We had his funeral and he was buried with Zach. Both of our pastors came, along with two of my close friends who are lay pastors, and Tom and Katie (Reina is sick- poor chica!!). The pastors did mostly the same service as they did for Zach and after we stood around talking about stuff while Jonathan filled in the grave. It was good. I teared up a bit, but I'm feeling like I finished an amazing book. I'll always remember, I will be inspired and affected by it, but I know the ending. This was the closure that I needed and I knew it would help. That's pretty simplistic, but it's the best I can do to explain.

I didn't start really building dreams for Toby. I didn't have future plans for him or imagine what he would look like. I lived each day for what it was- a gift. I didn't want to live in the future, or in the past. I just lived in the now and that now is over. It's hard, but I'm not sorry and I don't regret anything. I did the right thing by loving him each day that I had and not pinning expectations on his being born alive. If we do this again, I will do the same thing. I could always make it to 40 weeks and my child dies before birth. I want to enjoy that time and cherish it for the gift it is and not be swamped down in the "what could have been".

More time, more healing, more growth, more strength, more prayer, more love, more joy, more hope, more trust, more faith and much much more contemplation.

I'm faced with many things that I could not have foreseen. Never did I ever think that I would bury 2 child in 6 months time. Never did I expect to even have a miscarriage. I never thought I would lose my child, let alone two. Never would I have thought that I could be this strong.

I am doing better than I could have predicted. This is so hard and so painful, but God has given me the strength I begged for, and at the same time never wanted to have. I never wanted to have the strength to survive with grace and courage and yet I find that I have both. I don't have answers and I don't need them. I don't know why, but God does and I trust Him. I begged God today for the baby to be alive. I begged and pleaded but it wasn't meant to be and in the moments where I had doubts that the baby was alive, I begged for His strength so that I could make it through. He said no to one of my prayers and yes to the other. He gave me His strength and it is through Him that I will make it through again.

I am not angry with God. I have never been angry with God and it is one of the graces that He gave me. More over I do not want to be angry with God. I also do not feel like a failure. I know I did all I could for my baby and I tried my best. This was meant to be. I'm not angry with myself. I feel blessed. I have Andrew and Luke and I was blessed to have Zach and this baby for as long as I had them. I vowed, when I got pregnant this time, that I would enjoy every minute and never wallow in the hard times that pregnancy brings and I think that I did very well. I enjoyed this baby, knowing that my time might be fleeting and that I may never hold my baby in my hands alive. I loved it as best as I could and I hoped for the best, even though I knew it might end up being the worst. Life is too precious to hold out only for the worst.

This remains the saddest part of my life. I don't have a grief bigger than losing my children. I am hoping that we will be able to tell if the baby is a boy or girl. If we can, we have decided that if the baby is a boy, we will name him Tobias which means "gift from God" and if it is a girl, we will name her Grace as it is only grace that gets us through. If we can't tell, then I think we might name it Angel.

I don't know if the future will hold more pregnancies or not. I don't know if we will move towards adopting or not. I don't know and I think it needs a lot of prayerful consideration before we go one way or the other. It is a decision that Jonathan and I will make together in the coming months.

Thank you all for your prayers and your positive thoughts and well wishes! You are truly a God given blessing to me (whether you believe it or not, it's what I believe) and I am so grateful for each of you!

Much Love!
~Sarah

Totally unrelated- James this would make a FABULOUS icon- Voldie and Dumby? Imagine the words that could be flashing across the screen... oh the possibilities!

Second, we had a fun weekend with old friends. It was great reconnecting. I found myself going on and on again about natural childbirth to the point that I got into a heated debate with my friend Tomii, and even had another friend (who's father is a pastor) shoot me down for letting my faith in God lead how I give birth.

These (my dear friends who were part of this conversation and are reading this) made me think a lot, but in the end pushed me to believe more that where I am going is the right path for ME.

If my talks on God bore you, jump ship now. If not, then let's crack on and see where this leads me, because I don't even know exactly where it is that I'm going.

First of all, this is important to me because I had Zach so recently and this is all fresh in my mind and I'm less likely to temper anything I say because of that. I will not apologize for that and beg you give me a bit more time and I will go back to normal. Right now, this is part of my natural healing process. If it hurts you in any way, then do let me know and I'll try to make amends, but if it just annoys you, then I'd appreciate you trying to ignore me for a bit. I want only for everyone to be educated and informed. When it comes to the end of it, if you want a planned c/section and you know all the risks to you and the baby then okay- that's your call, it's your life to live, not mine.

So to begin. We died in the past, at much greater rates, due to disease and illness. Modern medical sciences (and common sense when it comes to hand washing) have lead to a longer life span, and cures for many common illnesses and maladies.

I state categorically that being pregnant and having a baby is not (for most people) an illness or a malady. I don't think that babies were intended as a creative way to kill us, either (at least before they're teenagers). God intended for our children to be a gift, not something that will kill most of us. It seems to me that the way modern medicine treats every pregnancy is the pregnancy is a life threatening disease that with proper management will not kill the woman, when in fact, only about 15 in 100,000 women die in child birth in America (reference). This goes against what I believe. YES child birth can kill me! Is it likely? No. It's not likely at all. Am I (personally) willing to make another birth a traumatic, dangerous and possibly life threatening situation by being in a hospital again? No. My experience of hospital births are that THEY are life threatening- not the birth itself.

I don't know why Zach died. I have no clue and I doubt I will know until I'm in heaven and I'm okay with that. I don't need an answer, because I have faith that there is a reason, that God has it in His control and there is a plan. If I were to die at home giving birth, then the odds are that I would have died in the hospital too because the death rates are comparable (reference). In a study of low risk women done in America and Canada, the same was found, that the death rates for home birth were comparable for babies and no mothers died (it was a small study, only involving 5500 women) (reference). What was also found is that the rates of intervention for the 12% who did transfer to hospitals, had fewer interventions than those who had planned hospital births. So I'll take those odds, as the indications are that they are the same, in and out of hospitals.

As for a baby's death- the death rate was at 6.87 deaths per 1,000 births in 2005 (reference pg.66) and the Netherlands did a large study which concluded that they're higher death rate was no influenced by the fact that 30% of their women deliver at home. The same number of babies died in home births as in hospital births (in low-risk situations).

If I felt like I should deliver in a hospital, I would. I have fantastic instincts and they don't fail me very often- when they do, I wasn't listening properly. I go where God leads me and I follow my heart and my heart says "stay away from interventions" because this is NOT how God intended for us to give birth. My faith is that if I put my trust in God (provided there are no indicators otherwise that something might be wrong like a placenta previa) then it will be okay. If it's not, then it's not. I've dealt with that already and we can't prove I am not the reason that Zach died. Certainly the only way that I could guarantee Zach a dignified birth was to have him at home. In a hospital, even in a Catholic, conservative, hospital a D&C was being pushed on me, and his tiny body would have been ripped to pieces. It's horrible and cruel that a doctor, who should have been better because she works with home birth midwives, would try to scare me into a D&C while admitting flat out that she was worried about being sued.

Anyway, as the numbers indicate that a new baby would have just as safe of a birth as in a hospital as at home, and I am 10 minutes from several hospitals with NICUs and less than 20 minutes from Johns Hopkins and I live less than 2 miles from the nearest paramedics, I see no problem in my choice to deliver at home and put my life and my (hopefully) future baby's lives in God's hands. I don't, in fact, see any problem with this at all. If I lived 100 miles from the nearest hospital then I think it would be unwise to deliver at home (or at least at MY home- maybe a hotel, though).

Because quite frankly, my life is in better hands when they're in God's hands than in a doctor's. That may mean that it's my time to go, but if it's my time, no doctor will be able to stop that, because despite the major god complex that many doctors have, they are not, in fact, God.

THAT is where my faith is. If you're not good with that, if you think I'm foolish, if you are now ready to call the loony bin on me, I don't care. I'm not ashamed of this, and I have the utmost calm over it. This is, for now, where my instincts (where God, if you will) are leading me. God didn't let me down with having Zach, so I'm not going to betray His support when I needed it, by turning my back on Him and putting my faith elsewhere.

Like I said, very passionate. This is my life, my choice, I've done my homework, and you have a quick link to it yourself now, and I believe that God didn't design us to be a lemon when it comes to childbirth.

Everything can cause death; driving a car, drinking too much water, eating too much, walking down a street, smoking. Pretty much anything can lead to a death and I don't play the "what if" games. Something bad might have happened to Luke if he'd been born at home, that's very possible and I might have said "oh if only I'd been in a hospital, he'd have been okay" well no, because what I know is that because I was in a hospital, I nearly died- I was nearly one of those 15 per 100,000 women and that CAUSE of death could ONLY have happened at the hospital because we don't keep an anesthesiologist in our medicine cabinet. There is no "what if" if you want to lead a sane life because you can't ever know what would have happened and I am (THANKFULLY) living proof that stupidity and random accidents can and do kill women in hospitals in ways that can only happen in a hospital.

If you still feel safer being in a hospital, then you're likely to do better in a hospital in giving birth because birth is a mental game as much as a physical. My mentality is that God will get me through this next time and I'll do a better job of taking care of myself so my BP doesn't go up.

As I said to a friend of mine this weekend (who had stalled in labor with her child and ended up with pictocin) "Can you poop away from home?" Gross, right? Relevant. I can't and neither could she. TMI maybe, but I can't do it. The same muscles that control your rectum also control the dilation of the cervix, which is how you get to that magic number of 10cm.

If you can poop anywhere, then hospital births could be okay for you. As for me, uhm... I'd rather just do that in the privacy of my own home, thanks.

We had a short ceremony. I decided I wanted to ask Reina and Tom to come and they did, so it was us, the kids, R&T, a lay pastor Wendy and the pastor. It was a short ceremony, but it was what I wanted. I cried and then I suddenly just felt at peace and like I had closure. I will probably still cry some, but I am doing okay.

I will always remember him and I think a part of me will always grieve, but I'm okay. I've been better, but I've been worse. At least I'm emotionally healthy so that I can just focus on grieving and not have other things in the way of healing.

I will probably post again tonight, but I wanted this one to be its own post.

I woke up and felt a pop and went to the bathroom and thought that my water had broken. I thought I felt the baby about to come out, so I asked Jonathan to draw a bath for me and as soon as I sat in the water he came out (8:15am). His cord was still attached so I didn't pick him up, because I knew that if I pulled the cord, it could snap and I might not deliver the placenta. So we waited awhile and I really felt like I had to sit on the toilet, so after about an hour of waiting, I picked up Zach and Jonathan cut the cord. It was very nice holding him. He's about the size of my hand and it's clear that he's a boy. Jonathan held him for me while I moved to the toilet and I was finally in a good position to deliver the placenta.

I cried a bunch and I was okay too. I'm glad that I waited. Very glad. This was so much better.

We have pictures of him and we did a small foot print, but we've placed him in the box Jonathan made. I made a soft pillow to line it, and a blanket and a stuffed animal. We will likely have a burial sometime this week. I don't know that I want others there.

xposted in homebirth

Title: Final Request
Summary: Fred's Final Request
Rating: PG-13 (for mild language and drunken naming of things) :-D
Word Count: Too damn many to count

Okay, my recipient disappeared. Big surprise there :-D (me-not 10% smarter than the puter). Some of my flist have seen this, as I needed advice, but I retooled it quite a bit. It still didn't end up as fluffy as I wanted but *sigh* sometimes the muses just go that way.

*goes to check the master list from the link she stole from St.M*
Woohoo! Okay, so this is for i_phianassa She asked for: Romance I suppose, but anything goes! So it went more along the lines of "anything goes"

Thank you St.M for your very, very valuable advise before, Dennis for being my moral support and David for beta'ing at the very LAST possible second (which is how it always seems to be with me).

The masterlist for all of the Changing Seasons stories can be found here: http://r-becca.livejournal.com/579018.html

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We have a new dog. Her name is Renee, she's totally shy, really cute, only a little big and Andrew stepped on her twice (with his shoes on- on her paw) and she didn't so much as whimper. He's not completely excited to have her, but she's not his dog anyway. We like her, but she does drool. She's a good dog, though.

We drove out to WV to get her, so we spent about 5 and a half hours in the car, but it was worth it and now it's nice to be home. She's parked herself under the kitchen table, and has already earned her keep by licking up the crumbs. I'll post a picture of her sometime, when I'm not so tired.

This has helped me just zone out, so I figured I'd post it for everyone else. I have 29 of them, but if anyone finds all 31, let me know.

Can you find thirty (30) books of the Bible in the paragraph below? Actually there are thirty-one (31) Bible names, one is a variant of an Old Testament prophet's name.

This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat pocket, on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for hours. He enjoyed it so much, he passed it on to some friends. One friend from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his john boat. Another friend studied it while playing his banjo. Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly newspaper column. Another friend judges the job of solving this puzzle so involving, she brews a cup of tea to help her nerves. There will be some names that are really easy to spot. That's a fact. Some people, however, will soon find themselves in a jam, especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized. Truthfully, from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or a scholar to see some of them at the worst. Research has shown that something in our genes is responsible for the difficulty we have in seeing the books in this paragraph. During a recent fund raising event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Phi lemonade booth set a new record. The local paper, The Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who reported that this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever seen. As Daniel Humana humbly puts it, "The books are all right here in plain view hidden from sight." Those able to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who have to be shown. One revelation that may help is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur without their numbers. Also, keep in mind, that punctuation and spaces in the middle are normal. A chipper attitude will help you compete really well against those who claim to know the answers. Remember, there is no need for a mad exodus; there really are 30 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found. God Bless.

I was in Labor and Delivery last night... again. I had worsening contractions, although they weren't painful, and when they started lasting for a few minutes, Jonathan actually began to panic. So we called the midwife, called Kevin to come stay with Andrew, and took off. After stripping and waiting in a hospital bed for an hour or two with my small contractions being monitored, the midwife finally got there with what I thought was good news. I have a urinary tract infection, here's a prescription for antibiotics, you can go home. Well I was glad, anyway, if somewhat embarrassed that I'd gone in for something that simple. I didn't even know I had one because it wasn't far along enough to hurt me when I pee.

This morning Jonathan let me sleep in, since it was after midnight when we got back, and he told Katie (David's mom- David is the boy I watch) what had happened, and she was like "It's a good thing you went in. UTI's are the #1 cause of pre-term labor."

*sigh* So here I thought it was just my uterus being irritated, instead of actually starting pre-term labor. Ah well. I keep saying it, but live and learn, eh?

On a sad note, my friend Kristin's sister Tricia died of cancer yesterday. Please everyone say a prayer for their family.

I can't, of course, take credit for the colors or patterns, but if this isn't the spiffy-est quilt I've ever made... well it is the spiffy-est. Which means I'm not sure I'll ever top it and, no offense to Mike and Julie, I'm not sure I want to.

As you know, this is what each square was to look like:

And in the lj-cut is what it actually looks like, just under halfway done.
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If I get several hours to work on it tomorrow, I'll be able to finish up the top part. The sewing goes fast, but the pinning (which I have to do) takes a long time.

Julie: I need to bind the edge of the quilt, which requires another material to do it. I can't locate the blue anymore, but I could possibly find the maroon again or you could pick a different material altogether to create an edge. I really don't want to use the off white stuff because it doesn't sew well and the edges stain more easily than anything else, but if you want that one, let me know.