Full Term baby!! (PS I am not a theologian).

We made it!  Thirty seven weeks pregnant - I have to admit there was a time when we doubted if we'd get this far.  I am so relieved and can't wait to meet our healthy, chunky termie!  FYI: termie is what parents of preemies/people-in-the-know call full-term babies. ;)

I wanted to share that info. but I also wanted to share something of a more spiritual significance and I hope someone can benefit from it as I did.

To begin, I read my Bible using Professor Horner's Bible Reading System.  If you click on the name it will take you to a pdf that explains it - I highly recommend it for many reasons, one being that you cover 10 chapters a day, some are in the Old Testament and some in the New.  Some days, like today, the chapters overlap and a theme emerges that makes me think, "Hmm, guess that is an important concept to God."

I began in Numbers 11.  The Israelites are complaining about the "good ol' days" back in Egypt where although they were slaves, they had all the food they wanted, but now all they had to eat was manna (but they were free).  So God tells Moses that the people will have enough quail to feed them for days; they'll have so much they'll be sick of it.  And Moses replies, "God, we have over 600,000 soldiers with us!  Even if we kill every animal we own and catch every fish in the sea it won't be enough."  Of course, he forgets he is talking to the CREATOR of the UNIVERSE.  But instead of belittling Moses, God just says, "Is there any limit to my power?"

Lesson: God doesn't like when we complain so don't do it, and don't doubt God's resources.

After that chapter, following the reading system, I go to 2 Corinthians 6 where Paul describes all the hardships he has endured.  Throughout all the beatings, starving, freezing, sleepless nights and heartache, he still recognizes that there is great hope in Jesus.  He doesn't look at his relationship with God in terms of all the bad things that have happened to him - he views it despite them.  He still talks about his "purity, understanding, patience, kindness, love and power of the Holy Spirit."  He has every right to be sick and tired of it all, but he clings to these fruits of the Spirit and finds peace and relief in them.

Lesson:  I haven't been through anything as bad as Paul describes, yet when life stresses me out, I neglect to see the great gifts God has given me in my life.  Not material things, but the intangible eternal things, like the ones Paul mentions.  Circumstances shouldn't dictate my attitude - Jesus should.

So all this is starting to click in my head now.  Next in the system is 1 Peter 5.  In verses 6-7 Peter says, "So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in his good time he will honor you.  Give all your worries to God, for he cares about what happens to you."  Later in verses 10-11 he says, "In his kindness, God called you to his eternal glory by means of Jesus Christ.  After you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.  All power is his forever and ever.  Amen." (emphasis mine)

Lesson:  I am going to suffer, but that doesn't mean God doesn't care about what happens to me.  He is kind, and he promises to provide for me from his unlimited resources.

To top it all off, I then read Psalm 121: 

¹ I look up to the mountains—
does my help come from there?
² My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth!

³ He will not let you stumble;
the one who watches over you will not slumber.
⁴ Indeed, he who watches over Israel
never slumbers or sleeps.

⁵ The LORD himself watches over you!
The LORD stands beside you as your protective shade.
⁶ The sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon at night.

⁷ The LORD keeps you from all harm
and watches over your life.
⁸ The LORD keeps watch over you as you come and go,
both now and forever.

This is what put me over the top and I thought, "I have to write this down!"  So I decided to share publicly in case there was someone else out there who God is trying to reach with his message of perseverance under trails.  We can keep going and we can even be HAPPY (?!) when we face trials because God LOVES us and he is keenly aware of all we are going through!

As my due date approaches, I have found myself becoming more and more anxious.  Since the baby is still breech, the doctors did not remove my cerclage.  Since they didn't remove it, I need to report to the hospital immediately once I start having contractions so they can remove it and I can dilate without injuring myself (assuming the baby has flipped head-down).  However, if the baby is still breech chances are they will administer an emergency c-section and remove the stitch at that time.  I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions lately that are much stronger than before, so I am constantly wondering, "OK, is this it?  Should I be getting ready to go?"  I am trying to mentally prepare myself for the hard work of labor, but I may have a c-section and not need to worry about pushing and breathing through contractions.

BUT, in light of everything I just shared with you, I am wasting my time with these thoughts.  I even wasted my time and yours by writing that last paragraph because the God of the universe, who has the power to raise people from the dead, is creating this baby inside of me and he will bring him into the world just the way he wants.  God cares about me, and the baby.  He wants me to be at peace and to trust him.  He has given me a full-term pregnancy and I have not had one single issue during the last 37 weeks, praise God for that! 

To sum it all up (I am speaking to myself here, but you probably need to hear this too):  STOP COMPLAINING!  The Lord is trying to do work in your life, and it will be an awesome work because he is infinitely more wise than us and he loves us!  Stop longing for the "easier times", and stop looking at the negatives.  Remember all the good that there still is; dwell on the blessings you have despite the tough circumstances you are in.  Then, as Peter said, "After you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. All power is his forever and ever. Amen"

³³ Seek the Kingdom of God above all else,

and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

³⁴ “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today’s trouble is enough for today."

-Matthew 6:33-34

Wow, it's been over a month since the last post.  I guess I have been busy nesting and resting and not thinking about writing. 

The biggest thing that we've experienced is Jonathan starting to walk.  This would be a great place to insert a video but I don't have one (what a bad mommy!).  I do have a picture of him mid-stride, though.



Hands up and out to the sides and laughing as he walks.

Obviously, we were so excited when he started taking his own steps.  He still crawls when he needs to get somewhere quickly (like down the hall to his room), but almost half the time he prefers to walk.

He has also learned to identify things using words.  A few of the words in his arsenal: pup-pah (puppy), meh (meow, which he says when he sees our cat), cah (car), baou (ball), tuh-DOU (touchdown...don't ask why he knows this).  Then he has code words that only we know the meaning of:  ha HA ha means he wants to watch a Three Little Pigs cartoon he is currently obsessed with; bah bah BAH bah is Brown Bear Brown Bear; ba ba BA is Yo Gabba Gabba.  It might sound far-fetched but I am telling the truth: we have decoded some if his jibber jabber.  There are still some things that he says that I have no idea what he means, but the important thing is that he is communicating!

I am now in my third trimester (33 weeks to be exact).  It isn't as bad as the first, but it is pretty uncomfortable.  We have made it almost 10 weeks further than we did with Jonathan which is so amazing to us!  We never thought I'd be pregnant for so long and it is such a blessing to be able to experience this and have the peace of mind that this baby will (hopefully) have a much less eventful beginning to his life than his brother Jonathan did.  I am scheduled to have the cerclage removed on Feb. 15, my last day of being 36 weeks pregnant (that's 1 day shy of being full-term).  BUT so far baby James is breech.  If he doesn't flip by then, they will not remove the stitch and schedule me for a C-section, then remove the stitch at the same time.  I know C-sections happen all the time, but I am really looking forward to labor (weird, I know) and will be disappointed if I can never experience that (our local hospital does not do VBAC). 

BUUUUUT God is sovereign and He knows what way is best for me and James, and whatever God ordains is right. 

Jeff is still in school at RTS in Orlando.  He is gearing up to start his Spring semester and has already begun yet another online class.  I can tell when he is starting new classes because a steady stream of books starts to arrive in the mail.  We bought a huge bookshelf about a year ago, and we have a good collection of books then, but now it's overflowing like crazy.  Almost all the books on there are theology-related, and about 1/3-1/4 are books that have been purchased just since Jeff started seminary.  I have never seen a person go through so many books in such a short amount of time!  But, I have never lived with someone pursuing a Master's degree, either, which is in a whole other league compared to a Bachelor's, not to mention that RTS is a prestigious school so they are going to make you work to be able to call yourself an alumnus.  How he does it all while still performing his duty at church and being an AWESOME dad and husband I will never know!  But thank God he is able.

So that's the Skipper household in a nutshell.  I wanted to write about an awesome series I have been reading on the meaning of marriage based on Paul's teaching in Ephesians 5, but that will have to wait.  So much good stuff in there, though!  If you want to read it yourself, here are the first 2 parts:

Part 1: A Picture Perfect Marriage

Part 2: The Wife's Role

The much-anticipated cerclage surgery

Yesterday I had the cerclage surgery that I have kind of been dreading.  The main reason was because of the anesthesia, which turned out to be not so bad.  We got to Florida Hospital around 5:30 am and I got called back about 40 minutes later.  They started my IV and I met one of the nurses named Karl.  He was really friendly so that helped ease my nerves.  Then I met the anesthesia team and they were also really friendly - so far, so good.

Once I got back to the OR they had me sit on a table and prop my feet up on a stool, hugging a pillow - the position for an epidural or a spinal (I had the spinal).  I had heard from my pregnant friends that epidurals (which are very similar to spinals) involve big needles and are painful, so this is why I was dreading it the most.  I was hooked up to a heart monitor that beeped with each beat of my heart, so as they sanitized the skin on my back, I would start to think about a big needle aimed at my spinal cord and the beeps would get faster.  I tried deep breathing to bring them back down because I didn't want the whole room to know how nervous I was.  I'm sure they could see it all over my face though because they were all talking to me about pretty much whatever they could think of.  That was really nice of them. 

The nurse anesthetist numbed the area first, so once she got to administering the actual anesthesia, it just felt like someone firmly pressing on my spine, and it was no where near as bad as I thought it was going to be.  They extracted some of my spinal fluid, then replace it with the drugs that made me numb from the waist down.  Within minutes my feet started to feel like they were asleep, and the sensation spread up my legs.  As I described what I was feeling and asked if it was normal, the nurse assured me it was, and looked very pleased that I was feeling that way.  The surgery team laid me down, hung a cloth in front of my face so I couldn't see anything, and the doctor got to work.  The other nurses and nurse anesthetists talked to me for the next 20 minutes while an IPOD that was on shuffle played everything from Whitney Houston to Lady Gaga.  It was such a relaxed environment and once the surgery was over, I was so happy that it had gone nothing like I thought it would.

In the recovery room, I had to keep trying to bend my knees and lift my hips off the bed to prove the numbness was gone.  After about an hour, I passed that test and got to move to a second recovery room, and Jeff was able to join me.  I finally got to eat some crackers and have some Gatorade, since I was ordered not to eat or drink anything after midnight the night before my surgery.  Jeff and I looked at pictures of Jonathan on his phone, and watched an episode of some Gordon Ramsay show where he traveled to India and made Indian food from ant eggs and such.  For my final test I had to use the bathroom.  As I got up to walk over there, my knees almost buckled under my weight.  As I clung to the nurse and Jeff, I was able to make it to the bathroom.  Sadly, there was no action in there and I had to stumble my way back to bed.  I downed the rest of my Gatorade and waited.  After almost 2 hours, a bottle of Gatorade and 1 1/2 liters of IV fluid, I began to worry that I would never be able to use the bathroom (even though I really had to), but I decided I had to try again, and I managed just enough for the nurses to let me go.  I was in so much pain from my bladder still being full and from the surgery that I was not very happy on the way home.  I got feeling back to my hips and abdomen about an hour later though and it was glorious!

Since then, I have been taking Indomethacin to help with the cramping I get occasionally as a result of the stitch.  My entire spine is sore as well, and when I can't take it anymore I take a Hydrocodone and fall asleep.  I try not to take too much medicine for the baby's sake, even though both are fine for pregnant women. 

So, that's my surgery story.  I go for a follow up in 2 weeks to make sure the stitch is holding up and my cervix isn't getting shorter.  I have been instructed to be a couch potato for the next week, which is kind of nice right now because I am still dealing with some soreness.  But once I start feeling better, it will be hard.  I also can't pick my baby up anymore and that it SUPER hard!  But in 6 months, hopefully we will see the fruit of all this. 

The hormones of pregnancy and our experience the last time has made it hard for me to be super positive about the cerclage.  Something like 90% of women who have one carry full term, which is encouraging.  But I can't get rid of this "wait and see" mentality.  I think it will be easier for me to be more positive once I get past 24 weeks (God willing).  I know that God is with me, but I don't know what He has in store for me with this pregnancy and to be honest, that's hard.  I know what the Bible says about worrying, and my future, and God's sovereignty.  Even still, it's hard.  But I am trying to pray myself into trusting Him no matter what, and not worrying about the "what-ifs".  I know my family and friends are praying the same for me.  And so far, this pregnancy is a million times better than the last one, so that should count for something, right?  At least we know what to watch for and are trying to prevent it from happening. 

So, here's to carrying full term!  Only 25 weeks to go...

September 11th

 Ten years ago, I was sitting in a classroom at Winter Haven High School.  The words "terrorism", "jihad", "national security", "Patriot Act" - none of them meant anything to me.  Then the principal made an announcement telling the teachers to turn the TVs on.  The image appeared just in time for us to witness the planes hitting the WTC towers and and the towers crumbling.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing - it looked like something staged in Hollywood for some action movie.  I felt scared for our country, and once I learned Washington DC was a target, too, I became very concerned.  Even as a 17 year old girl I knew this was the beginning of a new chapter for our country.

One  year ago, I thought Jonathan would never come home from the NICU as a healthy baby.  He was 70 days old and still on a breathing machine.  We had also just gotten news that he was almost certainly going to be blind unless the hospital would approve a radical surgical procedure to save his vision.  We waited anxiously for over 8 hours to hear the results of the emergency meeting that was called to determine if the procedure would be approved.  Thank God, it was.

On two accounts, 9 years apart, September 11th has taught me that whatever situation is immediately facing me may seem insurmountable; I may have no direction and be powerless to do anything.  But God is not that way.  He is sovereign.  He goes before me and makes a way when I can't see one.  He provides for me in all situations.  I thank God for the experiences He's given me, and in those times He has proven that He will never leave me nor forsake me.  He has upheld me with His victorious right hand.

This Thursday I will have outpatient surgery to have a cerclage put in place in hopes that I can carry Baby #2 to full-term.  I am not scared of the surgery.  I am guilty of being anxious about the rest of the pregnancy, though.  But all I need to do is think back to how the Lord has provided for me, and I am convicted of my lack of faith.  I am thankful for modern medicine, and the extra watch the doctors will keep over me during this pregnancy.  But more than that, I am thankful for the God who never sleeps nor slumbers, and who creates life within me, where no one can see.

Is there a doctor in the house?

A lot of medical things going on in the family right now!

Jonathan has had a cold since Monday, and it has been getting worse as the week progresses.  Last night, he only slept for 1-2 hours at a time and stayed awake for almost 2 hours at a time.  All the while, Jeff was in bed with a sinus infection, so I am a tired girl today!  I took Jonathan to the Dr. this morning and we are doing Albuterol breathing treatments until this passes.  He hasn't had a high fever and he is happy when he is awake, so we are thankful for that!  Jeff is also on steroids and antibiotic so hopefully he will be feeling better soon, too.  It's hard on Mommy when both my boys are sick!

Also, Jeff and I went to the Maternal-Fetal specialist yesterday to see what the plan is for this pregnancy.  Just for background:  I had multiple complications with the last pregnancy that may or may not have caused Jonathan to be born early:

1. I have a septated uterus (you can Google that), but we didn't know about it at the time.
2. When Jonathan was born, we discovered E. Coli bacteria had taken up residence in the placenta, anmiotic fluid, and Jonathan's blood stream.  I had no symptoms of this infection, and the body's defense against infection during pregnancy is to get the baby out (otherwise I could've taken antibiotics).
3. I had/have a weak cervix (the part of the body that keeps the baby in), so when Jonathan got too heavy, out he came.  Also, a weak cervix would make it easier for bacteria to travel up to the baby and infect it.

With all that said, it seems like the most likely situation for me is that I have an incompetent cervix.  This is good news because this can be helped with a simple surgery called a cerclage.  It's outpatient surgery that takes only a few hours and a spinal epidural.  The doctor said if this is the reason why Jonathan came early (and they can't be 100% sure that it is), then I have a 90+% chance of carrying the baby full term.  We are so excited about this, I cannot imagine carrying a baby that far!  We are still waiting to hear the exact date of surgery, but it will for sure be two weeks from now.  After that, the doctors will check the stitch every two weeks or so and make sure it is holding up.

After the surgery, I will have to be off my feet for a week or so.  Luckily, my awesome mom is flying in from Texas to help around the house and we are so excited to see her!  She hasn't seen Jonathan since last Thanksgiving so I know she is so excited, too.  He has come so far since then!

Granny and Jonathan, Thanksgiving 2010

Please keep Jeff in your prayers as he waits for relief from the intense pressure in his head, and pray that Jonathan would start to get better soon as well.  Also, please keep me and Baby in prayer as we prepare for surgery and whatever life for our family will look like after that.

Also, any comments or emails about people you know who have had successful cerclages would be much appreciated and encouraging!

Love,

    The Skippers