I'm in love.........

I ate too many pancakes this morning. Ugh, i feel a bit full and i have a sneaky suspicion i know why that scale is creeping up. It seems lately that i can eat and eat and hardly get full. I'm thinking i'm not eating enough fats and scarfing down way too many carbs. All the fellowship meals at church and dinner invites aren't helping either. On the other hand, maybe i have unresolved issues in my life from when i was a child and so i'm really not to blame. You know, it's all my parents fault for me not being perfect, i'm just a victim of circumstances. Just kidding........:)

We finally, at 30 weeks pregnant, found a midwife. Not just any midwife but one we're really excited about and feel a real connection to. I had pretty much given up hope that it was possible this late in the pregnancy and i had asked Marlin just a couple days before if he was sure we shouldn't do unassisted. Although he would be happy to deliver the baby himself he knows that I'm not ready for that so in his great husbandly wisdom he said no. And then we found her. I can always tell something about a midwife by the way she feels the baby. If her hands are too gentle and unsure, the red flags go up. We don't want someone who's cocky and over confident, but Marlin, being the business man that he is, looks for that confidence and calm bearing of someone who knows what they're doing. This midwife's hands were gentle and yet firm, and she instantly knew how the baby was lying. But i think the biggest thing that impressed us was her spirit. Obviously a conservative christian, we could tell by the way she handled herself that she knew her position in Christ. I can't explain that, it's just something we picked up on and our spirits instantly connected and that mattered far more than anything else. You know, in a homebirth you don't have the security blankets of a surgical team down the hall or drugs. While we firmly believe birth is a natural thing and 99% of the time it's best to let the body work naturally the way God intended, you can't ignore the fact that things can go wrong in the best of circumstances. Every time i get pregnant we pray for God to show where He wants us to have the baby, and that includes a hospital. I never want to get to a place where i refuse to consider something "different" than what we're used too, simply out of my own opinions. However, when you have a natural birth, having a midwife who can pray with and for you through the hardest part of labor (that's where i look at Marlin and say "NO MORE CHILDREN!!! EVER!!!!!!!! and that's where he quickly agrees, smart man) means the world. I have to say, after the twins i didn't think i would ever want to go through birth again. Theirs was a hard birth and i was so exhausted by the end that i couldn't even hold the babies or walk to the bathroom. So when i found out i was pregnant, i felt a few moments of panic and wished a few times that i could simply get an epidural or have someone knock me over the head until the baby's born. I knew if i begged for a hospital birth Marlin would agree, but i also knew deep in my heart that it wasn't really what i wanted. Something strange has happened however. As i get closer to the end of this pregnancy, i have started feeling a bond that's incredibly strong with this baby, and along with that an anticipation for labor. Not that i want the pain but i want the rewards that come with it. I've never had this feeling before, although i tried to have it many times. I would read scripture and try to convince myself that labor was worth it but it never worked. Of all pregnancies, i never expected it to happen with this one. I struggled the hardest when i found out i was pregnant, and was too busy for months to give it a whole lot of thought, but somehow over the last number of weeks God has done a work in my heart and i am head over heels in love with the child. I look at my strong manly husband and i feel a thrill that i get to carry one more child of his. Let me assure you friends, that is a God thing. With all the hormones raging through me and the emotional weariness, there's no way that i could come up with these feelings on my own. So i rest in that, and continue to pray that God would lead us and that most of all we would remain sensitive to the Holy Spirit and broken at the foot of the cross. After all, that's where all this started. :)