deal, not labor. I had to use the rest room at this point, which confirmed I was still bleeding, but it looked like cervical change bleeding, nothing impressive. The doctor came in, decided to check me, convinced no baby would come tonight. Ok, we'd still get 4-5 hours of sleep before my husband had to leave for work. (The fact that he had to be to work at 4am was the reason we went in when we did. If we hadn't, I would have waited until my water broke, probably some time the next day) He started getting ready to go home. I did too.

She checked me. "Hmmm," she said. "What does that mean?" I asked, my husband's face lit up. "Well, we're going to get you an IV and we're going to have a baby soon." My husband's face was so excited. He sent text messages to everyone, especially the superiors at work so they knew he wouldn't be there since we thought we'd be waiting until 2am to have this sweet baby. I was 4cm, completely effaced, and my water was ready to break. He was coming soon one way or the other. I was kind of sad to be in the hospital at this point, but I had made my choice on going in to get checked and had the support from my family to be there. I do think that part of me will always question whether I should have waited and labored at home and fought for a VBA3C, but I cannot live questioning it. It takes away from my joy and I will not let that happen! If we had waited, I have no doubts we might have had a baby at home or an emergency situation. I'm glad I don't have to worry about which one it might have been. 

Well, things went fast from that point. The entire staff was in shock that I lacked any pain with the contractions. They kept telling me as soon as the spinal block got done I wouldn't feel them. People, if that's all my contractions were like until I was seriously into labor or my water broke, I could handle that with ease. Anyway, I labored in a bed for a couple hours until they had an OR open and staff ready. I went back and waited some more for this anesthesiologist resident to do my spinal. I've had four spinals and an epidural done…this was the longest and worst experience I've ever had. It hurt ten times worse than any contractions and he didn't even do a very good job. I ended up needing more medication twice through my IV just to not feel the pain of the surgery! 11:20pm, I was finally on my back on the table, my husband was brought in and they started. Ok, My husband was standing watching them do it. No big deal for him but I kind of wanted a little encouragement as this was the worse c-section ever…ok, not ever, but it was hard. There was a lot more pushing to get him out than with the other kids. I asked him a few times to focus on me. I couldn't breathe as they pushed. He had to focus on coaching me through the breaths. He did great. 11:44pm, he was out and I needed more pain meds. I got to see him for two seconds after they cleaned him up. 10 pounds 14 ounces. 21.5 inches long. Blood sugar of 55. The low range of high so they took him to the NICU and treated him with both and IV and bottles after I told them one or the other. Since I couldn't have that fight in the NICU, I let it go and prayed. God watched over him and blessed us with an easy transition to breastfeeding after the bottles. Another answered prayer!

He spent 2 days in the NICU, but hasn't looked back since. He's lost a pound, but that's what happens when mom is pumped full of fluids before birth. He nurses like a champ, sleeps like a sweet baby should, and has such a pleasant demeanor. The kids all love him and that is a great plus. No jealousy. No rivalry. No issues so far. I'm praying we are blessed with an easy transition. 

Since my sweet Rhett was born, I've struggled with my choice of delivery. I do wish I had labored at home, I do wish I'd push for a VBA3C. I regret my choice to go in when I did and let the staff kind of bully me into a c-section, but I will continue to fight for peace in my choice and I WILL ALWAYS love my sweet baby and his birth story. I am blessed by his arrival and cannot imagine my life without him or any of his siblings.

Week 33-34 Update

Well, I had another OB appointment, which happened to be the same day as my growth ultrasound. It took 6 hours to get to the doctors office and home, but that's alright. My sitter was late, so it wasn't my fault. I'm just thankful I had a sitter.

It was tough news for me to hear. Baby is growing "normally", which is awesome new. However, his head is measuring 5 weeks ahead of the estimated due date they have on file (so between 3-4 weeks ahead of the due time frame I came up with). I'm worried about VBA3C anyway, but his head size doesn't make me feel any more confident.

Physically, I'm exhausted. I'm having contractions all the time. One night, I woke up in so much pain from them I grabbed my husband and forced myself to focus on breathing. They eventually went back to what they normally are, but I was rather worried for awhile. It takes a lot for me to go in. I only went in when my water broke with my last baby. I had probably been in real labor for a solid 18 hours before  making it to the hospital at 6-7cm. Who knows, if I go into labor early, I might just end up at a local hospital needing transport to my delivering hospital. Or, if God willed it, I could deliver in our garden bath tub. No big deal, right? That would be a birth story!

My kids are doing well. They are all getting excited. Even Ziva pats my tummy and says "baby" when she sees me. It's super sweet. Daddy is stressing out, but only because he's in school right now. He graduates on October 3. We're super excited...though he has to get his scores up if he hopes to make his career what he wants. He doesn't want to settle, but he's got work hard for it. I'll be editing papers last minute I'm sure. :)

My mom quit her job this week and will be driving from the Midwest to North Carolina to help me with the kids for the last 4-5 weeks I'm pregnant and until I'm healed. She sounds very excited! I need someone here in case I go into labor early as Daddy doesn't have the ability to leave work or miss work, even for a baby. Sad story, I know...not really. I had Ziva completely by myself, so I'm not concerned. Babies are born everyday without their Daddy there. Wives have babies without husbands. I've already had two births without my husband, one completely alone (after sitting in traffic for 4 hours waiting for an accident to clear, just 8 miles from the hospital).

Prayer Requests: VBA3C still...the staff at the hospital is completely against it. The ultrasound tech said they would require me to have a c-section if I came to the hospital I'm at and the OB still says he wants to do a c-section. I'm frustrated and really not sure what to do. Maybe I should write a letter of intent to VBA3C...we'll see. I'm not even sure what I would write in it. Any ideas? Pray please. Above all else, for peace. I trust the God will provide for our needs and for our situation as He always has. I just need peace and my husband needs peace.

Stinky Cloth Diaper Fix

Over the past 7 months, I have noticed that the cloth diapers I've been using for over a year have started to hold onto their stink...especially the poopy ones. Icky! I thought I knew all I needed to know about stripping the diapers. Boy was I wrong! Yesterday, in yet another internet search for answers, I found a blog that had what I had never heard before. It was eye opening! Of course, I cannot find the blog or the information anywhere in my phone or computer web history, so I'm just going to share it. If you find it, please contact me so I can credit this brilliant woman who opened my eyes!

For years, I've cloth diapered. Using homemade detergent that worked well for my kidlets sensitive skin and getting clothing clean. It worked well for everything, including diapers. I had to change from that detergent about two months ago when my youngest began breaking out with this horrid rash where the diapers covered. I went back to the ever expensive Tide...I hate paying so much, but if it works, it works. Yes, I use it for the diapers and have no real problem. I use less than recommended and rinse each load 5 times (with my washer, it takes about 4.5 hours to wash a load of diapers (3-4 days worth). I began rinsing with vinegar when my friend gave me instructions after I purchased my first diapers from her. It worked well, until about 6 months ago.

The diapers, up until this spring, held onto their ammonia stink, which I could handle. I just rinsed with vinegar again and continued on with my day. Fourish months ago, they started to hold onto everything...it smelled like I hadn't even washed them! It was frustrating and I was ready to go back to disposable as I could not handle the stink being pregnant and all. Searching and searching had turned up nothing until a very recently. Here's what I found...

Hard water can react with vinegar to make it hold onto stink or create it's own odor. Icky! I didn't know that. I had never heard that! Why did it take years to find that out?! The answer was simple...baking soda. That also explains why the stink got so much worse when I switched back to store bought laundry detergent. I had always used tons of baking soda in my detergent and now, I wasn't using any. My diaper stink problem has been solved. Friends, if you have that stink that you can't get rid of, strip the diapers, but instead of adding vinegar to the rinse, add baking soda. I guess on the amount. I don't even measure when I cook, so laundry is no different. I would suggest you experiment with amounts until you find what works for you.

My Diaper Washing Process:

1. Throw diapers (icky stuff removed of course) into the washing machine
2. Wash the load with hot water (my washer does not have the "hot water rinse option", but a hot wash works fine) and whatever soap you use for your diapers (I used homemade, but currently use Tide Free & Clear, or whatever it's called)
3. Rinse two more times, I have an HE washer so it's a small amount of water for me, not sure if you have to rinse extra, but I like to ensure no build up
4. For the final rinse, add baking soda (instead of the classic vinegar)

I do wash my diapers once, rinse 3-4 times, then line dry. It is a process and most other people don't do this much with their diapers. I just hate stink and would rather have it clean than stinky. If you want some other information on cloth diapers and cloth diaper care, feel free to search for it. I did for years and still do. The information is just waiting for you!