Ravens and Lillies
Thirteen days ago today I delivered my fourth baby, a handsome and sweet little boy, via my fourth c section.
When I was pregnant with my very first baby, I had every intention of delivering “naturally”. I’ve been a mother-baby nurse longer than I’ve been a mother and my background knowledge told me that it was generally healthier for a mother’s body to go about things with little to no intervention if possible.
My body in particular just wasn’t up for it, though.
I’m convinced that had I conceived and attempted to delivery my first giant child a hundred and fifty years ago in the wilderness of the West like my pioneer ancestors we would’ve been a sad story, one where “ she labored for days and then we tragically lost them both”, leaving my husband to remarry and raise a family with a woman having a more acceptable pelvic structure, that grew smaller babies or a combination of those two fine characteristics. For you medical folks we were a combination of “failure to progress” and “cephalopelvic disproportion”.
Truth be told, even after he was born, lacking an adequate amount of glandular tissue and a fully functional thyroid we would’ve at least needed a nurse maid. My first born lost a lot of weight initially, got a little jaundiced and inspired a tactless pediatrician to tell me I was starving my child and a well-meaning lactation consultant to tell me to stay up all hours of the night using a supplemental nursing system, pumping what little breastmilk I had and using whatever time I had leftover not to sleep and ward off postpartum depression with the few precious hours we can normally achieve when everything works the way it should but to instead breastfeed and do skin to skin. All of these things are important to breastfeeding success but not all of them, in succession, every night for weeks. Instead of success we see something very different and ugly. Something called depression and anxiety, sadness and self-doubt.
It could be argued that I didn’t have the right support during my prenatal care or in my subsequent pregnancies but I know that even though in my heart I have always been a “natural” mother and my burden to bear was never trouble conceiving, my body did not cooperate with the actual birthing of babies nor the breastfeeding. This is something I have come to peace with knowing that I have now four fine, healthy children and I seemed to have survived those “unfortunate c-sections”.
This, my last and fourth baby was a surprise blessing.
He was not in our playbook and when I got a positive pregnancy test after ordering one on a whim with a grocery order back in August, I was blown away that God chose to bless me in this way again. It was not my choosing or my intention. It was a perfect and wonderful blessing for my husband and I that was placed generously in our laps.
Both the negatives of altering your birthing and feeding plans for your children and the positives of being blessed with a baby that you weren’t expecting are all demonstrative of how utterly out of my own control some things are.
I firmly believe that joyfully taking accountability for the things you can in your life is the best choice. I’ve often touted the mantra “I am not a jelly fish”. It is not my soul purpose to float about without intention however, motherhood and pregnancy are a big lesson in the things we simply CANNOT control.
We cannot control the creeping of stretch marks or the widening of joints and even with the best medical practices in the world sometimes we just cannot halt preterm labor or any of the other scary possibilities.
The lesson of acknowledging how little control over some things we have is one not lost on me and I feel it is certainly applicable to our current social situation. It’s not an easy one to learn, though.
The day we labeled this COVID-19 thing a pandemic, was the day I was in labor and delivery triage being told I had high blood pressure and would remain on bed rest hoping to see week 37 of my little guy’s gestation.
This time around, my aged body did not cooperate even as gracefully as it did even in my first three pregnancies.
“Pushing forty”, I found myself tired and run down and eventually, although spared the terrible symptoms and consequences of preeclampsia, I skirted them with some scary high blood pressures.
I am no stranger to anxiety and depression. Let me just be completely honest with you. Post partum depression is something that bit me a few times a long the way which leaves me at a higher risk for developing such a thing again.
Being older and having three c-sections, left me at a high risk for a number of complications the most frightening of which was a uterine rupture Which is exactly as horrible as it sounds. It’s something else I worried about.
Worry is a funny thing.
Sometimes it turns me inside out and I can’t help but think about all the terrible possibilities.
So, when I found myself in labor and delivery triage AGAIN with this pregnancy having preterm labor and high blood pressures at 36 weeks I was scared. Scared I had endangered my baby somehow, worried I would get sick enough to meet my maker and leave ALL my babies behind, on and on my mind would go with so many what ifs I very nearly made myself sick.
I was worried about my now altered plan of keeping myself far from PPD with getting out and about early and seeing friends and going to do things. This is not a possibility right now when we are all to “shelter in place”.
Nevertheless, my fourth darling baby was born at 36 weeks.
Spoiler alert, he is absolutely perfect regardless of anything I did or did not do.
He was born at 36 weeks and 3 days because my blood pressure wouldn’t calm the heck down and I was having regular contractions the likes of which is risky in a three c-section momma.
During his first 24 hours he couldn’t maintain his blood sugars and landed himself a cozy spot in the NICU for five days. I even had to spend two nights at home without him before he could join us under the same roof.
Now, I know good and well many babies fare far worse and stay in the NICU far longer than he did.
I know that many mothers have full blown eclampsia and seizures and don’t make it.
I know that many mothers really do have uterine ruptures and hemorrhages.
I KNOW we were very, very blessed that our stay was minimal and I have so much to be grateful for.
We were loved on. My husband and I loved on each other and our baby through this. We were expertly and KINDLY taken care of.
The thing is, while this was a joyful time, knowing that both he and I were being well taken care off, wonderful nurses and doctors were making sure all those risks and what if’s would never come to fruition, and all in all I can say that we are now home, safe and healthy, it was still a complete lack of my own control.
I wasn’t able to sleep much and hadn’t in the weeks prior to our hospital stay.
I’d take my pain medicine. I’d try to rest and as soon as I slipped into sleep I’d jerk awake thinking I’d stopped breathing or I’d dream that my baby was having trouble or I was bleeding too much.
There was just so much to think about, so many possibilities, so many potential outcomes I tried to mentally see my way through so that I could ask God for specifics.
I prayed that I would physically feel better when my blood pressure got high. I didn’t.
I prayed that I would have a couple more weeks of baby growing in my belly. I didn’t get it.
I prayed that he would pass his blood sugars during the hours after he was born, and he didn’t.
I prayed that he’d go home when I did. He stayed in the hospital.
There was just so much worry and confusion and anxiety.
Much like other milestone moments in my life, God was answering other questions I hadn’t even thought to ask and was busy being way, way BIGGER than any of the details I could sort out in my own mind and heart.
For one, my husband was a complete rock. I know that sounds cheesy.
With the current regulations at the hospital, delivering a baby isn’t a family and friends affair. You can have one support person, period. No siblings, grandparents or friends are allowed. The blessing in this is that my husband, who knows me so well, was there encouraging me in a way I needed so desperately. We leaned on each other and I saw him as the immense blessing he is.
Knowing what I’d been through with my other kiddos, and understanding EXACTLY where I was at during that moment, he sat on my hospital bed with me at one point, pulled me close and told me not to go to “the dark places”.
This is a phrase I’ve used before, to him, when my mind just won’t stop and anxiety seems to consume me.
It was just my husband, myself and God navigating our way through the adventure of bringing our fourth baby into the world.
Of course, there are many other moments and details I could share. It was a great time but it was also a scary and worrisome time.
There were so many times where my feelings themselves seem to contradict each other.
He was born in a place I used to work and I had a lot of faith in the people taking care of him. In that sense it was easy to leave him in their capable, kind and loving hands. But there was a physical, heart wrenching reaction to leaving the hospital without him even though it was only for two days.
This was a big, life event and we are on the other side of it right now, grateful and blessed, enjoying time at home as a family of 6 and it feels like it was always supposed to be just like this.
I am so grateful and awestruck that God is Bigger and in a way I just am not meant to understand at times.
I am still a huge supporter of NOT being a jellyfish however, I think sometimes we have to step back and let God BE BIGGER.
It’s easy to say and harder to do.
Right now, the whole world is going through something new and different and scary. It’s hard to tell where we’re going to end up and it’s easy to be anxious and worried.
We’re worried about getting sick or our loved ones getting sick. We’re worried about job loss and lack of income. We’re worried about some very real things that aren’t to be minimalized. God is Bigger, though. Always.
Luke 12:24 (NIV) says, “Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!”
And Luke 12:27 (ASV), “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Sometimes though, we have to be out there with the Ravens and the Lillies and understand that God is still right there with us even though we can’t really comprehend what will happen. The New International Version even calls those lilies “wildflowers” implying that they are cared for even more seemingly unintentionally.
In the times when I’m clawing my way, and nowadays with help, from the dark places it helps to think that I am among those ravens and lilies and how much more valuable I am to God than those. We are among the gritty, wild things that we do not understand and cannot control and we must know that God is bigger.
There is purpose in the madness and I am never alone.
None of us is.
Sometimes we must be amongst the ravens and the lilies and hold our head up and look to our God and Father not know or comprehending it all and just understand that He loves us and He’s bigger.
