Sunday, November 21, 2010

Monday, November 15, 2010

Ok here is the info everyone needs to know...

So here's the deal, I'll let you all know (within an hour) of my Dr's appointment what went down. I'm being induced thursday. My body that looked so ready at 37 weeks to deliver a baby right on time has not budged since that point. (WARNING: for male readers, if words like cervix and catheter freak you out just stop reading now.)

So, on thursday my Dr will be inserting a Foley bulb (its a catheter bulb that you can inflate with saline) to help stretch the cervix and hopefully dilate me to 4cm within 6 hours. If it doesn't, then they will use prostaglandin gel and or break my water. If that doesn't work, I will get pitocin. My doctor warned me that this artificial process is A LOT more painful than the natural process, but she is trying to take as many natural steps as possible to make my body take over on its own. The foley bulb, breaking the water, and hopefully my body will do the rest. If not however, she said I should think about getting an epidural. She said its like trying to break through a brick wall getting a baby to come through a body that just isn't naturally ready for labor on its own, and she said the contractions are much stronger with the medications that bump start labor.

This just sucks. I wanted so badly to be natural. My birth plan is basically out the window. My body won't cooperate. Today I am no more ready to deliver than I was a month ago. So I am considering my options. I know I will feel like such a wuss who can't take what women since the beginning of time have if I get an epidural. But she said that sometimes it can be a lot more stressful on the baby NOT to have pain control during an induction.

So here I am. I would rather no one call me. I would rather not be heard from ever again, I'll just sit here and make another pot of coffee and pretend like things are ok. But really? This is the hardest thing EVER. I wanted my baby to come naturally and I wanted to be queen of the natural labor process. Apparently the Lord has other plans.

So here I wait and sit in a depressed state until thursday at 6am.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Help me.

I listened to a women's conference given by Bianca Juarez on the seven dadly sins. Wow...conviction on everyone. Who would have thought? Me I suppose. Its easy to think I wouldn't have a stumbling block at each and every one, but I gave myself to much credit. After spending hours and hours this week listening to the studies I am so convicted, and after I look at my sin, know my sin, and face it? Wow. So here is my Psalm. I won't confess my specific sins to you all on blogger, that probably wouldn't edify but make you go EWWWWWWW! It makes me go ew. I will tell you one...yesterday, on my due date, I cried for an hour and texted my husband telling him I didn't know what was happening to my faith. I was reading and praying and felt like I was being ignored. I got to the point where I just wanted to quit and say "FINE! If you want to ignore me though i pour my heart out to You, FINE!" but wow...wake up call. I hear "You ignore me though I gave my only son for you. Though I pour out my heart for you, though I give you life, love, and every blessing." then I cried some more because I felt like such a crappy christian, such a crappy person.

I wish sin wasn't a daily issue with me, Michael and I talk about it at night. Neither of us wants to sin anymore, but we must not want it bad enough, We both have our struggles, some more obvious than others. We decided it would be a lot easier if our natural disposition was not to succumb to the flesh...but it is. We both have things to keep each other accountable on. Imagine whatever sin you will to fill in the blank, sin is horrible even on the smallest scale. Like a lack of self control, a lack of peace, of patience, of goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness...lacking those things equals SIN! WOW. Brain hammered and zinging in my head...I lack multiples at once. In one spout of anger I show my lack of ALL of those.

Thankfully, I have a redeemer to save me from this wretched body of death! AMEN and HALLELUJAH!
Pray I learn to be more diligent.

(A psalm inspired by my sin)

Oh Lord give me strength to lean on You and not on the desires and callings of my flesh...I need strength from you to trust when I feel I have nothing to trust in, Lord I believe (help me with my unbelief!) and renew a clean heart in me! I ask for the reassurance of your perfect timing and not to succumb to my doubts.

I beg you Lord, give me the strength to live the life you have called me too! I know you will, and yet I falter daily. I feel like King David, though he was a man after your own heart, caught up in my follies day after day. How long, oh Lord, will you put up with a fool like me? I'm sorry for my doubts, for my sins. I'm sorry I call out to You thinking Your not there. Just because my prayer has not been answered to my pleasing Lord does not mean you do not own it and have it under control!

Please Lord, turn your face aside from this wretched sinner, I can't stand on my own. Only look at me through the blood of Your Son, who makes me pure! Help me not to take this love for granted! Help me not use this love to my advantage but to honor You and love You in return! Lord, calm my anxious heart. In Your timing, I know. No amount of tears, whining, or despairing will bring about anything worthwhile. It is only when I wait on you that my soul can truly find rest and that I can be content with the blessings you have given me. Content with the blessings? Rejoice in the blessings! Help me to rejoice in Your PERFECT timing and Your PERFECT plan and not give over to the waves of doubt that encircle me.

Lord, I have no standing on my own. I have nothing to offer you but a botched past and what feels like it will be a messed up future. Even in my failings, my daily falling, my wandering mind, my twisted tongue, my doubting heart, my contentions, my lack of trust, take me. I know Your WILL lead me in the way everlasting.

Thank You for casting my sin as far as the east is from the west.

As far as can be, now as King David cried to you in Psalm 51 I do also to "deliver me from the guilt" of my sin so that I can come boldly before You and declare my new life and heart!

I'm sorry for my crying yesterday, for my doubting that You hear my prayers, for my despair. For feeling forgotten. None of it is true. I am sorry for the secret sins of my heart, for the sins of my mouth, for the sins of my eyes. For my vanity, for my unwilling to yield heart, for my self consumed life. Take this as my confession Lord and give me the strength, I beg and plead with You though You give it freely, to live for You.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Thoughts on the bible and childbirth.

So I just went through Matthew in my morning bible study and am now going through Luke and 1 Samuel. I have a few thoughts, funny that both of the first chapters of the two books speak on childbirth.

First of all, in Luke it talks about the birth of Jesus. Please realize that I am in no way trying to be disrespectful to the word of the Lord, I just noticed some things from the 40 weeks pregnant vantage point that made me think. Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. Joseph was still a virgin because the bible states that he did not know Mary his wife until she had brought forth her firstborn son (Jesus) in Matthew 1:25. Can you imagine the awkwardness there? Here is this young girl who had never had anything happen to her body before and all of a sudden BOOM contraction hits. Joseph is the only one there to help her. She's in a barn. No epidural here. No cleanliness here! All women can probably attest that the thought of childbirth is bad enough on its own when you think of all the tearing and stretching involved, imagine being a virgin and having that all be completely new and foreign to you. And then there's Joseph.

I pity the poor guy. No bradley classes, no learning the breathing patterns. Heck, he had never seen his wife in anything but the latest desert robe (probably...) and then BAM! She's baring all for him to see and what a sight it is. Childbirth ain't pretty, according to the pictures in our childbirth class. Gruesome, scary, bloody, painful, but not pretty. And he was the ONLY one there to help her. Do you think her labor was any easier because she was giving birth to the Lord? I don't know. Luke glosses over this and says "So it was the time came for her to be delivered and she brought forth a Son". There is a lot that went on in that sentence that we don't know about.

Then here is what really got me. I understand that Jesus was the Lord from the time of His birth and that Mary knew that He was God. But...Mary was still a woman. Not the woman the catholics paint her to be, she was just a woman. She had just given birth in a stable and she had a healthy beautiful child that was probably a mix of a mystery and a gift to her. I can't imagine how she loved Him at that time when she first wrapped him in swaddling cloths and held him tight. She was probably still recovering from labor and delivery when these hairy smelly men show up to worship her child, the Lord God of Israel in the form of a baby.

Yep. I was thinking about how awkward it would have been to have your blood and placenta on the straw in the stable and then these guys show up to see the baby. And shepherds in those days...well rumor has it they were stinky men that were far from the top acceptable tiers of society. Yet this is how God planned everything to happen. I just have a whole new respect for Mary in this story now.