Celebrating

Earlier this year, the wonderful ladies of my Sunday School class said they wanted to have a baby shower for me.  I purposely scheduled it the day before I was due (thinking I wouldn't have had the baby by then) because my family and Sarge's family were planning on being here during that time.  Little did I know that Sweet Pea would decide to arrive early and attend the shower with me =)

It worked out perfectly, because instead of lots of gender neutral clothes, I was showered in pink, frilly clothes.

The fruit bouquet my friend Michelle made for the shower.

My favorite picture of my girls.

Girly- girl helping me open the gifts.

The quilt my step- mom made for Sweet Pea.

Millie was a little jealous that she had to share Angela's lap =)

Some of the beautiful ladies who loved on Sweet Pea and me =)

Thank you to everyone who planned and attended the shower.  Your outpouring of love and support has made the adjustment to my new normal at lot easier.  And yes, I am still working on getting all the thank you cards written =)

Blessings... and a Promise

When Sweet Pea was a week old, I took her to church.  The special music that day was Blessings by Laura Story.  The words couldn't have been more perfect for me that morning.

Below are the lyrics to Blessings that spoke to my heart so clearly that morning.

We pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom

Your voice to hear

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love

As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea

But long that we’d have the faith to believe

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us

When darkness seems to win

We know the pain reminds this heart

That this is not our home,

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

 

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy

And what if trials of this life

The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

Are your mercies in disguise

When I was looking for names, I took into consideration what the name meant, but never put too much faith in what it really meant.  Looking back now, I can see that Sweet Pea's name is perfect.

Levia (Lah- vee- ah) is the feminine form of Levi and means complete.

Joy means happiness, but it's more than than.  Joy comes from the Lord and isn't dependent on outside factors- ie the size of our house,  how much we have...  It's dependent on our relationship with the Lord.

Written in her name is a promise of complete joy.  I may not always be able to see how that promise will be fulfilled, but I can rest in the promise that her life will be a complete joy to everyone who meets her.

Wait, Holland??

A friend sent this to me shortly after Sweet Pea was born and we heard the diagnosis.  And yes, I know Sarge told me about it, but he never showed me where he found it =)

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Welcome To Holland

by Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandt.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.

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I can honestly say that I spent some time mourning the loss of my trip to Italy, but I am starting to see the beauty and joy that comes from being in Holland.  It's not what I expected, but in some way it's exactly what I needed.

Broken Hearted

First thing Monday morning, I called the pediatrician's office to get Sweet Pea in for an appointment.  Earliest I could get her in was Tuesday morning, so I had another day to sit and worry about everything that could possibly be wrong.

But at least her color was looking good...

Early Tuesday morning we headed off to the pediatrician's office.  One of the things I really dislike about going to the dr's office (besides the insane amounts of time they make you wait) is that I feel like I have to defend our choices.  And, I was right.  Almost immediately I felt like I had to go on the defensive about our choice to home birth and to decline prenatal testing- not prenatal care, prenatal testing, because it wouldn't have changed our decision to have Sweet Pea.

Once we got through that, I finally felt like we were getting some answers.  First the dr wanted us to head over to the lab to get some blood work done.  And then she was able to get us an appointment to see a pediatric cardiologist that same day.

When we were finished at the lab, we headed into downtown Dallas to see the cardiologist.  The first test they ran was an EKG.  It was sad to see Sweet Pea hooked up to all the wires =(  Then the dr came in a said they needed to run an echo cardiogram- basically, an ultrasound of the heart.  Over to another room where the technician swaddled Sweet Pea so she couldn't move.  Forty minutes later we were back in the first room waiting for the results.  I had been praying the whole time we were waiting that her heart would be fine, but it wasn't so.

Sweet Pea has been diagnosed with what's called Complete Artioventricular Canal Defect.  What that basically means is that there is a hole between the right and left side of her heart that caused the valves that separate the upper and lower chambers to form one complete valve instead of two valves.

Now I know there are other children out there that had holes in their hearts that fixed themselves, but that most likely won't happen for Sweet Pea.  Because the valve didn't form properly, the drs are going to have to surgically separate the valve.  The dr told us that it's a fairly simple/ routine surgery and the likelihood of her needing further surgery is pretty small. 

The good news out of all this bad news is that because of the location of the larger hole (above the valve instead of below) we can put off surgery for a little while.  This will give Sweet Pea a chance to put on some weight and get a bit stronger.  Praise the Lord for the little things =)

For now all we can do is wait.  We'll be seeing the pediatrician weekly to monitor her weight gain and the cardiologist every couple weeks to monitor her heart.  Part of me wants the surgery sooner rather than later just so I don't have to continue worrying about it, but then the other part knows that it would be better for her to be a bit bigger and stronger.

She certainly loves her baby sister...

Levia's Story Continues...

I left off on the last post with some of Sweet Pea's stats.  But there's more to the story.

I was snuggled into bed eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches watching the midwife, Amy, finish up her newborn assessments.  She turned to us at one point and said "I'm not a dr, but..."

Not words you want to hear from someone who's checking out the vital stats of your newborn daughter.  I felt the blood drain from my face and my heart sink into my stomach.  I didn't know what I expected to hear next, but it certainly wasn't:

"Based on her physical features, I suspect she has a trisomy defect.  I'm not sure if I'm trying to hear something, or if there is really something there, but she may have a problem with her heart."

I could feel my world crumbling.  All of a sudden my perfect baby wasn't "perfect" any more.  I didn't know what to say or to think.

Amy told us that we needed to get Levia in to see a dr as soon as we could and that they would most likely have to do an ultra sound on her heart to see if there were any problems with it.

Utterly exhausted (why do my kids insist on being born in the middle of the night?) Sarge and I tucked ourselves into bed to try to get a couple hours of sleep before the other kids woke up.  Sleep was pretty elusive that night for me.  My mind was racing a hundred different directions.

When the other kids came in, Sarge could see that I needed some more time to process everything.  So, he got the kids cleaned up and herded them out the door for church.

So I sat and stared and prayed and worried...  So many thoughts and emotions, but no answers.

Before they left for church...  They are so in love with her already.

Everyone after church. 

Levia's Story- Part 1: Her Birth

This last week has gone by so fast.  My baby girl is already 9 days old and it has been quite the experience so far.  So different from any of my other kids.  But, I'll start at the beginning, with her birth story.  The rest will follow in other posts.

Like my pregnancy with Junior- Junior, I had been having timable contractions for a couple weeks...  A couple hours every day or so.  So, when the contractions started on the Saturday before Mother's Day, I didn't give them "too much thought."  That is until I realized that I was feeling them a bit more in my back.

After we put the kids to bed around 9, I had Sarge call the midwife to give her a "heads up" that things might be progressing...  Except she didn't answer.  Hmm...  This could be an interesting night.  Wasn't really planning an unassisted home birth ;)

Around 10PM, Sarge called the birth center and told them we needed to get in touch with Amy.  She called back a few minutes later and said she was on her way.  By this time, I was definitely in labor, although still not believing it 100% as none of my other kids had been early (Levia was just over a week early).

Amy and her assistant got to the house a little before 11 and I was just about ready to get in the tub.  I labored in the tub for awhile with Sarge putting pressure on my back.  Amy was really great about letting us labor by ourselves.  The only time I realized she was in the room was when she would check the baby's heart rate.  

In between contractions, I joked with Sarge that he was going to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after the baby was born =)

Pretty soon, I was pushing.  It seemed to take forever, but I know it really wasn't that long (Junior was 3 hours of pushing).  And soon enough she was out. 

I've had a few people ask when my water broke with her.  And honestly, she was born with the water intact.  It didn't break until we were lifting her out of the tub.    I know that's suppose to mean something, but not sure what.

While we were waiting for the placenta to be delivered, Sarge woke up Junior and Girly- girl to let them see their new sister.  Girly- girl was so excited that it was a girl, even though she had assured me that she would still love the baby if it was a boy =)

Pretty soon we were tucked into bed and Amy started all the newborn checks.

Levia was 6lbs 7oz and 19".