How I Met Billie

Sooooo . . . Where to start . . . I'll go the chronological route. :-)

Around noonish on Friday I noticed my water had started to leak. I took a few hours a few hours at home to make sure and we headed down to Stanford to check for sure and hoped stay. After the nurse and my midwife confirm my water was leaking they admitted me. They wanted to start me on penicillin right away (for Strep B). Since it needs to be in one's system for four hours before the baby's born my midwife, Jamie, decided to wait to break my water. She also started me on a low dose of pitocin that would progress me a little but not crazy. That all worked out ok.

Jamie came back to break my water about 1am. It's was pretty massive - you could just about see my stomach deflate. :) Over the next hour-ish my contractions did finally begin to progress a lot more substantially. I then requested my lovely lovely epidural. At that time the nurse checked my dilation - which was 6cm. She then went to call in the anesthesiologist.

I then decided that it would be a great idea to empty my bladder so that I wouldn't have to "go" while I was having a needle stuck in my spine. So I waited for a contraction to end so I'd have as much pain-free mobile time as possible. I was still able to talk through the contractions at that time.

James helped me to the bathroom. I couldn't "go" though. And then another contraction started and never stopped and just got worse and worse. I was going through more and more pain and apparently getting louder and louder. This is super awkward to mention but I'm not sure how else to explain it - I thought I needed to have a BM and was having a contraction at the same time. I didn't want to call a nurse because the thought of saying "it hurts to poop" sounded pretty weird. Since poop wasn't happening I stood up to try anything that would make the pain stop. Around this point (I think) my mom went ahead a called the nurse it - thank goodness.

At that point something was happening down under. I felt and it was about half the baby's head!! This was the first point that I realized I was giving birth and that it wasn't a contraction that would go away.

I'm not sure how I heard the nurse tell me to lay down on the floor to push but I heard her and somehow did so while yelling "I CAN'T!!" (There was a lot of that line going on.) I somehow managed to kneel and roll onto my back without sitting on the baby's head. It probably went quicker than I thought but I eventually got it into my head that if I didn't push the baby would stay put and the pain would continue. I'm not sure I would have been able to push more than the one time that I did.

And so Billie was born. My first view of her was her on my stomach with the back of her dark haired bloody head in my sights - it was beautiful. James cut her cord and then they took her over to her warm bed thing to give her some smacks to get her making noise. She was pinking up but not being very vocal. Meanwhile I was still laying on the bathroom floor in what my mom described as a CSI scene. Poor James was standing then with his bloody wife and quiet baby. He was awesome though - very level and helpful and awesome.

I've never been more serious about this: I really thought I was dying and I've never been more frightened or in more pain. I'm sure the intensity would have been not as bad if I'd realized sooner what was going on. I'm told that Jamie could hear me over the phone at the nurses station when they called her.

So Billie was born about 10-15mins. after I was at 6cm. Almost while I was standing. Thankfully not in a toilet. In fitting with the theme of her birth she pooped on me twice during kangaroo care. One could say it was a "crappy" birth experience. But I was a million times better after she was out. I think we all were!

I'm A Quasi Jerk

Did it tick anyone else off when, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Esmerelda picked Phoebus instead of Quasimodo? We all know why she picked Phoebus - he wasn't really that great compared to Quasimodo's kindness and sacrifice And this is only from the Disney version. In the book, Esmerelda is obviously disgusted with Quasimodo's appearance without knowing anything else about him (although he is pretty loony in the book version due to his personal issues) - and Pheobus is kind of a creep. Anyway, I definitely think she should have gone with Quasimodo in the Disney movie (and no one in the book!).

So, that was just a rant that along the same theme of what I'm actually going to talk about. ;-)

It doesn't take much for me to get onto certain trains of though and I suppose this one won't be the most originally insightful revelation I've ever had. But it definitely has made me take note of how I think about things and how I would want my kids to think about things.

It began with seeing on the news the pictures of the two young adults suspected of the Boston marathon bombing. My first thought was "Wow. They don't look like 'bad guys'. They're just a couple of young good-looking boys." And, because I saw this right after a night of Disney on Ice, it made be think about how "Prince Charming" is always portrayed as very handsome. It would be inconceivable for Snow White, Cinderella, or any other "princess" to be pursued by a physically unattractive fellow. (Maybe The Princess and the Frog is the best anti-example of this - they fell in love as frogs!)

It made me realize that I don't want my kids to grow up and fall-in with people that they think are good because they "look" good. And I don't want them to miss out on something wonderful in a friend or potential spouse because a person may not be aesthetically pleasing or look like Prince (or Princess) Charming. I want my kids to see that beauty isn't in the EYE of the beholder - but the HEART of the beholder. AND in the HEART of the . . . . beheld? Beholded? You get the picture: We need to look with more than our eyes.

When it's put into words I've always felt this way. But I didn't realized it's in my heart until a thought like what I had crossed my mind. I guess it's somewhat ingrained in me to look at a picture of someone and judge their heart based on their mug. I'm going to try to stop doing that.

Time and Will

"Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate."   - W. H. Auden 

I never know what in the world will me me happy.

I purposefully avoid watching certain shows or reading certain books because I don't want to be convicted about who I am and feel like I need to change something - because I will certainly fail at it. I've never watched Biggest Loser because everyone is always talking about how it makes them change their eating (or want to at least) and to exercise more. But, not only do I not want to eat healthier or exercise - but I know I don't have the self-disciple to follow through with it and then I'll feel guilty and stupid and like a big failure. So I avoid anything that will convict me about it.

I have to admit - I've done that with Bible reading as well. Talk about the biggest thing that can ever convict a Christian! So I avoid that gold edged book sometime frequently and something infrequently. But when I do pick it up - I discover it was a big fat lie. When I crack those intimidatingly thin pages it refreshes and encourages me and whatever corrections it reveals are just at refreshing and encouraging as any of the rest of the experience.

So, my most recent non-endeavor has been a certain book. Sacred Marriage. Of course a sacred marriage is a great thing . . . but you haven't heard the subtitle yet: "Maybe God didn't intent marriage to make us happy but to make us holy." (Or something to that effect.) Well dang. Of course I want to be holy . . . but I really REALLY want to be happy!

I bought the book though, I guess in hopes it would absorb into me or something . . . . When that didn't work, I went ahead and read the first chapter last night. Shocker of all shockers: It made me happy. APPARENTLY becoming more like Jesus and building your character and contentment makes you happy! Who would have thought?

I suppose I've read so many Christian marriage books that just plain piss me off - that tell me what I should be doing (but I always fail at), or worse, they tell me how to be based on the way women typically are thought to be - but I'm not like "normal" women at all. I usually identify with the man advice in those books - which presents it's own set of problems regarding my identity.

But this book doesn't tell me what to DO. I thought it would present a sort of "deal with it" mentality. But the way the concepts are presented freed me rather than chained me further to ideas that have never worked for me. It simply looks at marriage from a different perspective and it ended up being the case that I was already the kind of person that does that! I have just thought that it was wrong - that I was wrong. My mentality wasn't wrong because it was wrong - I just thought it was because I wasn't like everyone else.  I'm not a romantic; I'm not ooey-gooey; I'm not a crier, a snuggler or a sentimentalist. It was refreshing to read a perspective that says that's not what makes a marriage work. It's not about the "spark" in your marriage - it's about staying, about attitude, about choices, about perspective.

It's about being like Jesus. If he can take the bad parts of life and work them out to where good comes from it - where good wouldn't have existed otherwise - then I can do that too. With him. And it makes me very happy.

I'm not sure I'm ready for Biggest Loser yet . . . but I'm ready for my marriage. I've got time and will.

"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."

- Orson Welles

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy, if not, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates

"When we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy."

- C.S. Lewis