15 years

Today is Eric's and my 15th anniversary. Boy, do things change, but our love has not. In 15 years, we have built our home with our own 2 hands, have 4 children, and so much more. I am so blessed to have found him. Even though everyone told us I was too young (17 when we met, 20 when we married), we proved everyone wrong. We knew what we had... TRUE love.

Life

You know, I started trying to write this a month or so ago, but I had to put it on hold. I had a lot of anger going through me and I needed to vent, but God gave me a blank mind and I couldn't get my thoughts out on paper, so I stopped, calmed down, and waited until I could write what needed to be said and not just a mish mash of things that couldn't be deciphered.

Life has many ups and downs. There are so many people in our lives that just don't understand what we are going through. When Eric and I got married, we made many rules to follow.

First was that we would never start drinking or smoke. That would be automatic grounds for divorce. We teach our children that smoking and drinking is an abomination as said in the Bible.

Second, whom ever cooks does not clean. That has had to be tweaked in recent years, since I am the Stay at Home Mother and I hardly ever see my dear husband who works a crazy amount of hours, so I can live my dream, but when he is home and cooks, I do try to do the dishes for him.

Third, is plain and simple. I am a Stay at Home Mother, which means... I stay at home. I do not go off all over the place shopping or hanging out with friends. I am a mother to the children God has blessed us with and do not have time for frivolities. I nurse and cloth diaper our babies, I keep our home in a decent order at all times, laundry is done every day, dishes are done as I have time, the children are home schooled, I keep the accounts straight, and I cook from scratch meals >90% of the time. I also keep the children in optimal health by not allowing many processed foods and letting them be children, letting them run and play outdoors as much as possible and dig in the dirt to learn about the wonders of nature that God put right in front of us. So far if we are ill, I am blessed to be using only
 herbs, essential oils, and homeopathy. My children have never had any conventional medicine or vaccine. We do not go to a medical doctor, but do go occasionally to a chiropractor. We have not had to go to our naturopath in 4 years, thank the Lord.

Some people may read this and think I am nuts, but aren't we as wives supposed to submit to our husbands? People now seem to read the Bible, but do not think it really applies to now. Of course it applies to now. God's rule are for forever, not a "back in the day" kind of thing. There are no time stamps on what God commands. The sooner everyone understands this, the happier people will become.

Beautiful blessings

I thought I would share a beautiful blessing we had yesterday.

A few weeks ago I saw this fat green caterpillar feasting on my parsley plants in my raised beds. I took him and the parsley he was eating and put it in my daughter's bug house. We forgot about it for 2 days, then remembered that we needed to go check it and feed it. Well, when we got to the bug house, it was starting to turn into a chrysalis! So, this turned into a home school lesson for both my son and daughter. We learned about the life of a butterfly and looked up to see what kind of butterfly it was going to be. We discovered we had a Black Swallowtail! I had always heard of them, but had never seen one in real life, so I was getting really excited too.

Well, a couple weeks past and I decided to bring it in the house to keep a better watch, since we kept forgetting to go out in the sun room to check on it. 2 days later, my daughter came running to me in a panic. The butterfly had just come out of the chrysalis. So we proceeded to take the bug house outside and lifted the door open, so it could climb out and spread it's wings. Here is the beautiful picture I got of it on my hydrangeas.

God is so good to us!

He's here!

Emmett Xavier Weddell arrived on January 31, 2013. We did have our home water birth as well as the Lotus birth like we were praying for. I wrote Emmett's birth story below if anyone is interested in reading it. This was definitely the hardest pregnancy, birth and now nursing experience I have had so far. I was very run down and did not feel well the entire pregnancy, no matter what I did. The birth was nothing like it was with Tabitha or Grady. Nursing has been a challenge also. Nursing Tabitha and Grady was definitely textbook worthy. I never had plugged ducts, cracked nipples, pain... until now, although it is finally getting better. So to say the past 9 months has been an eye opener and humbling, is an understatement.


Here is Emmett's birth story.

I was "37 weeks and 4 days" when labor started at about 6:15am. I felt the baby doing head butts against my cervix 2 times before I felt a “pop”. I ran to the bathroom and only dribbled on the floor, but as soon as I sat on the toilet, there was a small gush. I called my midwife to let her know.

Contractions started while on the phone with her. We kept track of every contraction with Contraction Master app for Eric’s iPad. It was really cool, because at the end of labor I emailed myself the chart of every contraction I had. I can also see when labor “stalled” a couple times.

Grady decided to wake up at 8:30, since he heard us talking and Tabitha woke up around 9:00. Tabitha took over recording the contractions and Eric decided to go back to sleep in case it was going to be a long day/night.

Contractions were manageable all morning and early afternoon. Labor stalled around 10:40-12:15, then again 4:20-5:30. After labor stalled the last time, I wanted to get things moving, so I had the kids take a nap and had Eric call our massage therapist friend to suggest a few acupressure points. Boy did they work! I stood up from where we were doing the acupressure and thankfully, I was standing on a pad. A huge gush of water came out. I felt like I was uncontrollably peeing, so as soon as it slowed, I hopped in the shower. Strong contractions started and they just kept intensifying. I started crying, which is our cue that the baby was coming very soon, so we had Tabitha call the midwife and tell her to come NOW!

I hopped in the tub and started having back to back contractions. My midwife, Erika, arrived about 30 minutes before I had a huge urge to push.  I did scream 2 times because the pressure was so intense. I pushed for 21 minutes and out came Emmett Xavier at 9:17pm. We did not cut the cord, as we did a lotus birth, but did decide to cut it on day 3 since I was afraid I was going to move him wrong and rip the cord from the umbilical site.  His cord did come off on day 5.

After the birth we made sure I didn’t scare the kids. Thankfully they said they weren’t scared. I am happy I prepped them with YouTube videos before hand. Tabitha also came up to me and gave me a big hug and told me “You’re really good at birth!”.  I am so blessed!

Below are pictures of Emmett's Lotus birth.

 

 

Children

A couple weeks ago I had this post all written out and I hit the "Publish" button and I have no idea were it went to! I was so upset that it has taken me this long to get the patience to attempt to write it again. Hopefully I remember all of my points.

The main point of this post is about family size.

Who do people think they are to tell someone else how many children they should and should not have? I have heard it now from both sides of our families that 2 is enough. How dare they! Just because I have "one of each", does not give anyone permission to open their mouths and tell me I should just stop and be happy with what I have. If they are brave enough to tell God that they do not want anymore blessings in their life, then let them. Do not expect me to.

Before children, I said 2 - maybe 3. I had no idea how much of a blessing they would be, and how much I really didn't know. I am not saying that we will be the Duggars, but we do have a large house and we are finding we have larger hearts than we realized.

Even Eric commented the other day that we could build a sort of bunk bed arrangement in our family bedroom. I just had to smile when he said that.
I am so happy that we are on the same page (on most days, lol).

I really do enjoy being pregnant and crazy as some may think, am enpowered everytime I go through labor. I know some think I am out of my mind for having a homebirth (which will eventually be a whole separate post). All I can say is that you just have to experience it once and you will be hooked for life. You cannot have fear.