I have not told the story of Sarina's birth yet, so I'll give that a quick summary. We were supposed to be induced on June 9th. But we really didn't feel peace about it. After praying about it, we decided to go with my doctor's recommendation and proceed with the inducement. However, we were praying that God would close the doors if it was not his will. The 9th came and there were no closed doors, so off we went to the hospital. We checked in, got our room, I got dressed in the gown, IV, everything. The bag of pitocin was ready to go and the midwife walked in. First things she asks is how I feel about having the baby today. So I was upfront with her and told her that I wasn't feeling so sure about it. After much discussion and some tests on the baby to make sure she wasn't under stress, I walked out of the hospital still pregnant! I never would have thought that I would be happy to leave the hospital one week past my due date and pregnant. But I felt so much peace that it didn't matter that I was physically uncomfortable. I glorify the Lord that he was able to close the doors for us so late in the game. He sent us just the right person to enable us to follow his plan.
We went back to the hospital the following Friday, the 11th. I can't tell you how differently I felt driving there. On Wednesday I had been feeling dread, fear, worry, but this day I felt excitement and anticipation - all of the things I should feel when I'm about to meet my baby. The inducement on Friday went off without a hitch. Pitocin started at 7am. Although the contractions were progressing, it was nothing big until my water broke at 9:20. Then everything took off like a rocket. Sarina was born at 9:55 am. So that was almost three hours from start to finish. Not bad.
Now she's four months old, rolling all over the place, smiling, laughing and delighting us all.
Our school year is going great! Every year seems to bring new improvements over the last one and this year is no exception. I am learning better time management skills, as well as learning to accept that even if I don't get everything done in a day that I would like to, God knows what I need to do and everything else can wait. The older two kids are learning how to manage their time better, too. And we're all learning how to work together to keep our home a nice, clean place to live.
One more bit of news before I go. We just found out that there is another home school family living in our neighborhood with a large family like us. I actually had met them before, because they own a used curriculum book store that I shop at. But last Monday, Rebecca came rushing in exclaiming that the people who own the book store lived just down the street. So we literally dropped everything, piled the babies in the stroller and went to introduce ourselves. We all had a blast and the kids went back over today to play again. Matthew and I had just been talking last week about how our kids don't have other kids in our neighborhood to play with. I remember at the time of that conversation submitting my heart to the Lord's plan for our children and reminding myself that he knows what they need. So the timing of meeting this family was so sweet to me because the Lord was answering the cry of my heart.
God is so good. He fills my life with so much joy. I love living for him.
