mywalkintofreedom

[mywalkintofreedom]

A surprise natural breech home birth

July 15th, 2021

The day feels long. I am now 6 days overdue, and feeling very ready to go into labor. I’m very fatigued this day as well. We’ve had a challenging set of weeks behind us, and I’ve had to overcome many trials of fear and symptoms the enemy tried to put on me to discourage me from having a good labor. I’ve had many symptoms for the past few weeks that labor is near. I feel ready to have Saela and welcome her. One prayer I prayed often the last few days: “Father, please give me something to lift my spirit”, and He does again on this day.

That evening I decide to do some exercises on my birth ball, like I have been doing often, and am hoping to help Saela engage a bit more to jump start labor, as she doesn’t feel very low yet. Later on in the evening, Micah and I take a walk. We’ve taken this walk before, we actually took this walk just a few days before this day and I had no issues. Today I’m barely able to finish the walk and struggle. I tell Micah how I just feel so big and heavy tonight.

That evening we go to bed and as almost every night, I wonder if this might be the night. (All my labors have started in the night). We pray, and I specifically pray a prayer that I prayed before:

“Father, please give me a clear sign that labor is on its way. Either have my water break, or have a bloody show”

I prayed this because my labors have always progressed quickly. I wanted there to be enough time for my midwives to arrive. I knew that if either my water first broke, or I’d have a bloody show, that it can usually take a little while before contractions pick up, which would allow plenty of time for everyone to get here.

I also specifically felt lead to pray against fear this particular night, so I did.

With that prayer, we lay down and go to sleep. It was around 11 pm.

12:27 am, July 16th, 2021

About an hour and a half later, I wake up for no reason. I don’t have to pee, which is usually the reason I wake up. So I just lay there. After a few minutes, all of a sudden, my water breaks. I feel a little gush of warm fluid, and I’m confused at first at what is happening. I’ve never had labor start with my water breaking. Then I feel an other gush. At this point I know for sure my water is breaking, as I remember the feeling. I whisper, “I can’t believe it Father, You answered my prayer”. I’m feeling really excited now, knowing labor is on its way. I’m one week past my due date at this point and so ready.

I turn to Micah and wake him up. He looks at me as I tell him “honey, I’m feeling this warm liquid”. He literally stares at me with no response. I’m assuming I might need to be more specific. “I think my water just broke”.. still no response I’m looking for. He mumbles something like “oh okay”. “Labor is starting, my water is breaking”. He shoots up, and smiles. I guess it took him some time to process what I was trying to say. Gushes of warm fluid continue to come out. He calls our midwives, and they both are on their way. I’m just laying still in bed, with little gushes of fluid coming out every now and then. We take a quick picture, because I want to remember how God answered my prayer, and how labor started. I’m feeling some contractions but nothing too intense. (We had a plastic cover under our sheets by the way, we were prepared). Im texting with my mom some, telling her my water broke, as they are 6 hours ahead of me. I’m concerned contractions might pick up quickly if I get up, and I am determined to lay still until our midwife arrives.. but after awhile I decide to get up and use the bathroom.. and meanwhile Micah takes off the sheets and changes them out. I also change out my clothes.

Our first midwife arrives about an hour after we called her, she lives an hour from us. We’ve been in touch during her drive. She checks on me and the baby and after that we head outside and walk up and down our driveway all together. We’re just chatting, and whenever a contraction comes I pause and then continue walking. Every now and then we pause for her to listen to the baby’s heartbeat as well. The outside air feels amazing, it is a beautiful night. We do this for awhile, and then go back inside.

After awhile our second midwife and assistant arrive. I’m so relieved everyone arrived on time. Labor is still very manageable. Contractions are getting stronger over time and are starting to take more concentration. I’m either leaning over my birth ball, sitting on the toilet, or laying on my bed.

We have worship music playing. I selected a random playlist from Maverick city when everything started, because there were several songs from them that I had really been liking recently. A lot of songs I know, and a lot are new to me. Some songs move me deeply, bringing me to tears. I’m frequently thinking about my parents. They were supposed to be coming to visit us in this time, but The United States is not allowing Europeans to come in due to COVID. It’s been a cause of grief as I haven’t seen them for a few years and had really hoped to have them here for the birth. I have a lot of emotions going on that have build up over the weeks leading to labor causing me to cry.

I’m going to the toilet again, and this time when I wipe and show it to my midwife there is meconium on the toilet paper. I can tell there is some concern about this. Fear immediately tries to cripple me. Ezra swallowed meconium during his birth and ended up on oxygen for several days after birth, so it triggers me. They both assure me not to worry, and are monitoring baby’s heart rate frequently. Her heart rate is perfect. I’m able to move past the obstacle of fear and overcome. Everything is going to be okay.

My contractions are really picking up now and intensifying. Fear is really trying to mess with me again. Can I do this again? I don’t know if I can do this. (This is usually an emotional sign post that you’re about to transition). I know that fear will only work against me and make the pain worse, so I’m really doing all I can to relax my body and let my uterus do what is was designed to do.

I’m now allowed to get in the birth pool, something I’ve never done with my other births, but decided late in pregnancy that it was something I wanted to try. As soon as I get in the pool I feel instant relief. The warmth of the water feels so good. I’m in active labor now. There’s no chatting, it’s deep concentration and breathing and moaning.

While I’m in the pool more meconium is coming out. My midwife wants to check my dilation and suspects that baby is coming out bottom first. It is then that I hear “that’s a bottom”, SHE’S BREECH. I’m in the middle of active labor and can not comprehend what I’ve just been told. Are you sure? All I can think is no no no no, what? She’s breech!?! Fear is there again, really trying hard. I have my dramatic moment of freaking out and then I lean over the birth pool and pray for God to give me peace, while contractions continue to intensify. Because the fear is there so strongly, the pain of my contractions are super strong. I believe I say that God is going to need to come down from heaven to personally deliver the baby (yes, dramatic). I feel I’m close to the end.

Because breech births can have complications we are now faced with the choice if we want to continue laboring at home, or if we want to go to the hospital. This also triggers me, because I was transported to the hospital after Ezra was born. Micah and I both agree to continue laboring at home. We both think that our midwives are the best people to handle this birth, and very capable. I have lots of thoughts running through my mind. If we were to go to the hospital they would probably send me for a c-section, I think to myself, or id have the baby in the ambulance. I’ve only ever heard of breech babies needing to be delivered by c-section, and I’ve only ever heard of babies needing to turn head down at the end of pregnancy if they’re breech.. I really need to trust God. I’m constantly praying asking God for peace and strength, and He comes through and does just that.

Our midwife has me come out of the birth pool because the baby is not coming down, and also so I can get on my hands and knees, this is the best position to deliver a breech baby. By the time I get out of the pool I feel confident and have regained my peace and am able to move past the obstacle of fear, again. As soon as I step out of the birth pool I can feel her starting to descend. If she doesn’t come down completely in 15 minutes we need to go to the hospital, because this could mean that the cord is too short. (We live very close to a hospital). Thoughts continue to run through my head, and I’m continuing to pray and ask God to equip me and give me peace. I have no idea what is going to happen, because I have never delivered a breech baby, but I make a choice to move forward and not let fear hinder me from doing what I’m needing to do. I need to get out of the way and surrender to God, and that’s what I do.

The pushing stage is what I had been most concerned about prior to labor. It was also one of the reasons I wanted to try the birth pool, because the warm water can relax your muscles more. Pushing went beautiful with Noami, and I didn’t tear with her, but the pain I had felt was still burned into my memory.

Right at the 15 minute mark my pushing contractions start to come. I am now leaning over the side of the bed with my knees on the floor. My body is doing all the work for me and pushing for me. I’m surprised, because the intense pain I remembered from my last labor, isn’t there. Strangely it almost feels good and relieving to push. I’m wondering if she’s even coming out? But she is! First her bottom starts to come out, next one leg, there’s a pause, and an other leg comes out.. there’s an other pause and slowly her arm comes out, and an other arm and lastly her head. In about a span of 3 minutes her entire body safely and smoothly comes out.

July 16th, 5:27 am

About 5 hours after my water broke, Saela is born, Frank breech.

As she’s handed to me tears are streaming down my face. I can’t believe we did it! I can’t believe I did it! I’m overwhelmed with thankfulness, and can’t help but thank my midwives for staying with us and allowing us to labor at home. I continue to thank them and cry because I just cannot believe it. I cannot believe what just happened. We naturally and successfully delivered a breech baby, at home, without any complications. In fact, this was my least painful experience so far.

A little while after Saela is born, our dear friend arrives who we had called to come. She’s been there for each of our births and always been a great spiritual support. We didn’t call her until we found out Saela was breech. Things progressed very quickly at the end so she didn’t make it in time. As she walks in I tell her in full disbelief “SHE WAS BREECH, and there were no complications, we naturally delivered a breech baby”!

Later on we are told that breech babies are legally not allowed to be delivered at home, IF it is known that the baby is breech prior to birth. But, if it is a surprise breech, which this was, then you are allowed to continue to labor at home. My mind is blown, I’m so thankful.

One of the many things I love about home birth, is the educational part of it. Our midwives always explain everything that happens and take their time, it’s not rushed. They also allow you to look and study your placenta, if you want to. It always blows my mind to see an entire organ, grown in just 9 months, that housed a growing baby. When my midwife is examining Saela’s placenta, she points out a blood vessel running across the amniotic sack. She explains that if my water had broken through that vessel, all blood supply would’ve been cut off to Saela.

We have gone over and over why Saela was breech. We have no idea. We discuss that it could have been a possibility that she needed to be breech to be able to be delivered safely. We don’t know, only God does.

Later I looked it up, and only 3-4 % of babies are breech at birth!

I had some very interesting feelings towards the end of my pregnancy, like something was just different. Saela was head down at my last appointments. It’s truly a mystery to us why she was breech.

We really see the hand of God on Saela’s life. The enemy really tried to interfere with her birth, not just during labor, also prior to labor, but he didn’t win. God won. I didn’t tear either, or even bruise or swell, and my recovery has been very quick and easy this time.

I share this story, because Micah and I have both seen Gods’ hand on everything. There were so many opportunities to go down under fear, but He helped me/us move past those obstacles every time they arised. He was in the midst of us, and maybe some day we’ll know why things went the way they did, but for now, we look back on an amazing unique birth.

Saela Manoah Huff

July 16th, 5:27 am

8 lbs 11 oz

21.5 “ long

We don’t have any fancy pictures of the birth, just these two boring ones of me leaning over the birth ball. I also attached the selfie we took after my water broke, and a picture of Saela shortly after she was born.

[mywalkintofreedom]

Life at west Main Street- part 5

When I think about the first months of Ezra’s life, I look at it as a time where we learned some of the most valuable lessons in life. When he came into our lives we were no longer living just for ourselves, I guess is how I could describe it.

I remember a lot of things just became less important, or didn’t seem like they were that big of a deal anymore. I remember Micah saying “I feel so small now, and like I know so little about life”. It might be hard to believe, but the season we were in, living where we were living, there couldn’t have been a better time for us to have our first son enter into our world.

When I look back, our circumstances, our finances, our living environment, I’m glad they were the way they were. Why in the world would I say that? Because it was these things that caused us to make life changing decisions at the most important stage of our journey, when we had a newborn, and that we learned things that we otherwise wouldn’t have. Never ever despise small beginnings, it was our foundation. It also made that we learned to depend on God for our every need, not just for ourselves, also with our child. I didn’t know what it was like to be statistically poor, or to have to wait to buy a piece of meat, to not be able to buy new clothes. I’m saying “statistically” poor, because if you looked at our income, we were poor. BUT, we weren’t poor in spirit, we were richer than we had ever been. I remember food never tasting as good as it did in that season. We bought good food, and it was just enough for what we needed. We would often look at each other and say “I feel so rich”. We lived in our apartment for about a year and a half, and because we lived here for so long, living “primitive”, I guess is how I could describe it, became a part of our mindset and foundation that we built our family on. Watching how God took care of our needs, gave me great hope that He would help us take care of our son.

Some of my dearest memories at west Main Street were probably the early hours of the morning. I treasured every second I got to spend with Micah, and honestly still do. Maybe it’s because we had a long distance relationship before we got married, that was definitely part of it. But to be in the company of one another was and just is the best, especially in that time. Micah and I would get up early every day and he would make us coffee and we would sit down and read the Word together. We had been reading together every morning since the day we got married. I’m sure many know this, but proverbs has 31 chapters, so it’s perfect for reading “the chapter of the day”. We did this for years.

We would read while we had Ezra in his squeaky rocker that Micah would rock back and forth with his foot. Often this was at 5:00am after his first feeding. Ezra would listen and eventually fall asleep to us taking turns reading out loud. I can still hear the squeaking of that rocker like it was yesterday in the early morning hours as the sun rose through the trees.

There had been many months of reading together where I just sat through it and wasn’t feeling anything and wasn’t getting any revelations and often didn’t even feel like reading, until then. It wasn’t until the first months of Ezra’s life that the Word of God started to explode. I was having so many revelations in this time, and Micah did as well. It’s like all of a sudden I understood parts of scripture that I had read my whole life or was seeing things I never saw before. I remember craving the Word, wanting to be in it. We had bible studies together and we made decisions on how we were going to raise our family, and how we were going to keep our home spiritually clean.

Micah was 19 when we got married, and I had just turned 20. I don’t think I had ever shared our age in my other blogs, so there ya have it. We knew we were for each other. I knew before he was even my boyfriend, and so did Micah.

By the time Ezra was born, Micah was 20 and I was 21. So yeah, we were still young chickens. I still felt like a teenager in a lot of ways. Still immature in a lot of areas of our life. But we had the privilege of growing up together, which we still are, and I don’t regret being that young at that time. We might not have always made the right decisions, but does anyone always make the right decisions? We may or may not have bought pizza with our last pennies too many times than I can count, and then had to eat plain bread in the following days until pay day. But we did always learn from them. (except for the pizza situation, we never seemed to learn from that one.) We always wanted to do Gods will for our life. I honestly don’t know where we would be today if God hadn’t been the One guiding us.

I remember getting to the point where I felt like life was starting to settle down a little, or so I thought. I think it was late July, but I don’t remember exactly. One afternoon, Micah came home for lunch and he had an interesting look on his face. I could tell, like I always can, that there was something he needed to tell me. Lunch hour had nearly passed, I think, when he finally said “well, I quit my job” (!) My brain couldn’t really comprehend what it had just heard. In full surprise I said “you did WHAT!?” He quit his job. I thought maybe he meant he decided he wanted to, or was planning to, but no, he had already gone to his boss and done the deed. His job was our only income, by the way. He explained to me all the reasons why he had quit, and that he felt it was time to move on to something else... and the entire time all I could think was “you didn’t discuss this with me”. I was furious about it, actually. I mean I was upset that he gave up our income, of course, but I was more upset that he made the decision without me.

In fact, I was so upset that I didn’t talk to him for nearly two days. I wasn’t trying to give him the silent treatment, I just knew that if I would open my mouth I would probably end up getting really angry, and say things I shouldn’t (I had a good amount of experience with this). After two days when I felt my anger had cooled off, some, I told him exactly what I thought, but calmly. I told him that I thought it was not a good idea. I told him that I thought that he needed to have something else lined up before he could quit. And most of all, I told him that he hurt my feelings by not involving me in that decision before he went and made that decision by himself. Then I told him that I would support him in his decision and walk beside him, and help him in any way I could, because he is after all my husband, but that I most certainly was not in agreement. He repented to me for not including me in the decision and said he saw that that was wrong. This was actually a big learning moment for both him and me, for me, because I had to make a choice not to let that anger take root in my life which would then create a breech.

But he didn’t change his mind, which I hoped he would. We shared it with several friends, and I stood beside him and did not share with anyone that I didn’t agree. He had one more week of work and then he would be done. There was a goodbye party at work and everything. They had made him a cake and cards, the whole shebang. I remember thinking, “oh my word if he does change his mind this will be interesting”.

Please know that Micah’s heart was never to do the wrong thing. He had been faithfully working at a job that didn’t fulfill him for almost a year at this point. He often talked about wanting to do something different, but the open door just hadn’t come yet. It’s a journey, learning to hear God and His will for your life. It’s not always easy. Micah was learning, and he had an open heart, always.

We searched for different work for him, but we didn’t have any success. I prayed that God would show him the right thing to do every day. I firmly believed his time wasn’t done yet at his old job, but also had to be open to trusting God if it was. After some council on his decision with friends, and conversations between him and I, he eventually humbly went back to his boss and asked him if he could have his job back. This definitely wasn’t easy, but he did feel it was the right thing to do. I was so proud of him. He recognized he had made the wrong decision and had gotten ahead of God. His boss had already hired someone else on, so he wasn’t able to take Micah back full time. In a way this was okay, and a consequence that we had to accept, it gave Micah an opportunity to do some other work on the side that he’d enjoy more.

So between that summer and January of 2016 he worked several days a week at the car dealership, and then the other days he did odd jobs. God still provided for us. You know, even if you make a mistake, you repent and you move on, it doesn’t mean God abandons you.

One event that really made an impression on both of us happened at the Ingles supermarket. We were really tight this week. Like really tight. We had to pay something that set us back, I don’t exactly remember what, I wish I did. I remember we really didn’t know how we were going to eat this week. We needed a miracle. We had $10, and decided that we would get a few essential food items and that Micah would walk to work. Micah was always the optimist, he would tell me “don’t worry, God WILL provide”. Sometimes his optimism would irritate me, and I would say “how the heck can you be calm about this!?” But, the reality is, his trust in God has truly taught me a lot. We decided “okay let’s pray and ask God”, we had prayed that God would provide for us, and make a way for us to be able to buy ALL the essential food we needed for that week and put gas in our car.

It was a Sunday afternoon after church. We always took the mini cart at Ingles, because we wouldn’t buy a lot. We had Ezra’s car seat on the mini cart, and we would put our groceries in the section below. We were only getting like three things. While we were there we saw someone we knew. This person jokingly bumped into Micah “on accident” to say hi. We chatted for a bit, and Micah said “yeah just doing some groceries for the week”. This person looked at our cart, and then he looked at us, and said “in that?” We were like “yeah we don’t need too much, we put everything down there at the bottom, it works great”. He then looked at me and said “why don’t you go get a bigger cart”. I was like.. uhh.. ok.. sure. When I got the cart, this person started filling up our cart with all sorts of groceries, and told me to pick out everything we needed. I still get emotional even writing this down. I was very hesitant putting things in, we had been calculating everything so long, just throwing things in the cart was not something I was used to. This was one of the most meaningful things I personally ever encountered. His wife was there too, and also asked me questions, like what I liked to eat, and things like that, and she then would put it in the cart. I remember he put a bottle of fancy sparkling grape juice in the cart, and different extras that we never bought, but would think about buying sometimes. Micah always wanted to do special things for me but we just couldn’t afford it, he always told me that’s why this meant so much to him. He put expensive cheese in the cart, he put a jar of Nutella in the cart (🙂). And meat, wow meat for every day of the week, plus extra. A lot of things that I really liked that he didn’t know I did. I remember really just not knowing what to do, and he kept nudging me saying things along the lines of “come on, is that all?” “What else?”

We went to the checkout, and even there I was thinking “what’s going to happen now?” Is he going to leave and let us pay for it?😂 We had never filled up a belt with this much stuff. They paid for everything.

We walked out of the grocery store and said bye, and of course THANK YOU. We went to the car, and when we got the groceries loaded we sat down and looked at each other. “What just happened?!” Like seriously, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” I remember Micah raising up his hands and praising God, thanking Him. Our miracle happened, God provided, the same day, not just the necessities, more than what we needed for that week. We headed to the gas station and used the money we were going to get those few groceries with, and filled up our car.

I had a routine, every day I would take a long walk with Ezra to Micah’s work and then we would all drive back home for his lunch hour. This walk took me about 45 minutes the first time I did it, but I got faster and I remember the last time I took that walk it took me 35 minutes. Often people would stop and ask if I needed a ride, and they always were very surprised when I’d say that we were just taking a walk. During my pregnancy my feet had grown half a size, I had no idea this was even a thing, but it can happen, and happened to me. This meant that all my shoes were too small, and would make my legs hurt and knees. One time we had extra money so we went to Goodwill to look for shoes for me. We found these tan Toms for the exact money we had, they looked brand new. I wore these Toms every day until it had holes in both front and back, I loved them.

My walk was my favorite part of the day, it made the morning go by faster. The outside air was necessary for me to keep my spirt lifted, and it did. The stroller I used was the stroller we had gotten from our babyshower. I remember the wheels were starting to peel by the time we moved out of west Main Street, because of how many miles I had walked with this stroller. I also walked up the hill to the library every day.

My spirit had never felt more alive. I still didn’t have any distractions in my life, and the main thing I noticed when I didn’t have a phone for more than a year is that my brain was much less occupied with other things. It was very quiet and peaceful, I guess I could say. I had space in my head, if that makes any sense. We were gifted a gift card to Hobby Lobby by a family member, so we bought paint brushes, canvasses and paint and yarn. I set up this little corner in our apartment where I would paint almost every day while Ezra took his naps. I really enjoyed doing it, although I really don’t think I was any good at it😂 I also learned how to crochet and would make hats and scarves for Ezra. I also crocheted scarves for different family members.

In that September we went to Kentucky for three weeks for Micah to work with his dad. Ezra was 4/5 months old at this time. I would say that the breastfeeding struggles were at its peak in this time I think. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to throw in the towel and exclaimed to Micah that I was done, (even though I never really meant it), that I couldn’t do it anymore. He was having major blowouts and rashes and screaming fits, Ezra that is, not Micah. That’s honestly what I remember the most of that trip. But I was getting close to my breakthrough even though I didn’t know this of course. While we were in Kentucky, we planned a trip for me to go to The Netherlands with Ezra. I’m pretty sure my parents provided a ticket for me and Ezra (infants fly for free). Micah wasn’t able to come. A ticket was booked and after the three weeks in Kentucky were over, we headed back home.

Not too long, maybe a few days after we had gotten back home from Kentucky, we were headed to the airport. I so wanted Micah to be able to come with me, but that just wasn’t an option. I moved to the United States when I was 14 weeks pregnant on November 4th of 2014. It was now late October of 2015, so it had been a year since I had been back and since I’d seen most of my family. Most had never met Ezra.

I remember being very nervous about flying alone with Ezra for 9 hours, and about nursing sitting next to other people. (I mean you basically sit on each other’s lap in an airplane) They allowed Micah to escort me all the way to the gate, they gave him a special pass, it was so special. Goodbye at the gate was hard, we hadn’t ever been separated from each other since we had been married. I was going to be gone for three weeks.

When I got in the airplane the flight attendant saw I had Ezra and said she wanted to find me a good spot. (Before I had left Micah had prayed for people to step in and help me when I needed it) I had an entire row to myself. A nice guy also offered to carry all my luggage. Ezra did phenomenal on the plane, he didn’t cry once. He slept well and nursed well, and stole all the flight attendants’ hearts. It really felt like a God-thing. They said they had never had a baby do that well on a flight, it made me feel good, but I thought they probably said that to every mother😄

My time in the Netherlands was good. It was very very strange to be back. I felt like a different person, and like I was looking at what I’d known my whole life through different eyes. I wasn’t the same person I was when I had left, while pregnant, a year ago. A lot had happened. It was also when I was back, that I realized how primitive our life really was. I also remember unpacking my suitcase, and for the first time in months I smelled the real smell of our apartment again. I hadn’t smelled that smell since I had prayed that one time, and all of a sudden I realized that that was what our stuff smelled like. Still the muffy cigarette smoke smell.

After three weeks it was time to go back home. It was hard to leave, but I was leaving home to go back home. Both felt like home, so I had my peace about it, and was excited to see Micah again. On the flight back, I also ended up in an empty row with Ezra.

It was the Sunday morning after I had gotten back from Europe. We were getting ready to go to church. I was still having issues nursing, and this morning things were not going well again either. I was just so upset. I told Micah I wasn’t going. I really had rarely missed a service but the enemy was really resisting this morning. Micah eventually convinced me to go and God knew I was supposed to be there, and so did the enemy, so the enemy really tried hard that morning to keep me home.

When we got there, we sat down all the way in the back where we always sat. I remember holding back tears because I was just struggling this morning and so done with my nursing journey and feeling like such a failure. I honestly wasn’t hearing anything that was being said.

All of a sudden our pastor stopped talking. He started walking through the rows, and we were all following to see what he was doing and where he was going. Next thing I know, he is walking straight towards me all the way in the back. He stops in front of me, and he looks at me in my eyes and says “I love you, I am so proud of you, you are a good daughter” and then he gave me a hug, a long hug. I broke, I completely broke, how did he know? How did he know I was feeling like a failure? How did he know I was struggling? How did he know I needed to hear this? How did he even see me all the way in the back of the church? I cried, I couldn’t help it, it all came out. He cried with me. We looked into each other’s eyes crying.

It was a life changing experience. I received a piece of God’s love that day. I received a piece of confidence. I honestly don’t even know what happened, but it changed me, and it changed my journey. I wouldn’t even be able to explain exactly what changed and what happened. My nursing journey changed after this too. I figured out what was causing my struggles and had a peaceful journey from then on and never struggled again. But even before I figured it out, it changed. It was a night and day difference.

At the end of the year Micah was hired back on full time at the car dealership. Before he got his job back full time, he was doing a side job for someone. It was around Christmas time. The fun thing about side jobs was that I often was able to come with him with Ezra. I remember this particular time he had finished the job and we were saying goodbye. Right before we left, this person paid Micah and said “merry Christmas,” and put 100 dollars in his hands. This was much more than what had been promised!

It was the beginning of the year now, 2016. The apartment was still as cold as it was the winter before. We were sharing a room with Ezra, he was 8ish months old by now. We decided to move our bed into the dining room (which was about the same size as our bed) and let Ezra have the bedroom. It was mainly because he would wake up often when we’d come in at night, and I didn’t like not being able to to talk before bedtime. It honestly changed everything. We loved having the bed there, and it made it feel so cozy. We would put the space heater in his room at night and it would stay decently okay. We had a lot of blankets covering his windows and it was a smaller space so that helped. Whenever we’d put the space heater back into our main space where our bed was in the morning, I remember it always showing crazy low temperatures. It was like we were camping in our own house, in the winter. I slept in my bathrobe with lots of blankets and it honestly wasn’t that bad, but do remember my nose getting cold😂. I remember thinking, “I’ll look back on this one day”. With Georgia being Georgia, the difference in temperature between day and night was always big, so the day time was much better. Eventually we had two space heaters, and different curtains, really thick and long curtains, which helped a ton to keep it steady around 60-65 degrees. I think the windows were the main issue, they were really old and you could feel the wind come through them when you’d sit next to them. That’s why the different curtains made such a big difference.

It was around this same time that we were asked to house sit for some people which was a huge blessing, because it meant that we would sleep in a heated house. God knew. We would house sit a week, maybe once a month. I do remember it being harder to go back to the apartment in the day time, because the difference in temperature was so big between their house and our apartment.

It was also in this time that I finally got a phone! My dad had given me his old phone while I was in The Netherlands, and we were able to finally get it to work with Straighttalk. This of course changed a lot for me. Where before I had needed to walk to the library to ask Micah something, I now could just text him. It was wild. I hadn’t had a phone for a year and a half. I also had more opportunities for fellowship because it was easier to text people. At the same time it also conflicted me, because phones can be such a distraction.

Micah was working full time at the car dealership, and he was also working on Saturdays for someone else at this point. Often he made over hours at the dealership. I remember the last few months being rough. He was gone a lot. We were starting to think about moving, and I was starting to really want to move. Ezra was moving around now and there wasn’t a lot of space for him. We also wanted to have more children. It was towards the very end of our season at West Main Street that we were having a little extra money here and there, because Micah was working a lot but also, because we were getting finished paying off our midwife, our loan and my greencard. Micah and I made a deal, that every Saturday after he got done working, we would eat out somewhere cheap, while getting our groceries. We would turn grocery shopping into a date. It was the absolute highlight of my week.

I was working through discontentment, and I continued to be reminded to be faithful with the little things. My prayer always was for God to help me take good care of what we had. I remember thinking “how can He entrust me with more, if I’m not taking care of the little that I have”. “How can he entrust me with better, if I’m not thanking Him and grateful for what I have right now”. And I would actively thank him for our home when I felt discontent and ungrateful, sometimes against everything I was feeling. Our neighbors would often wake up Ezra from his naps, they would stand right next to his window and holler at one an other and I would feel so done. Ambulances woke him up frequently as well. I hadn’t ever imagined living there still at this point, and did struggle with it. I prayed for months that God would bring us to a different place and provide a different place for us to live and grow our family.

The neighbors who lived in the basement, with the grandparents upstairs, in the house next to us had moved out. There was a sign that it was up for rent. We went to go look at it. When we walked in, it was the most filthy space I had ever encountered. There were hundreds of dead cockroaches (and I’m not even exaggerating), and the carpet was so gross, there was still some furniture left with rips everywhere. We also looked at the basement where they had lived and we both just couldn’t believe that an entire family had lived there in those conditions. I thought to myself “and here I thought I had it bad”. It was unreal, and so sad and so dark. We prayed that they had found a better place, and it was a realization that a lot of people in our town in this neighborhood lived in these kind of conditions.

In april of 2016 we had been searching for a house for awhile. We had paid everything off (which was an absolute miracle!) and were now able to afford a bigger place. After a long search we found a little two bedroom house in our price range. We had done all the calculations and came to the conclusion that we could do it. We had family help us get enough for the down payment, and we moved into this little house mid April. Our season at West Main Street came to an end, and a new season had begun, and this was just the beginning of our journey. In the months and years to come we realized how much of an impact this season had on our life, and how it really set the tone for our future.

Pic 1: Ezra on one of our many walks

Pic2: our bedroom before we moved our bed into dining room

Pic3: doing our morning bible time outside

Pic4: the way our apartment looked just weeks before we moved. It was home.

Pic5: Corey aka “the toothless wonder”

Pic6: our little kitchen.

Pic 7: our side of the apartment

Pic8: Micah always making us the best food

Last pic: family selfie

[mywalkintofreedom]

Life at west Main Street- part 4

So as I had written in my last blog, we had finally left the hospital and we were headed home. When we got back to our apartment some of our neighbors were hanging out outside. I didn’t really want to see any of them, but they all flocked to our car to come see the baby. I was still kinda struggling to get around, so I carefully got out of the car and one of our neighbors said “wow you look pale, are you okay?” I wasn’t quite sure what to answer. In my head I remember wanting to say “well I did nearly die but other than that I’m okay” 😂

When we got to the door some friends had hung up a balloon that said “it’s a boy”, it made me smile. I was almost hesitant to walk into our apartment, I knew we had left it a mess, and I wasn’t sure how I would do seeing it exactly the way it was, because of the experience we had had. When we walked in, the entire apartment was spotless clean and rearranged. There were some flowers on the table, a napkin holder with napkins, salt and pepper (I don’t think we had ever owned napkins). I was especially concerned to see the bedroom where everything had taken place. Our bedroom also was rearranged and cleaned up. I know it seems like such a small thing, but it was big for me, I was so thankful. And over the next few days we would find different small things they had bought for us. It represented a new beginning.

I had a very odd sense of grief seeing things from before the birth. I saw some maternity clothes I had worn the day before or foods I had eaten and I couldn’t handle it for whatever reason and it made me choke up. It was the weirdest sense of grief.

Our church always sets up a meal train, so the first two weeks new parents don’t have to cook dinner. With how frugal we had lived over the past months (and still were), this was huge for us. Not only because we were getting all this amazing food, but also we were saving a lot of money on groceries and it wasn’t often that we had any extra. Although most of that extra went to pediatrician bills. Every day someone brought us a meal, we even had steak one night which we hadn’t had in ages. Because we had extra grocery money from the meals, Micah had gone to Ingles one day and bought me this big fruit bowl with assorted fruits already cut up, it felt so luxurious😂 and SunChips. The SunChips became a tradition that he bought me every birth after that. Seems so small, but these extras were so special.

It was May now, so the temperature outside was getting warmer. It was about 80 something degrees in the apartment, and I was starting to think about the hot Georgia summer. It was manageable if I only wore a tank top, but it was warm. I would put a cloth on my arm when I was nursing because Ezra would stick to my arm 😂. But Micah and I both prayed God would provide a way for us to stay cool in the summer.

One person who was bringing a meal one day noticed it was warm in the apartment and asked Micah if we didn’t have an AC unit. Micah had told him no. I was actually in the shower while this person was there. When he had left and I had gotten out of the shower, Micah told me that this person was buying us an AC unit and was coming over the next day to drop it off! This was of course, an amazing blessing to us.

I’m not sure what to write about the first days. They were hard, intense and beautiful all at the same time. I was still in a lot of pain and couldn’t really sit, which made nursing hard. Nursing didn’t go well at all, and was triggering. I also had gotten so much mixed information on how to nurse at the hospital that I had no clue. One nurse had said one thing and the next came in and said the opposite-it also hurt bad. Ezra would get so upset and arch his back, which then would make me upset.

I remember after getting home from the hospital thinking I was never going to give Ezra that pacifier ever again. The first night he would not stop crying and we did everything we could to rock him. Forget about it, I told Micah to go find that pacifier and gave up on that idea pretty quick. He had gotten used to it and slept good as long as he had that thing. I really had wanted to make that choice myself on whether or not I was going to use a pacifier or not, but it was what it was.

I didn’t want to put Ezra down, and would listen to his every breath. He had been so closely monitored in the hospital, I almost couldn’t believe we were allowed to just take him home. I’m sure that’s how a lot of new parents feel. He had been separated from me so much after birth that I kept him close to me on my chest and didn’t leave his side. If I ever took a shower I would take him with me in the bathroom even if Micah was home, I just wanted him with me.

Of course we had the classic first parents moments. We got peed on and pooped on while changing diapers. I remember Micah getting shot in the face one time, it was funny.

I’ve always been fascinated by psychology and loved this aspect of my social studies I had done in the past. I was determined to study Ezra’s behavior and learn what worked and what didn’t work, and how to take best care of him.

Micah had a week off work, but 5 days of that week were spent in the hospital. After the weekend he had to get back to work and the first morning alone I had a major melt down. Micah had been with me the whole time and I hadn’t been alone yet. Nursing was hard, pain was still there and we lived so close to the hospital that I constantly heard ambulances, which triggered flashbacks constantly. I guess I really hadn’t processed anything that had happened and all of a sudden it all hit me at once when I was by myself. I really had thought I was okay, and I think I was but I needed to grieve and process. It caused me to grieve deeply, and it caused me to be angry and upset. When he got home for lunch that day I told him I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t be alone, that I wasn’t ready. He ended up calling his boss if he could stay home the rest of that day, and his boss gave him two more extra days on top of that. I was so grateful, and we both needed that time.

We had checkups at a pediatrician for Ezra and he wasn’t gaining any weight. We hadn’t really had much time to figure nursing out yet because I hadn’t been able to nurse him much in the hospital while he was in the nursery. All I heard was: you’re failing. She started to tell me that it would be best if I started giving him formula, and I basically begged her if I could please try breastfeeding just a little longer. I know there’s nothing wrong with formula, and anyone who has needed to do this I have absolutely no judgement, but we definitely couldn’t afford formula, and I just wasn’t ready to give up. She said okay, I had to come back in two days, and if he hadn’t gained any weight by then I would need to start supplementing.

I told Micah one night, when I was struggling, I missed my mom and my family so much. Postpartum comes with so many emotions, I had a lot of them as well, sometimes it was overwhelming. I said I just wished I could see them.

I have three older sisters who all had their babies when I was a teenager. I had remembered how special that time was when they had their baby. We were all so involved as a family and we would make gift baskets and spend a lot of time coming over. I remembered thinking even then, one day this will be me, what a special time that will be (yes, that rhymes). But my first days had been nothing like I had imagined in those teenage years, and the missing of my family was big. I had known it would be different, but didn’t expect it to be such a hard thing.

It all sounds so intense. but there also was so much joy. So don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all hard.

Any time I was alone while Micah worked, I remember praying a lot, and also reading the psalms every time I had to nurse. It was the only way I could keep myself from getting really angry, because I would feel so angry every time I was trying to feed him. I would just read the psalms out loud, I didn’t know what else to do to keep my peace, I didn’t have any prayers to pray, and the words in Psalms really resonated with me so that’s what I did. I held him on my chest all day and he wanted me to hold him. I think we were both okay as long as I was holding him. There is some truth to this scientifically, there is a happy hormone released when a mom holds her baby, it’s also healing, especially when doing it skin to skin. I didn’t know this yet in that time, but it was very healing to me to have that time.

In the evening times I would be on Micah’s phone letting google teach me how to nurse. I found a website that was very useful and would go there for every single question I had about breastfeeding. I remember feeling the burden that Ezra’s growth was dependent on my ability to nurse. I was determined to learn everything there was to know, and “studied” breastfeeding every night. I didn’t know anything, and had no idea how much there was to know! Often in the middle of night when I’d struggle to get him to drink I would be on that website searching for answers. And I prayed, a lot. One amazing thing that I appreciated so much, every time I got up to feed Ezra in those first couple weeks, Micah sat up next to me and would get me water. He was such an amazing support to me.

We had reached out to someone we knew, asking if they could come help me and show me what I could be doing wrong, but this person never replied. I remember feeling so rejected. It was hard to reach out for help for me, and when I finally did there had been no reply. After that I didn’t want to reach out to anyone else. Much later in life when we had to reach this person for something else, Micah found out we had put in the wrong phone number, one digit was wrong, and that’s why they had never replied. It was such a set up from the enemy.

When I went back to the pediatrician, I remember the anticipation when we got Ezra undressed and put him on the scale. I was so nervous. To my greatest joy, he had gained an ounce, I think, maybe 2, I don’t remember the exact amount. I was allowed to keep exclusively breastfeeding him if he continued gaining. It was the happiest news I had ever heard and I felt prouder than I had ever felt. It gave me hope that maybe I could get this thing.

When Ezra was almost two weeks old, some dear friends of us reached out and asked if we’d liked to come over for breakfast on the Friday that he would turn two weeks old. We were going to celebrate his “two week birthday”. Be there at 7:29 am they had said (the time Ezra was born). They also said they had a surprise, I thought it was such a cute idea. A day or two before the breakfast, is when I had had that meltdown and told Micah about how much I missed my family.

It was a rougher night that night with little sleep, so we overslept. I remember waking up to Ezra and looking on the clock. We were late! We had lived with these friends before we moved into our apartment, so I thought “I don’t have to get dressed up for this”. I put my sweatpants on and we got in the car. On our way over there, we talked a little bit about what the surprise could be, I said “probably a little gift for Ezra or something”. I really didn’t think it was anything big. When we got there they told us to get Ezra out of his car seat, but he was finally sleeping after a long night so we left him in there. When we walked into their living room it was the biggest, Godsend surprise I had ever gotten in my whole life. My mom and two of my sisters had flown in from The Netherlands and were standing in their living room! I started weeping, I was absolutely shocked, both Micah and I were shocked! We had had no idea! It’s hard to describe what I was feeling in this moment, it felt like I could release my feelings and it felt like a burden was falling off my shoulders.

My mom explained that all my siblings had come together and bought her a ticket to come see me. They were able to stay for a week. During that week when they were with me, breastfeeding started going a lot better, it was still pain, but he was latching now and he was gaining and I was still studying it daily. I was just so so happy. I got to show them our little apartment. They brought so many gifts. I hadn’t seen them for a very long time and it felt good having them in my little world for just a little while at such a season of my life. I was so used to being alone that I really treasured this time more than I ever had before. It was exactly what my heart needed in that time. I remember goodbye was extremely hard, but I think if they had stayed longer than a week goodbye would’ve been too hard.

I adjusted to life as a mom. I loved being a mom, it’s what I had always wanted. It wasn’t just me anymore when Micah went to work. I felt like life had a whole new purpose. I felt like the biggest calling of my life had begun. The first weeks were hard, but also so so special. I listened to a Paul Wilbur album on repeat to keep my spirit lifted and even then I could tell Ezra loved it, and I continued to read the psalms out loud. I had a hard time really having any words in that time. Any time I heard an ambulance and my thoughts headed the wrong direction, I would open my bible and read the psalms and it would put my mind at peace.

I was less than 2 weeks postpartum and so itchy to get out. I decided to put Ezra in a baby wrap (after 45 minutes of trying to figure out how to wrap this thing by looking at pictures in a booklet (remember no internet) )and was going to walk up the hill to show him off at the library. (If you’re an OB or midwife you are allowed to shake your head). I left the house and realized I forgot his pacifier, so I turned back around to get it. Then I left again and realized after a few minutes I forgot the diaper bag, I walked back again and grabbed the diaper bag. Then I was finally on my way, but I was honestly not ready to walk up that hill and really shouldn’t have been. I had to pause every couple minutes. It was funny too, because with him in the wrap it almost felt like I was pregnant again walking up that hill, which I had done so often. When I got to the library all the ladies oohed and aahed over him and asked me his name, it was so special how involved they had gotten, and said they had wondered if I had had the baby because I didn’t come for awhile. We hadn’t told anyone the names we had picked out, except for this one random guy that worked at the library. He was shy, and one time he had asked me if we had any names and I had told him Liam was the name we had picked for a boy. It was funny to see his surprised face when I told all of them the name was Ezra. (I attached a picture at the bottom so you can see how pourly I wrapped him😂)

Any time Ezra cried in the middle of the night I was concerned he was waking up the whole building, it would stress me out. Still they all said they never heard us, even though I could hear them loud and clear.

Taking baths in honey and milk epsom salt became something that gave me absolute peace and joy in this season. I think I did it every day. It was a tiny little bath tub, but the entire apartment would smell like milk and honey and it’s become one of my favorite smells in the world. The epsom salt was one of the gifts from our baby shower and since then we’ve always bought it for after labor.

In the coming months Ezra started gaining weight beautifully. By the time he was 4 or 5 months old he was in the 90th percentile for his weight. He was somewhere in the lower 5% when he was a month old. The pediatrician honestly was stunned at his quick growth and joked that I should bottle up my milk and sell it. After getting so close to not being able to breastfeed him, I feel like it was a testimony because we had a very difficult beginning. He was a chunky baby. Even though he was exclusively breastfed and gaining weight, breastfeeding continued to be a struggle for many months, and I continued to study it to try and find out what was causing some of the issues I was having. I didn’t figure out what was causing the issues until he was 5 months old. Emotionally I struggled with it greatly as well, probably even more so. I had so much anger well up in me during those months, that I think just came from our birth experience, and God really walked me through it and helped me to deal with those feelings.

Through all of this, I don’t know how things would’ve gone if I hadn’t gone through the process that I had before Ezra was born. All those hours that I spent before Ezra came into our world were for a reason. It had prepared me for this chapter of my life.

We lived in our apartment until Ezra was 11 months old. In part 5, if I decide to write it, I will probably talk about our last months at West Main Street, the decisions we made for our life, a trip I took to the Netherlands with Ezra and transition to our new house.

I want to end by saying that I felt very hesitant to talk about breastfeeding, and it’s probably one of the main reasons why it’s taken me awhile to get this part written, because I know how sensitive of a subject this is for many women. Many women struggle to breastfeed, and many women might not end up being able to breastfeed like I was. In no way would I ever want any other mother to compare her story to mine. We all have our own journey and you can be so proud of yourself, however your story went, as I know it is not easy.

I also know my birth story is not an exception. I’m not saying that to diminish what I experienced, because for me personally it was definitely something that made an imprint on my life. But what I mean by that is, that if you read my story and were somewhat shocked, know that at least half the moms, if not more, you talk to probably had one or more difficult birth experiences that they haven’t shared about. Many women have birth experiences that were traumatizing or not how they had imagined it, and it can cause a lot of grief. If this is you, I pray if you haven’t yet, that you will find closure and healing, and know you are not alone.

If you’re a new mom, please don’t let my story scare you. I believe anything is possible with God.

[mywalkintofreedom]

Life at west Main Street- Part 3 Birth

I ended my last blog saying that before our first child came into the world I had a lot of victory in my life. I had gotten to a stable place and had gotten used to living the way we were living. I really believe this was Gods way of preparing me for childbirth. The intimacy and relationship I had built with God in the many quiet hours is what helped me get through the next chapter of our story. I was in the Word daily like I had never been before. I didn’t know then that I was sowing seeds for what I was going to need. I was heavily dependent on Him to carry me through the next part. Also the “stripping down” as I called it in my first blog really prepared me for natural labor. I had been faced with my issues without any distractions to escape in the past months, and I believe this is what helped me to get through natural labor, because I had learned to face it and not be able to run from it. When you are faced with the pains of labor you have to go through it, you can’t say “okay I’m done now someone else take over”. As unprepared I was for what was to come, I do believe God prepared me in these ways. My life was about to change forever. (I am 34 weeks pregnant in the picture below. We were trying out hats at a store just for fun)

Our church always throws a babyshower for any expectant mother. We had a babyshower as well and we were overwhelmed with the generosity and kindness of so many people. We didn’t have anything for our baby and went home with anything we could possibly need. And when I say anything, anything! This also made it so real, our little apartment all of a sudden was filled with baby items.

Towards the end of my pregnancy I was getting very very impatient. Part of my impatience was because of “fear of the unknown”. I just had no idea how things were going to go. Another fear I was having is that I wasn’t insured, so if things went wrong I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. I also was afraid I would go into labor without being able to contact Micah. I had never gone through labor before. I started to struggle a lot actually towards the end, because waiting on our baby to come, mixed with being by myself and watching literally every minute on the clock, and then the unknowns, made for things to go sooo sloooow. Also, I want to say that we weren’t uninsured by choice, there just weren’t any options for me until my greencard process was complete.

Before I go into how labor started I have to tell you about an amazing name revelation we had. We didn’t know the gender of our baby. We had picked out a boy and girl name. Noami for a girl, and Liam for a boy. We also had the name Ezra on our boy name list, but ended up going with Liam. Well, when I was about 36 weeks pregnant Micah and I found the movie “flywheel” at the library. We watched it together and at the end of the movie they name their baby “faith”, because of what the season they had been in had represented. Micah and I looked at each other and we both thought that was amazing. Micah then wanted to look up the meaning of the name Ezra Yosiah, which we had as second choice (it had been my first choice when we were initially picking out names). He looked up the meaning and it means “Our help is founded in Jah(God)”. We both looked at each other and our mouths dropped. Dramatic, I know, but really. That was EXACTLY the season we had been in. God had been our help. We had depended on Him. We both said “that’s it” that the name, and we both were convinced from then on that we were having a boy.

On April 29th of 2015 I remember clear as day waking up that day feeling depressed. I was so done waiting. I hadn’t even reached my due date yet, but with this being my first child I had thought since 37 weeks “any day now”. I wrote in my journal about how done I was. The next day was the same. There really is nothing wrong with being done, it’s pretty natural.. but where it was going wrong for me is that I lost my good attitude. I was upset, I was angry, I was cranky and that made that I went into my labor with the wrong mindset because I wasn’t at peace. I was doing the best I could though, in that current season in my life.

On April 30th the time was ticking away and at 7:30pm Micah had still not come home from work. He would be late from time to time talking to customers or having a sale, but this was really late. The library closed at 6, so I couldn’t contact him. I also was starved. Don’t judge me, he always made dinner in this time (because I didn’t really know how to cook yet😑), so I would wait on him. I got so hungry I decided to go ahead and eat. I had two cinnamon raisin bagels with peanut butter and Nutella and slices of banana. I remember hoping it was okay I had two, because we usually only ate one, and I thought “I hope we still have enough for the rest of the week now”. In a way I felt guilty, but I didn’t know I was going to need that extra bagel that night. At around 7:45 I started to have scenario’s in my head that he had died in a car accident. I was getting really worried, and I really am not easily like this. I put my shoes on and decided to go walk to his work to see if I would find a car wreck somewhere along the way. I was nearly 40 weeks pregnant at this point. Our apartment was located in kind of a valley, so I had to walk up a hill to get to the square. I started walking, and I was having a lot of Braxton Hicks, but I had had those a lot, so I paused from time to time and kept going. Then when I was about halfway up the hill I saw our little Corolla’s headlights coming down the hill. Thank God! Micah saw me and stopped, and I told him “dude I thought you had died, what took you so long!!?” He had gotten into a long sale. When we got home I told him I already ate, so he went ahead and ate a bagel as well for dinner.

It was a Thursday and we were low on groceries. We decided to go to the grocery store. We went to Ingles first. As we were walking there I said jokingly to Micah “I feel like the baby’s head is going to fall out, I have so much pressure and it’s so low”. The baby definitely dropped that night. Me being clueless didn’t think a ton of it. We then went to Walmart and I was struggling to walk because the pressure was intense. Looking back now, I was probably already in early labor😂 We got home and went to bed. I remember thinking “this might be the night”.

Around 1am I woke up to a contraction. It was more intense than a Braxton Hicks. I got really excited thinking “oh my goodness maybe this is it”. I waited, and another one came, I got even more excited. I waited some more, another one. After several, I decided to wake up Micah. I told him I was having contractions and that it could be it. Micah got excited as well. We waited a bit and it really didn’t take long until they were getting more intense. Micah decided to call our midwife, I was protesting, I was scared this wasn’t the real thing and that she’d drive all the way here for nothing (she had told me stories of false alarms and I didn’t want to be that person). She lived more than an hour away from us. When he got her on the phone she wanted to talk to me, she told me “since you’re still able to talk try to lay down and rest more, if it gets more intense then call me again and I will come”. I thought, “see it’s probably not real”. Well, I tried to lay down, but I was pretty much in full blown labor now. Contractions were coming fast and got painful, this is when I was pretty sure it was real, and I slightly panicked. Micah called our midwife back probably less than 30 mins after he had hung up, again I was terrified she’d come for nothing even though I was for sure in labor. As we waited on her, my contractions were coming every 3 minutes and I had no idea what to do.

My contractions were so intense and I wanted my mom. I don’t know if I had ever felt as alone as I did in that moment. I told Micah to call a dear woman friend of ours. She came right away in the middle of the night. As soon as she arrived I felt a lot better. She had made notes she knew exactly what to do. She talked to me, she encouraged me and assured me that all of this was normal. She was amazing.

When our midwife finally arrived she seemed pretty relaxed, she then checked my cervix and I was 9 or 10 cm dilated! She was shocked! I had only been in labor, I guess maybe 3ish hours. You could see she slightly panicked. She did not see this coming at all, and neither did I, because she had told me over and over again that first labors were very slow. So I said “so I’m really in labor?” Our lady friend laughed and said “oh you definitely are honey”. Contractions continued for quite awhile without feeling the urge to push yet. We tried all sorts of different positions, but the only way I could tolerate anything at all was by laying on my side with a cloth over my face. Even though it was overwhelming, I felt I was dealing with it decently by shutting everything out and praying.

Finally the urge to push came, I had no idea how to do anything, and my lack of preparation for natural labor was definitely showing. I just pushed as hard as I could, and it felt like there was absolutely no improvement. It was very painful. I kept feeling like I was doing something wrong and I was constantly apologizing for the lack of progress. I started feeling hopeless and I clung to God more. Around this time our Midwife’s assistant arrived. She was a woman about my moms age, she held my hand and told me I was doing wonderful. This also really helped me. I hadn’t seen her come in so I thought “where did this wonderful lady come from?” I pushed for nearly two hours, maybe more I don’t know, with very little progress and then I felt something inside of me, it felt like a really sharp pain and I yelped out. I had no idea what that was at the time. My midwife kept saying “I really don’t want to do an episiotomy” (because the recovery is much harder). I had no idea what she was talking about, because I didn’t know that term. It was now starting to get lighter outside and I asked to open the window, I felt a slight breeze and it felt so wonderful. My midwife made the decision to do an episiotomy. I still didn’t know what it meant, but when she got out scissors i got the idea. With the very little strength I had left I pushed maybe two more times, and I could not believe the enormous baby that came out. (I will never forget Micah’s face when he saw the size of the baby).

At 7:29 am, on May 1st, 2015, Ezra was born. He was 8 lbs 7 oz. Micah and I both cried, I couldn’t believe I did it, and that he was finally out. It was over! It was a boy! They put Ezra on me and I wanted to take it all in and look at him, but the pain I was feeling was overwhelming.

What was supposed to be a peaceful joyful moment, which it was for a short while, turned into a stressful life threatening moment very soon. While I was getting stitched up from the episiotomy I was bleeding heavily and the bleeding was not stopping. The pain I was feeling now was worse than the pain I had been feeling during labor. My midwife and the assistant were doing everything they could to find what was causing the bleeding and they were pushing on my uterus to try and help it contract and make it stop the bleeding, which hurt unlike anything I had ever felt. They were doing a lot to find out the cause.

I was starting to feel my body shaking and I started to feel very very cold. I didn’t know what was going on, but I felt like something was wrong but I was also in denial. It was then that my midwife had to make the decision to call 911. I cried and told them “no no no we can’t, I’m not insured”, she plainly told me “if we don’t you’ll die”, I guess I couldn’t argue with that😄 It wasn’t barely 5 minutes and the ambulance people arrived. (We lived 3 minutes from the hospital). I now started to feel myself drift away. I was hearing everyone’s voices but couldn’t respond. I remember them taking Ezra off my chest and telling Micah to get him dressed. I remember being wrapped in a white cloth and carried onto a stretcher. I remember feeling exposed.

As they carried me outside I remember the temperature being fair and wonderful, and I remember thinking “I have a son”, “I am a mom”, and feeling a sense of joy about this, I felt changed. Then I heard a bird, it was a bird I remembered hearing often during my childhood in the Netherlands and I felt like God was telling me “everything will be okay”. It was a moment that has stayed with me since then and probably will for the rest of my life.

They put me in the ambulance and the people in there asked me a lot of questions that I wasn’t able to answer. I remember them trying to take my pulse and not being able to. I do remember whispering “where’s my baby?” They told me my husband would be following the ambulance with our baby.

When we got to the hospital I asked again “where is my baby?” It was then that Micah caught up with us holding Ezra in the car seat. I hadn’t really seen Ezra’s face yet, and Micah showed me rushing after us as they carried me in, and I said “he is so beautiful”.

They brought me to a room where I felt extremely cold and the shaking was only getting worse. There were several doctors leaning over me discussing things, (it felt very odd because I heard everything). One of them came in and said something along the lines “okay let’s get his baby out”, and they told him the baby had already been born. I thought “who brought this clown in?” They started pushing on my uterus again and all I remember was screaming at the top of my lungs and crying because the pain was unbearable. Then there were loud beeping noises and they rushed in with those thingies to get your heartbeat going, (again a very strange experience because I could hear everything). Everyone started rushing around and they said “no pulse, we’re losing her”, and I remember wanting to say “I’m still here”. There then was a doctor, after things calmed down, that kneeled down and held my hand, looked me in the eyes and said “everything is going to be okay, I’ll take good care of you”. He was the first one that had looked me in the eyes, and I felt very comforted, I knew he was a man of God. He got me blankets because I was so cold and after the screaming they decided to put me to sleep.

Through all of this I had Gods peace the whole time, which I think is truly a testimony. I had no doubt I wasn’t dying and really all I could think about was my baby. They put one of those things over my mouth and nose and after that I just remember getting really tired and falling asleep.

When I woke up I was in a different room and not so cold anymore, the pain was also better. I looked into the hallway and saw one of my pastors, and wondered if something was terribly wrong, then I looked and saw Micah. I immediately asked him “where is the baby”. He answered “someone is nursing him right now”. I couldn’t believe or understand what I was hearing and got upset at him and started crying saying “I want my baby, I’m supposed to feed him”. It was explained to me that Ezra had needed someone else to nurse him because I wasn’t able to and that he needed nourishment. I was very upset, and this probably continued to be the main thing I struggled with the most in the upcoming months.

Ezra was finally brought to me and I felt much better having him with me, it made me forget everything when I held him and I could finally study his face. He was indeed a boy, just like we had known within ourselves. I just couldn’t believe it.

Doctors came in and told me that I had suffered a major internal tear and that that was what caused the bleeding. They said they had never seen a tear as big as it was and if it had been minutes later I wouldn’t have made it. They had given me a blood transfusion and surgery while I slept. Nurses came in and out and were very sympathetic.

I wasn’t sure how to process everything that had happened, but I was glad it was over. Micah took my hand and looked at me and said “I will never look at you the same, I have never loved you more than I do today”. I could tell by looking into his eyes that he was changed, and that we were changed. I didn’t know all he had went through while I was in critical condition. I just loved him so much and we were parents, wow.

I felt guilty because we were in the hospital, and we couldn’t afford to be in the hospital. Micah said he had already been talking to some people at the hospital and they were going to see if emergency Medicaid could pay for us and that I shouldn’t worry about it.

I don’t remember a lot from that afternoon. I just remember trying to nurse and rest while holding Ezra. Some people also came over I think. I was in pain but I was so happy with our baby.

At the end of the afternoon a doctor came in and wanted to do some basic checkups on Ezra. He started listening to his heart with a stethoscope and he said it was elevated and that he wanted to take him to do some further tests and he would be right back. They stayed away for awhile and when the doctor came back he didn’t have Ezra with him and had a grave look on his face. For a moment I thought Ezra had died or something terrible had happened. (You can see this was a theme) The doctor then told us that Ezra was not breathing right and needed help breathing and also that he needed to be in the nursery. I really didn’t understand, he had seemed just fine that afternoon. I cried, for a moment I just felt like I was in a nightmare that wasn’t ending. I think this was the first time I felt completely overwhelmed and lost my peace for a moment.

The first time we went to go see Ezra in the nursery Micah pushed me there in a wheelchair. When we got to his little bed he was hooked up to different wires and had oxygen in his nose. He was also sucking on a pacifier they had given him and I thought “oh no he must have been crying, and I wasn’t there”. I was emotional. They allowed me to hold him finally. He was in a diaper because of all the wires and I held him up against my chest, it was the best feeling in the world. Anytime I held him all was well in the world. For the first time he opened his eyes and looked at me. It was like I had known him my whole life, he had exactly his daddy’s eyes. Sitting up was painful but I didn’t want it to end.

We were in the hospital for 5 days total. We felt very cared for. In the midst of the heartache and trauma Micah and I could still laugh together about different things. Like this picture below. It was probably because we were sleep deprived, but we had the biggest laugh of our life when Micah put Ezra on the hospital bed with the food tray over him as if he had just finished all of it. Micah would do things that would make me laugh, and I would tell him to stop it because otherwise I was going to pee my pants, literally😂

A financial lady at the hospital arranged for emergency Medicaid to pay for all of our medical bills, it was a huge burden falling off of our shoulders. I have no idea how she arranged it, because I wasn’t a permanent resident of the United States yet. We got the bill in the mail later and it was $70.000, we would’ve been in debt for the rest of our life.

When we were released to go home it felt unreal. It felt like we had been in the hospital for so long. We put Ezra in his car seat in our little Corolla and on our short drive home a song came on the radio that said “My hope is in You Lord, all the day long. I won’t be shaken by drought or storm. A peace that passes understanding is my song and I sing my hope is in You Lord”. I was so thankful, and tears of happiness dropped down my face, so emotional. I felt every word of the song and this became Ezra’s song. I always told him later on when he was older when it would come on the radio “that’s your song Ezra”.

Physical recovery took longer than regular childbirth. I had to heal from the episiotomy and the surgery and the blood transfusion. My body healed perfectly, and I never had any long term negative effects. Considering what my body had gone through I was doing well. Emotional recovery took longer for both of us. I will probably write about recovery and life as a new mom in part 4.

I want to end by saying that home birth is amazing and I hope this post doesn’t make anyone think that having a home birth caused this. My first one just happened to end unfortunate. We also had not done enough preparation. There were a lot of factors that might have contributed to the way things went that I haven’t shared. I had a quick and natural uncomplicated second birth in the hospital and a beautiful also natural uncomplicated and healing home birth with my third child. I am having an other home birth with our fourth child and would choose it over a hospital birth. That’s my personal preference and is different for every unique person. Every person chooses what they feel is right for them. Home birth is not as normal and accepted in the United States as it is in other parts of the world. Unmedicated child birth is amazing, but does require more preparation. We were not prepared the first time and have since then learned a lot from our experience and have taken it with us in our journey.

[mywalkintofreedom]

Life at West Main Street - part 2

In my last story, I really just painted a picture of what life was like. I didn’t go into a whole lot of detail about how God came through, though. God really came through for us in many ways, especially through the body of Christ.

Before we moved into our apartment we lived at a friends house for a month. During that month I had a dream that I really believed was from God. We had a lot of things to sort through together and figure out. In my dream I was with my mom and we were walking in the ocean and I had to follow her. I kept looking behind me and was afraid, and every time I looked behind I would start to sink and I would have a hard time seeing where she was going. My mom turned around and said “don’t look to the right or to the left, keep your eyes on me”. After I woke up I had an incredible sense of peace and I knew it had been God. Any time after that when I would start to lose focus, I would think of that dream and God would remind me “don’t look to the right or to the left”. Also in other words, “stop looking at your circumstances”. So much stuff hadn’t been figured out yet, but I had to choose to trust God.

I shared how we had a $20 food budget, which we did, and later in our journey it slowly increased. We also had dear friends that fed us dinner once a week to cut down the cost of food, it was a huge help. We had another church member that dropped off bread almost weekly. We had more church members that gave us food boxes regularly. The body of Christ really upheld us. Without them, I don’t know how we would have done it. We had friends teach us how to coupon and counsel us. When we had a need, we prayed, and God would provide in one way or an other. Sometimes I had a small desire, like I would be craving Nutella, and someone would randomly give me a jar of Nutella at church because they said they were thinking of me.

I shared about having two suitcases and a desk chair when we moved in. Within a matter of probably two weeks, we were donated a couch, a bed, a table and chairs, a stove (which took some months to be able to hook it up, because of funky wiring in the apartment, but we had it), a mini fridge, a toaster oven, a waffle maker, a washer and eventually a dryer. One friend was sending us boxes anonymously with brand new pillows, bedding, blankets, some maternity clothes, towels, kitchen towels, plates, bowls, pots and pans, utensils. Pretty much any essential item was send in anonymous boxes that would arrive, even toilet paper and cleaning supplies. It was very humbling and overwhelming, I mean we even had a can opener! Just imagine packages arrive from an anonymous person with all the things you need, when you haven’t told anyone what you need. It was amazing.

Someone took me to Walmart and told me to pick out curtains and other things we needed for our apartment. It was also someone else from our church that gave us money to turn on the water and power to our apartment. We never asked any of these generous people to do this for us, we never told them our need. We prayed together and stuff would happen. It was life changing.

Micah and I were never good at asking for help, which is why it was hard to take out a loan when we needed to, but people showed up and supported us even if we didn’t ask.

And even in the midst of being supported, it was only us that could walk that journey. We had a lot of support, but I struggled greatly any time I was by myself in those first months. Mostly, because I wasn’t used to being by myself. I had just finished a year of college studying social work before we got married, and was around people every day and had a very fast pace busy life. I also came from a big family where there were always people around me. One of my love languages is quality time, so being by myself was new. Going from that life, to being alone every day was a shock for me, and I don’t mind admitting that. BUT through it all I learned the most valuable lesson I could’ve ever learned: I learned to be content. I learned to be okay with my own company, and most of all, I learned how to entertain myself and to be thankful for every little thing in life. Sounds pathetic, but in today’s society, entertainment mostly comes from technology. I had to really face myself and even find out hobbies that I would enjoy to keep my spirit lifted, because being a millennial, the only way I really entertained myself was by watching shows or scrolling on my phone and hanging out with family and friends.

A few weeks after we moved into our apartment Micah was offered a full time job at a car dealership, where he had been doing odd jobs. This was a huge milestone for us, because it meant that we had some stability and a consistent income. I have to say though, even before he had a permanent job, we had one financial miracle after an other. Somehow there always was an odd job for him to make just the right amount of money. The way we were living really made my faith in God become so real. He truly was the One providing for us.

The apartment continued to be an interesting living space. As clean as we tried to keep it, we regularly dealt with cockroaches. We eventually came to the conclusion that perhaps the other people in the building weren’t keeping their spaces clean. We were given a space heater that would show us the temperature in the apartment. It would get as low as 48 Fahrenheit in the coldest months at night, but when it would go over 55 or so it would feel comfortable. We dressed warm in several layers and I would usually sit right in front of the space heater, which made it not so bad. Pregnancy also helped, because it keeps you warmer as well. Anytime we’d go to someone else’s house, or go to church, my cheeks would get flushed and I would be so hot! I had gotten used to colder temperatures. I couldn’t believe I had taken central heat for granted.

The house next to our apartment that we saw from our window, had a basement in which an entire family was living. A mom and dad, a little, maybe 4 year old boy and a baby. I often felt for them and often wanted to help them. The kids were usually only wearing onesies, even in winter. Upstairs, in the regular part of the house lived the grandparents, I think. I think they bred dogs, they had about 5 tied to trees in the yard. These dogs never stopped barking and often kept me up at night. As much as I wanted to help this family, I also thought about calling the police on them for having these dogs! I might have threatened I would untie all of them in the middle of the night in my hysterical mood. I did eventually get used to the dogs and stopped hearing them, and I think they sold some because they eventually only had 1 or 2.

Our upstairs neighbors, were a couple, probably in their late 50s. It was this lady that actually had hollered from across the street telling us there was an apartment available below them. They were sweet people, and also very troubled people. I would often hear them fight, but it’s not like we never had arguments, so who was I to judge them? I also overheard the lady, what I thought was, dealing drugs one time outside our window. We found out it was her birthday from her husband one time. We put together a little basket for her with a few items we had and went up to give it to her. Her reaction was priceless, as if she had never received a gift before. Anytime we had too much food that we couldn’t store in our mini fridge we would give it to them, and they were always so grateful. I really felt for them and we tried to share the gospel with them whenever we felt there was an open door. I also believed the lady had some kind of disease, because about once a month I would hear her vomit all night and then she would disappear for several days in a row and look different every time she returned. She also was picked up with an ambulance several times. We prayed for them and did care about them. We borrowed things from each other. We often borrowed their plunger and they often borrowed things from us. One time they would not stop fighting and were cursing at each other loudly, so Micah told them if they didn’t cut it out he would call the police. That night the guy came to our door and asked for all of his things back that we had borrowed, which was a giant old tv that we sometimes would watch dvds on from the library, and his plunger. This put an end to borrowing things, but we did still give them food. I still see them at the apartment sometimes when I drive by, and often think about asking how they are doing.

Our neighbor next to us, was an older lady. She was quiet and sweet as could be. She told us she never heard us, and I thought she must have impaired hearing, especially after we had the baby. She always greeted us, but she rarely got out of her apartment.

The other apartment had different people moving in and out. At one point a guy was living there that would never stop playing music. It was music with a loud base and bad words, and I couldn’t stand it. I prayed, and thank God, he moved out pretty soon.

We got to host my sister a few weeks after we had moved in. She had just gotten back from missionary work, so in my mind I had thought, “Surely our apartment will be better than where she’s been living.” But while she was with us the toilet kept clogging up. One morning she was using the bathroom and I had heard her trying to flush several times and after awhile she stuck her head out the door and said “uhh guys, my poop is coming up in the bathtub”. We all busted out laughing, it was hysterical. I had the best time with her. She stayed for three weeks, and I had never appreciated her company more than I did when she came. She helped me make our apartment homey, and we hung up pictures together. It’s some of the most valuable memories I have with her now.

Our landlord, Miss Charlotte, was also the sweetest lady. We experienced a lot of issues with the apartment, and would call her about it, every time she would immediately send someone to come fix it. We eventually got a new toilet, because the repair guy determined that it was too old and therefore clogging so much. We also had trouble with the electricity. Whenever we’d plug something in, the lights in the living space would dim really low. If we plugged more than one appliance in, the power in the entire apartment would go out. We became friends with the electrician named Terry, because he had to come over so often in the beginning😂 Someone gave us a huge microwave at one point, we never really used microwaves but we did use it for popcorn. Well one time when we plugged this beast in and turned it on there was a loud noise and half the apartment was without power and wouldn’t come back on. Terry had to come over again, but it took a few days before he could, so we lived in the dark for awhile until he fixed it. We decided not to use the microwave anymore, we didn’t really have room for it anyways. It was at this point that Micah got concerned about fire safety and collected all of our important documents in case there would be a fire😂, this was dramatic, but felt real at the time. Terry pretty much fixed most issues and we just didn’t use too many appliances at once.

As the months went by my due date was getting closer. Our baby was due on May 3rd of 2015. We were seeing our midwife regularly now, I loved our trips up to Atlanta. It was so fun to spend that time together. Paying for gas stretched our budget quite a bit, but I loved the drive.

What I thought was impossible became reality, our apartment truly became home. I started to feel safe and remember one time coming home after going grocery shopping saying to Micah “you know this really is home”, and he said “I was thinking the same thing”. I was nesting, I stopped volunteering at our church’ school when I was nearing the end of my pregnancy, and actually enjoying the isolation towards the end, and painted just about any piece of furniture that could be painted with cheap crafts paint. Most has held up amazingly well after all these years.

We lived close to the library. All I had to do was walk up a steep hill and there it was. It took me about 7-10 minutes. It was a great motivator to get exersice! I walked up that hill every day to connect my old phone to WiFi and I would contact Micah asking him what time he could come home for lunch. I also got to know the ladies that worked there as I saw them often. The library had a huge selection of Shirley Temple movies, so every day at 4 in the afternoon during my last week or 2 of my pregnancy I watched one of the movies and actually really enjoyed it.

At one point much earlier in the journey I temporarily had Micah’s phone, which had regular service. We thought it would be best for me to have his phone so I could contact him by texting the business’ cellphone. Well, one time his boss called Micah’s phone and I picked up. He said “is Micah there?” I told him no, then his boss said “ he just drove away in a customer’s car and I can’t reach him!” Just a few minutes later Micah arrived at the apartment and he came in and said “get dressed honey, we’re going to pick up some keys in Colombus!” (Sometimes if Micah had to take a trip somewhere his boss allowed me to come along with him). So I told Micah, “I just got off the phone with John (Micah’s boss), that’s not the business’ car, you took a customers car!” Micah’s eyes got big and he got back in the car and drove back to work. He had indeed accidentally mistaken a customer’s car, who had left the keys in their car, as one of the business’ car. He then from then on had to have his phone on him at all times so they could always contact him.

During these weeks, before our first child came into the world, I had a lot of victory in a lot of areas in my life. I got to a really good place actually before our child was born. I had no idea how my life was about to change, I also had no idea what kind of birth experience I was about to have. I will share more about this in part 3.

[mywalkintofreedom]

Life at West Main Street - part 1

We’ve been doing some work around the house lately. We painted some walls, and hung some new pictures, got a new light fixture... stuff like that. I’ve always found it very important to make our home my sanctuary. I have to change things around every now and then too, just to change the scenery. As a stay at home mom it’s important to me that I feel comfortable in the space I’m in.

I can’t help but think back to the first place we ever moved into together back in 2014. It was a small one bedroom apartment, it smelled like cigarette smoke, it had no central heat or air and was a shared building with 3 other apartments. It was what we could afford at that time, and I say that with a wink, because we moved into this place using our last money to pay for the down payment not knowing where the rent was going to come from, as Micah did not have a permanent job yet. We also couldn’t afford to turn on the water or power yet, but we chose to be grateful that we found a place to live and trusted God to work out the rest. It was nothing like I had pictured in my mind as we were dreaming up our life. BUT, let me tell you this, it was the most life changing season of my life living there. This little apartment became my sanctuary, and the many months that we lived here became some of our most treasured memories as a newly wed couple. It became the foundation of our marriage, the foundation of how we decided to raise our kids and really just the foundation of our journey together. We learned lessons and foundational things there that we will bring with us for the rest of our life.

We had plans to move out as soon as we could, but reality pretty soon showed that this was going to be home for awhile and that this would be the home that we would have our first baby in.

You would think that the environment was the hardest part of living here, but it wasn’t. While it was certainly a struggle the smell, the dysfunctions and interesting neighbors, the greatest struggle presented itself as how I like to recall it “being stripped of every comfort I’d ever known”. This meant, not having internet, not having a tv and not having a phone and not having people to contact or call.

The first day Micah went to work a full day, I remember clear as day, sitting on a desk chair that someone had given us, in an empty apartment, in the dark (it was a cloudy day and the place had very little natural light). I had no idea what time he would come home, because we had no way of contacting each other. All we had was this desk chair and our suitcases with clothes (which half of mine didn’t fit me because I was pregnant) and an air mattress that we slept on. I sat there probably for an hour that first day, with my hand on my belly feeling our baby move, tears dripping down my face, thinking about what I could possibly do with myself for the entire day. This continued to be the biggest struggle I woke up with every day, what am I going to do today? The first months, all I could think about was moving out. But as the weeks went by there was no way we would be able to move on to something else. It felt like being dropped off on a deserted island. In a way it was similar. I had no way of contacting people, and I was in a country that was not my own. Every day I counted down the minutes until Micah would come home, which were a lot of minutes when you start counting in the morning. Any time he came home all was well. We would light candles and play card games all night. This was after he would have made us dinner on our one pit burner, which would take more than an hour usually, because you could only heat one thing at a time. It really didn’t take long until our apartment was furnished. We had different people donate things to us, a lot of items are still part of our home and in a way sentimental to me.

For the first while we didn’t have a fridge. This was challenging, but it was winter so this helped a little. We had a box that we would put our milk in, and maybe two or three other items we had, and we would put this outside between our front door and screen door. I remember some days being out and about and we would be watching the temperature, because what if our meat would get too warm!? (I also had some fear that our neighbors would steal the box😂) We did have some precious meat spoil one time and it was hard, I mean I think I cried. Eventually someone asked us if we could use a mini fridge, which remained our fridge for the entire time we lived there. The only down side to this fridge was that it didn’t fit an ice cream container in the tiny freezer section at the top😭 (the freezer section also didn’t have a way of closing so we closed it with a piece of cardboard😂). But in the end that was okay, because we really couldn’t afford ice cream anyways.

Since I’m talking about food, this is also what I meant with “being stripped of every comfort you’ve ever known”. We had a $20 food budget a week in this season. Going and buying whatever you feel like eating really wasn’t an option. I remember one night sitting on the floor in front of our tiny little pantry, crying, because I just wanted to eat some chocolate so bad. I know that sounds crazy, (do keep it mind I was also pregnant😉) but when you can always buy whatever you feel like buying you don’t know what it’s like when you can’t.

Our biggest arguments we ever had in our early marriage days were about... food... and what to buy. We were total opposites, my brain told me we should be buying the cheapest of the cheapest, well mister Huff wanted to buy organic chicken with our $20 food budget. I honestly could kill him for it and thought he was insane. Then we’d have an argument about me being too loud protesting in the store. His intentions were honest and pure, he wanted the very best for me and our unborn child. We eventually met in the middle, and I’ve learned not to loudly start arguments in the meat aisle. While we had very little to spend, we never felt poor. We calculated everything to a T before we went shopping and eventually knew the prices by heart, and became pretty smart in our shopping. We made the best meals with what we had. We ate meat maybe 2-3 times a week and did beans on the other days. We didn’t really eat snacks, just an apple at some point of the day. We paid everything with cash (which we have done up until just a few months ago! But we still don’t own a credit card). Any change we’d get, we would save up and buy an ice cream cone with at the end of the week at Dairy Queen. If we had a really good week, we’d be able to buy a blizzard, which felt like a celebration.

While going through the literal purification of my life, we also had a lot of unknowns. How were we going to bring a baby into the world? The hospital wasn’t an option because I wasn’t eligible for health insurance, because I didn’t have my green card yet. Speaking of which, I also feared the green card police would knock on my door and deport me, for real, which was probably a little dramatic. We saved every little bit of money we could to pay for a midwife, and pay for the green card application.

Through all of these changes, I was getting used to living in a very different country than my own. They call immigrants, aliens, and that’s often how I felt. I had visited the United States often before I officially moved there, and I loved the country, but living here proved to be more of a culture shock than I knew it would be. There were so many small details I had to learn about the culture, the language and the country. There were times that it caused anxiety.

I remember one particular time our church was doing “family fun Saturdays”. It was just a way of fellowshipping together. I was actually quite excited about this, because I didn’t have any fellowship throughout the week and missed my family a lot. Micah worked Saturday morning and after he was done we left. When we got there and we walked into a room full of people anxiety hit me, but I was okay, because Micah was right next to me. Well next thing I knew, the guys were going to do a sports game outside, Micah left and I was left alone in a room full of people. This really wouldn’t be a big deal, but anxiety overtook and I got immensely afraid and panicked. I left as quick as I could and went to our little car. We were parked in kind of an open spot where other cars were arriving, I was so afraid of seeing people and having to converse that I sat down curled up on the floor of the car in front of the front seat. I couldnt help but cry uncontrollably because I just was so afraid of conversing with people and that someone would see me and I was thinking to myself “what have I become”? Social anxiety was something I had struggled with before, but never ever in my life to the extent I was experiencing that day.

Speaking of cars, I do feel like I should probably tell you about our 1997 Toyota Corolla. How did we ever end up with a car when we had no money? That’s a good question. It was presented to us to buy the car for $600 at the very beginning of our journey, but we denied, because we didn’t have any money. The car was given to us. Before we had this car we were walking everywhere.

When I was 27 weeks pregnant we prayed and reached out to a midwife that was willing to accept us and decided that the only way we were going to be able to receive prenatal care was to have a home birth with a midwife. During our first meeting with her we went over the cost and when we left we discussed it and we really had no idea how we were going to pay her. It was going to be about $3000. After a lot of praying we both came to the conclusion that the only way we’d be able to pay her was if we could take out a loan. We didn’t like having to do this, but we also couldn’t go without the proper care for me and our baby.

We decided to go to the bank, and that’s where we met Frank. We sat down in front of Frank and we explained what we needed the loan for. He asked us if we had any collateral. Micah and I looked at each other, I whispered “what is collateral?” and then we looked at Frank. Micah answered, well, we have a 1997 Toyota Corolla. Frank said, “okay let’s see it”. We had parked it right in front of the bank. The two front fenders and the hood of the car were black, as it had never been painted white after a replacement like the rest of the car. The grill and the Toyota logo in the front were missing. Micah and I joked constantly that it looked like a car with a toothless smile. When we walked out, “corey” as we named him, was right in front of Frank, but Frank was looking right over it looking for our car. Then Micah said “this is him, pointing at our car, this is the toothless wonder”. Frank looked at it and made some notes on a note pad, we went back inside (meanwhile Micah and I really had to hold our laughs because it was hysterical). After Frank got done writing some things down and asking some questions he said “well, I can give you about $1200 for a loan”. It wasn’t the amount that we needed, but it was something so we took it. We left the bank and laughed often about the story of Frank and the “toothless wonder”. We were able to give our midwife $1200 up front, and paid her and the bank off as soon as we could possibly could.

It is around the same time that we realized that we were definitely not going to be able to move anywhere else until we had paid off this loan, the rest of the cost of the midwife, and gotten everything paid to get me a green card. I made a decision to stop thinking about “the next step”. Often we live with the mentality, “if I can just reach this or that, then I will be happy”. Always thinking about the “best best thing”. My mentality had been “if I can just move somewhere else I can start to be happy”. I learned a huge lesson in contentment in this season, and the scripture that Micah and I were often reminded of was “if you can be faithful in the small things, God can entrust you with the bigger things”. (And boy if I had known what God would do later in life I would’ve started this much sooner). I started by praying that God would either take the smoke smell away, or help me not to smell it, because I couldn’t stand it. He did, I stopped smelling it. I declared this small apartment my sanctuary. I decided to make it my home, and asked God to help me make it home. When you always have distractions at your fingertips it’s easy not to deal with feelings, I was faced with my feelings every day and had no way of numbing them with distractions. There were no distractions. None. It was just me and God, every day. There was no way for me to “numb” the time away by watching tv, scrolling on a phone or asking someone to come over.

You would probably think after reading all that that I regretted moving and that I regretted getting married. I truly didn’t. I knew with everything within me that this was where we were supposed to be and that I was with who I was supposed to be with.

There is so much to say about the season that we lived here. What I forgot to mention earlier is that someone came to us when we had just moved into our apartment and gave us, I believe it was $250. However much it was, it was the exact amount we needed to turn on the water and power for the apartment. They said that God had laid it on their heart to give this to us, and we knew it was Him because of the amount they gave us. They had no idea of our situation. There are so many miraculous things that happened while we lived here, and I plan on writing more about it because I’ve always wanted to, it is an extremely important part of my journey, and our journey, and so many valuable things were learned. I am forever grateful for the “stripping down and away”, because it prepared me for motherhood and life as a mom and it made us make important decisions for our family that I believe will truly change the lives of our children and have changed our own lives. God became real, and the Word of God exploded as we read together each day. I have never been the same and I never will be. More stories to come about the many experiences at west Main Street.

[mywalkintofreedom]

Trusting God with our lives

"Peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is knowing that God is right there with you in the midst of the storm". It’s easy to have peace when you’re in a stable situation, and everything is going the way you want it to go. BUT, it’s a challenge to stay in peace when everything around feels like it’s out of control. It’s easy to trust God when life is all good and happy and bubbly, but when life knocks you down, that’s when our faith is tested. Do we still trust God in those times? Can we still give Him all the control in a difficult situation? No matter how desperate your situation is, God promises us in His Word that He can use any situation that the enemy tries to manipulate you with, and turn it around for the good. What do we need to do? Trust Him. God can’t help you when you’re trying to do His work, you need to surrender to Him. To us situations seem impossible, we look at it from our own perspective and think: "How in the world is that going to work God?" However, God sees our future, and He already knows how He is going to make it work. Maybe you are praying for something big to happen in your life right now. You get frustrated because nothing is happening. Well, maybe you have some issues you need to work on first, before that ‘something big’ happens. Maybe God sees that if He gives you that ‘something big’ right now, you wouldn’t even be able to completely enjoy it because of the issues you have. You see? He is almighty, and sees the complete picture, and we don’t. Meanwhile, we try to figure it out on our own and get tired and then come to the conclusion that we need God. All the while God is up there watching us work and work, and reaching out His hand so that He can work with you and guide you. But a lot of times we are scared to trust God. What if He doesn’t want the same thing that you want? Well, His plans are always good plans for you to prosper (Jeremiah 29:11), so we need to get over the fact that it may be different from our plans. He SEES the future, and knows what happens if we go a certain direction. Why am I writing this? Is my life out of control? Well, no. But, do I need to trust God with the life that I have chosen to live? Well, heck yes! Some people ask me: "Hey Cis, isn't it really hard, that relationship of yours"? I just answer: "yeah, it sure is". But you know what.. looking back on these past few months, I don't think I have ever learned so much about God and myself. I also have never grown so much spiritually. The amount of trust you need in another person when you live, I don't know how many miles, apart, is big. The amount of trust you need in God is even bigger! This is something I can't possibly control. I have a schedule in my head of how I want things to go, but really, only God is the one who can decide those things. If the love you have for each other comes from God, then nothing can separate you. I can really testify that that's true! Sometimes Micah and I can't talk for quite a while because of the time difference and work and school etc, but still, I always feel him close to my heart where ever I go. Why? Because our love comes from God first. When the only tool you got is communication (and sometimes that's not even a possibility), you really get to know each other in a very special and deep way. Ya know.. sometimes I really struggle with trusting God that He is going to provide for us. All these girly hormones and emotions get very high and sensitive sometimes, and then I decide that I need to take all control. Yep, that’s where I go wrong sometimes. My deepest desire is to show Micah my home ground, my little world up here, and introduce him to my family and friends. I can’t possibly explain how much that means to me. Right now, it seems so far away, and I find that very difficult. So yeah, all I know to do, is to trust God. All I know to pray is: “Let Your will be done and not mine”. He has awesome timing. I just see this little picture, and He sees the full picture. Many people ask me how we do things, and how we make this work. Let me explain something to you. It may be cliché, but it’s the best way I can explain it. A house needs a firm foundation. If you build a house on sand, it is not going to take very long before it falls down. BUT, if you build a house on a firm foundation it can last forever, IF you take good care of it. Same way with trees. If you plant a tree in good soil where it can get enough water, it will bear fruit and grow. If you plant a tree in the desert, it won’t be long till it dies. What does this have to do with our relationship? We want our relationship to be grounded in the love of God. God is our firm foundation and our good soil. When things get rough, we look up to God, and not to the other person to fix it. However, we are still learning and growing, and we make a lot of mistakes along the way. BUT, God told me this when Micah asked me to be his girl: “Every good and perfect gift comes from Me. Don’t worry about things, because I will take care of the gift that I have given you”.  So far, we are still in love with each other. So far, God has always provided for us. How and when is Micah going to get here? I do not know! I have to look to God and trust Him that He is working on our behalves behind the scenes. God sees all the desires of my heart, and everything that needs to happen. I am basically preaching all this stuff to myself, because I really needed to hear this. I have been going crazy this past week. Let me tell you why. Micah doesn’t have a phone. He can only contact me when he’s home with his laptop. However, he is moving, and his new house doesn’t have internet yet. So here I am thinking: how are we going to do this?! I got scared, thinking I would never be able to talk to him when he moves, and decided to take control and started looking for a phone like a crazy person. I went online and searched all these websites, and asked all my family and friends about phones and tried to figure this thing out. I got so stressed out and frustrated about it! Then, of course, I got mad at Micah for not having a phone. Then I came to a realization that I was not looking up to God for this situation. What happened here? I completely forgot everything I just wrote in this blog. I didn’t trust God that He was going to provide for us, like He has done every single time so far. If you ever think of us, please pray for us. We appreciate it. Yes, we are a very happy, bubbly and thankful couple, but sometimes this extraordinary-less-traveled-road can be very hard, so yeah, we can use all the prayer we can get.  "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".