By the time I was pregnant with our next child, which was very soon after my miscarriage, we were growing in our faith by leaps and bounds, we had started homeschooling and I had discovered home births. Now I never thought I'd partake in one of those, but after my last experience at the hospital, I felt moved to give it a try.
At this point in my life I was full of exuberance and ready to take on the world, so I decided to invite my mother and mother-in-law to be with us at our first home birth. I don't think either of them talked to me for a week after that :) It was a rather difficult birth and there was a doctor, a doctor-in-training, two nurses, my husband, my mother-in-law and myself all in our small bedroom. My mother opted to stay downstairs with my children, it was the middle of the afternoon at this point, and to cover up my loud vocalizations they just kept turning the movie up louder and louder. Finally by 3:00 in the afternoon I was begging God for mercy (something I had never been able to do before because I didn't know anything about God's mercy :) and our fourth daughter was born at 3:28.
In my enthusiasm (or in reality, my deliriousness) I called my kids in to see their new sister. Unfortunately no one had been brave enough to tell me that I looked like death warmed over, so my girls were a bit taken aback when they walked in. It wasn't till I saw the pictures of them with their new sister that I realized how horrible I had looked. No wonder everyone was upset with me :)
The next few months were very trying for us. We were trying to sell our house (it was kind of funny that our agent had called during the birth to see if she could show the house. Now that would have been quite a "showing"), my husband's back went out in a major way, I had a crack in my nipple the size of the Grand Canyon so every time my daughter nursed I cried, and it was Christmas.
How I wish, as I look back now, that I could have been a much better sufferer! Hopefully during all of that time there was at least one millisecond that I was able to make use of. Why is it that many times we don't realize until we are out of the trial period how badly we behaved? It is a good thing that time as we know it does not exist with God, so maybe my desire to have done it all better can still be put to some good use.
Life went on and we somehow managed to sell our house and move to a bigger house closer to our church. As our faith grew, so did our family once again. When daughter number four was 13 months old, I found out I was pregnant again...
