Friday, May 21, 2010

Birth & Faith

My first born, Caleb, had a prolapsed cord. I was in labor and his bp and heart rate would drop with each contraction. So that one was an emergency. He was out within five minutes of discovering that he was in distress.
Second baby, Lundi. I went into labor three weeks early with her. The problem that time was that while I was being monitored in the hospital, she failed to have the required number of peaks of her heart rate. Also she was breech, so they took her c-section, too.
Harrison was also breech. It was decided that if he didn't flip by my due date, he would be born c-section.
Lauren is the fourth born. She was breech also, and after three c-sections they don't even let you try for a v-bac.
Then there was Liam. He was transverse, also born c-section. When I delivered him the doctor strongly advised me to have a tubal ligation because my uterus was so very thin and he didn't think it could sustain another pregnancy. Well, I didn't feel "done." So the whole time he was warning me about all of the risks, I kept saying in my mind: "yes, I trust your medical knowledge, but you don't know about the power of the Priesthood." So I was back and forth for a long time about whether or not to add a sixth baby to our house. Until one time I was in the temple, wrestling with the Lord. (It was the first time I had ever done that.) Then...it came to me. Clear as if there were hands on my head. "Kim, it matters not what the doctors say, or whether or not you will have to buy a new car, or new house or risk your own life (this one was particularly hard to except, I didn't want to leave my children without a mother). The ONLY thing that matters is that you are a vessel by which another soul will come to earth to take part in the plan of salvation." And that was it. Audrey was conceived shortly after and joined our family in December of '08. And you know what? That "thinning of the uterus" That "window that was two cells thick" where they saw Liam's foot. Not even mentioned. I had been healed. Miraculous.
During my pregnancy with Audrey, I knew that she would complete our family. She was the caboose. So after much prayer, fasting and counseling with our bishop, we made the decision to have the tubal ligation while they had me open when AudPod (Audrey, the sixth pea in our Pod) was delivered. And so it is. We are completely eight.
Thank you so much for asking me to share these experiences. It reminds me, once again, how good the Lord has been to us and how he has guided us each step of the way as we have grown our family.


KKS

1 comment:

the herd said...

Thank you for that nice comment. That post must have been just for you because nearly five minutes after publishing it, I deleted it due to the fact I felt so bad for sounding so down. I'm glad not to be the only one having a garden destroyed! You have a beautiful family.