6 Months to the day since a little man stole my heart

Me in early labor while waiting for midwives

 Wow.. its been quite awhile since I have updated this! I wish I would have written this post closer to when Gavin was born so that I could remember all of the details.. but this blog is mainly going to be about his birth. I had started having regular contractions around 4PM. I called midwives during dinner around 6.

Me in the middle of a contraction before birthing tub

After the midwives showed up around 8PM. They checked on me and decided they would go get something to eat while I labored awhile. While they were gone, Shawn and I put on our tennis shoes and went for a walk around the neighborhood. That really kick started the labor. By the time we got back the contractions had gotten much more intense. So we laid on the bed with the lights dimmed and some soft music playing. Shawn laid behind me with the back massager and helped try to relax me when the midwives came back from dinner.Not more than 5 minutes later did my water break and the "fun" began in full gear.

Shawn trying to distract me from contractions.

 Shawn started to fill up the birthing tub with really hot water since we expected to be awhile and didnt want the water to be cold... we were wrong... Before he finished filling up the tub the contractions came on very intense so I decided to climb in.

What an awesome Man I have

looks like Im in intense labor huh...

The water was quite warm so we had to switch to cold water. In the mean time I insisted on cold rags and chewing on crushed ice to keep me from over heating.. eventually it got to the point where I took the hose of cold water from Shawn and sprayed myself down with it... lol.

Towards the end I asked Shawn to climb in and support me. He did amazing.  Was such a big help in getting me relaxed.

Around 10:30PM I started getting the urge to push. It didnt take long for Gavin to get here. He was born into my arms in the water at 11:07PM. Weighing 9 lbs 8 oz and measuring 22 inches! We waited for 2 hrs before Shawn cut the umbilical chord.. which happened to have a full knot in it. He has been such a joyful addition to our family.  I couldnt get the formatting right on the pictures on here.. so just scroll through to see the rest.

 

 
 

The Point of Power is Always in the Present Moment

Before I update the blog on the book I have been reading I wanna update you on whats going on in my life. A HUGE weight has been lifted as we found a way to pay for a midwife. I am able to pull my money from my 401K... which isnt a lot, but its just enough to pay the midwife. Now I dont have to stress about an unassisted birth.. I am officially out of the first Trimester.. so that is exciting.. means the rest of the time will go by pretty quick (well until the last couple weeks which always seem to take forever).

Ok now to the book. Where I am at is talking about how all the events you have been through in your lifetime, up to this moment have been created by thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past. They were created by thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, ect. However, since that was your past, it is over and done with. What is important now is what you are choosing to think and choosing to say right now. For these thoughts and words are forming your future. Take a minute to think about your thoughts right now. Are they negative or positive? Do you want that thought to be creating your future? If not, change it.

The only thing we are ever dealing with is a thought, and thoughts can be changed. No matter what the problem is, our experiences of them are just the outer effects of our inner thoughts. Even self hatred is only hating a thought you have about yourself. Say you have the thought "I am a bad person" this thought causes a feeling, and you buy into that feeling. However if you dont have that thought, you dont have that feeling. Thoughts can be changed, change the thought, change the feeling.

This shows us where we get many of our beliefs. But dont use that as an excuse to stay where you are. The past has NO power in the present. It doesnt matter how long you have had those negative thoughts and feelings, the point of power is in the present. When you realize the power in that, think how free it will make you.

We habitually think the same thoughts over and over so it may seem like we do not have the power over choosing them. We can refuse to think certain thoughts. Look at yourself and think how often you have let yourself refuse positive thoughts and dwelt on the negative ones. You have the power to ignore the negative ones and focus on the positive.

Everyone seems to have some form of self hatred or guilt. The more self hatred and guilt you have, the less your life seems to work, which means the less self hatred or guilt you have, the more your life will seem to come together. Most people have thoughts like "I'm not good enough", "I dont do enough", "I dont deserve". Any of these sound like you? I know I say or think many of those about myself. But think about this.. Who arent we good enough for? By whos standards? I find that when I am saying these things to myself, it is ME who is the problem. I am the one stating that I am not good enough. Not my husband, not my kids.. but me. If I can turn my thoughts around to confirm to myself, that I do enough, I am good enough, I DESERVE what I want ect.. then imagine what kinds of things can begin to happen in my life. So for now, I will say to myself. I AM GOOD ENOUGH. What you think of me after that, is all on you.. no longer on me.

You Can Heal Your Life

Wow! So everyone that knows me knows how miserable I have been and how much I hate my life right now ect. Well I had a talk the other day with one of my best friends. She recommended and even sent me a book by Louise L Hay called You Can Heal Your Life. I HIGHLY recommend each of you read it. As I go through the book and work on certain aspects of my life, I will be blogging about it the entire way. The concept of the book is that everything, good or bad that happens to us we bring upon ourselves. It is our thoughts that put it out there to the Universe for us to get back. Right now I will go over some of what I have learned for you.

It starts out with this awesome quote "The gateway to wisdom and knowledge are always open" Life is pretty simple, what we give out we get back. "What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. I believe that everyone, myself included, is responsible for everything in our lives, the best and the worst. Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experiences by our thoughts and our feelings. The thoughts we think and the words we speak create our experiences.

We create the situations, and then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for "we" are the only thinkers in it. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives." Which one of these sounds most like you? "People are out to get me." "Everyone is always helpful." Each one of those beliefs will create quite different outcomes. What we believe about ourselves and about life becomes true for us.

The Universe supports us in every thought we choose to think and believe. It only takes us at our own value. Then it reflects our beliefs in our lives. If I believe that life is lonely and that no one loves me, then that is what I will get out of life. Think about how powerful that is! So lets say that I am willing to release that thought and replace it with "Love is Everywhere, and I am loving and lovable" and repeat that to myself often until it becomes true for myself, what kind of things will I be able to draw into my life? I believe I will find loving people flowing into my life, and the people already there becoming more loving towards me. How amazing is that?? Just by changing my thought process the kinds of things that can happen.

Many of us have dumb ideas about who we are and how life should be lived. Thats NOT saying that we ARE dumb. We are all doing the best we can because we haven't known any better. We just need to have more understanding and awareness to make it better and do things differently. Things like "Men dont cry!" "Women cant handle money!" are very limiting ideas that we deal with on a daily basis.

When we are little, we learned how to feel about ourselves and about life by the reactions of adults around us. If you lived with people who were very unhappy, scared, guilty or angry, then you learned a lot of negative things about you and the world around. "I never do anything right." "Its my fault" "If I get angry, Im a bad person" things like that lead to a very frustrating life.

When we grow up we have a tendency to recreate the emotional environment of our early home life. This isnt exactly good or bad, its just what we know. We also seem to recreate in our personal lives, the relationships we had with our parents or what they had between them. Think about it, how often have you had a lover or a boss that is just like one of your parents? We also treat ourselves the way our parents did. We beat ourselves up in the same way (if you listen to what you say to yourself, you can hear it in their voice) We also love ourselves in the same way as you were as a child.  "You never do anything right" "Its all your fault" How often have you said this to yourself? I know I find myself repeating those quite often :( Now how often do you tell yourself "You are wonderful" "I Love you". Which ones do you repeat to yourself more?

Your parents arent really to blame in all of this. They showed love the way they knew how. If they never learned to love themselves, how are they going to teach it to you? They were doing what they knew best, what they themselves learned as children.

I believe that we choose our parents. Whether you believe in a spirit world where you chose them or reincarnation ect. I believe that we chose to come to this place in this time to learn some lesson that will advance us in some way. So we choose our sex, skin color, country ect and then look around for parents who will mirror the pattern we need to work on in this lifetime. Then when we are adults we like to point the finger at them and say "You did this to me!" When really, we chose them because they were perfect for whatever we needed to overcome.

No matter what our problems are, our experiences are just outer effects of our inner thoughts. Self hatred is only about hating a thought about yourself. Example you have a thought that says "I am a bad person". That thought starts a feeling, one you believe. However, if you dont have that thought, you dont have that feeling. Change out your negative thoughts for positive ones and see what feelings show.

So for this week, I am going to set out and undo a lot of these negative thoughts that I believe about myself. I am going to plaster my walls with affirmations so that they become reality and watch how much better my life becomes and I suggest you do the same.

9 Weeks and counting

So far I have made it over the 7 week wall we hit last time around. This time around I am definitely a lot more sick. I have a hard time even pulling myself off the couch, from either exhaustion, or for fear that I will lose everything I have eaten. My poor hubby.. every times hes cooked me something I have ended up in the bathroom.. so now he thinks its his cooking. Anything with chicken in it is an automatic no I have figured out.. and that makes me really sad... I LOVE chicken! The not sleeping because I have to pee a million times in the night is already getting old.. and its just begun :/ Oh well, I am just happy that in the end, I will have this wonderful child with my husband.

I have been looking for a job for a while now and nothing seems to be taking. Around here everyone wants you to have security clearance in the door. But you cant just go get yourself clearance.. your employer has to do it. So I am kinda hosed unless I get really lucky and find a place that will hire me without it. I guess I am kinda glad I dont have a job whereas I have been too sick to do much good :( But we really need the money. I have to come up with $3500 for a midwife. Which by the way.. there are NONE in the area, I have to find one thats over an hour away.. hope they drive fast because my labors arent really that long.. (its been 6 years... maybe it will be longer *shrug*) I just need to trust that everything will be okay, that it will work out how we need. That we will be taken care of. We usually are, but getting to the point of putting all your trust in the unknown is tough.

Today I got to go to school with my son, where he was honored as student of the month for courage. I am so very proud of him. He got a medal and everything for it and when he saw me walk into the school and find him, his face lit up and his grin was huge. That is one of the plus's of being home. I am able to be there for my kids when they need me to be at all times. I DO miss adult interaction tho.. all day I am home by myself with nothing to do and no one to talk to. It gets pretty lonely. For now.. I think I will go meditate and set my intentions. Things will turn around for us.. they have to.

Much love to all....

Hopefully this time, it sticks

This post will be a short one... last couple of weeks I hadnt been feeling well and smells seemed to want to make me puke, also I have been quite easily irritated. I took a test before New Years and it was negative, but after not getting a visit from my not so favorite Aunt.. I took another test yesterday. This time, 2 lovely pink lines showed up! So again, I am pregnant. This time I really hope nothing goes wrong and everything comes out  fine. I really want this to work, to have a child that is mine and Shawns.

Going from a website.. it looks like I am about 5 weeks a long and due around Sept 4th. I know people generally  wait to tell people the news until they are out of the risky time period where most miscarriages happen. But for me, why should the loss of any pregnancy be hidden? What has society taught us? That its only sad to lose a child once you are either X months along. To me, a loss is still a loss especially for those really trying to have a family.

Soooo heres to hoping!!

Christmas

It seems that with growing up, the magic of Christmas is compressed into a few hours over the course the 24th and 25th of December. When I was a child the entire season was filled with magic every day. Each day seemed to last forever while I waited for the longest night of the year to arrive where I would lie in bed twitching like a heroin addict in withdrawal waiting for my parents consent to rush down the hall and finally see the presents, the wonder the entire child calender sat upon.

Growing up we didn't have any money and tho I know now that all of our gifts came from the church, my parents tried to make things wonderful for us. I remember one year we didn't have enough money for even a tree. My mother got the idea to make one with Green garland and a Hula Hoop. Tho I may not remember what the other trees of my childhood Christmas's were.. I will never forget that one. My siblings and I would go around the house dragging our feet while holding hands and taking turns touching the tree to see who would get the bigger shock. It was one time in my childhood that I truly remember being happy. We may not have had power, but we had a tree and that was good enough for us.

I am really having a hard time getting into Christmas this year. Normally my house would have been decked out with lights and stockings, pumpkin rolls would have been baking, and Christmas music would have been blaring. It's so hard to get into the feel of Christmas this year, being away from home and away from those we love. For the first time in our marriage, we are on truly on our own and we don't like it. Even tho we didn't go see family all the time, it was at least always an option. Now there is no way we can drive to see in laws for the weekend and this saddens me a lot. Most people don't really like their inlaws, they just put up with them. But me.. I LOVE them! Every single one of them. I see how they are with each other as a family and find myself envious that mine is no where near that. I mean most of us get a long fine.. but we aren't so tight with each other. My mother and father in law do so much for our family, more then they ever have to and I really do appreciate them and am very thankful I have them in my life.

I need to find a way to get into the Christmas groove for my kids. They are so excited to open the gifts under the tree, they have been counting down the days. I am excited for that as well.. to see their faces when they get to open up the gifts they have been drooling over. To see the way they light up when I walk into their room and tell them that it is time to go downstairs. Maybe tonite.. I will bust out the Christmas Karaoke tracks with kids and enjoy their excitement with them.

Cheating

Today at lunch I got a call from my oldest sons teacher and was informed that he was caught cheating on a test.  He is a straight A student so I am not sure as to the reason he would feel the need to cheat. I was informed that because of this 0 on his test, that he would not really recover grade wise. That his A would now become an F for the quarter. For ONE test?? Anyone else think that is a bit extreme? I think they are putting way too much weight on the tests then they should. Which means that he will have a really hard time getting his grade back up to an A at all. I dont quite understand why he would feel the need to cheat, especially considering its in a subject that he knows! I dont know how to handle it yet, as I have never had to worry about him doing something like this. How would you handle it if it was your kid?