the reluctant pioneer

You can find Part I here Another horrible phone pic, taken in my long-term-stay hospital room, but I wanted to show how much smaller my tummy was after losing all of my water. My previous post has a picture of me at 27 weeks and I look roughly the same size, but I assure you there was a substantial difference. It was 6:45 on a cloudless Sunday morning. Mark was rifling through the linen closet looking for a towel, I was on the phone with my Mom, already grateful for the first grace: it was early enough that Mom wasn't yet unreachable at church, but late enough that we'd all gotten sleep. Our conversation was brief as I relayed that my water broke, everywhere. She would be over immediately. Our four other children were fast asleep and would wake to find Grandma here and us gone. I knew they would be confused, but seeing Grandma would put them at ease. Until this point, I had been very careful not to move, fearful even of reaching for the phone. Not only did I not w...

30 weeks along in my 5th pregnancy, I was growing more uncomfortable by the day. I had joked to both Mark and my doctor that I felt 10 weeks further along than I was. We knew we were having a boy, our second with three girls sandwiched between them. I also knew he was going to be big. I was consistently measuring a couple weeks ahead, but with a husband who weighed 10 lb 15 oz at birth, this was neither a surprise nor a medical concern. Despite my discomfort, I was having a nearly textbook pregnancy. Clearly a bad picture, but my last during normal pregnancy. Roughly 27 weeks along. Earlier that week, my doctor had cautioned me to take it easy, no more house projects until I was at least 36 weeks along. With a history of preterm labor and our first son's preterm birth at 35 weeks  (followed by full-term girls) it was best to be cautious. I obeyed grudgingly, getting a kick out of teaching Mark how to paint walls and occasionally grabbing the paintbrush for a bit of cutting-in...