What I Want for My Son

Daniel and I were talking a little bit earlier this week about how often, in movies and television shows, we hear parent characters talking about how all they really want is for their children to be happy. “Happy.” That’s it. As though there isn’t much more to life than temporal happiness—if that’s not on the road to hedonism, it’s pretty darn close. Is that what we want? Of course we want our son to be happy. But what exactly does that mean? This is what I want for my son (and this of course applies to any/all of his future siblings as well):

I want him to have a happy childhood, full of laughter. I want him to develop a love for learning, an active and playful imagination, and an infectious zeal for life.

I want him never to be forced into close familiarity with fear, sorrow, or pain.

I want him to have true friends to walk with him in every stage of his life, from childhood to old age, and I want him to be a true friend to others.

I want him to be confident in himself and his talents, with a healthy understanding and belief in his value as a child of God, as well as recognizing that same value in those around him.

I want him to have a generous spirit, always counting his blessings and ready to share what he has with those who have less.

I want him always to know how much he is loved, by Daniel and me, and by God.

I want him to walk with God from his first steps to his last, and to find in his Creator and Savior a loving Father, brother, and best friend. I want him to seek God’s will in every choice he makes, and I want him to find it.

I want him to have faith that is stronger than my own, and strength to overcome the many temptations that come his way in an overly materialistic, self-indulgent, and improperly sexualized culture.

But still, I want him to experience doubt—enough to make him search for the truth until he finds it and his faith is strengthened, but never so much that his faith is overwhelmed.

I want him to respect all people’s searches for truth even when they differ from his own, but without succumbing to relativism. I want him to have courage to stand up for his beliefs and against evil in the world.

I want him to do good out of a pure desire to serve God for love of Him.

I want him to live a healthy long life, but without fear of death. I want him to have the “peace which surpasses all understanding.”

Yes, I want for Charlie to have happiness in this life as much as possible, but more importantly happiness in the life to come. I want him to experience eternal joy with God. In short, I want my son to be a saint.

Okay, let’s bring this full circle. I want Charlie to be a *happy* saint!

The question for us parents just starting out with a new baby is: how do you raise a saint? It sounds like a pretty overwhelming task when you put it that way…

Wouldn't Change A Thing

I really don’t know what to write about this week. There has been a lot going on here, though. Daniel started his new job on Wednesday, which is exciting because it pays better and will allow him the option of working from home part of the time after six months. It also is getting him into more of the business side of the psychology field, which will hopefully open up additional doors for him in the future.

As I write this, Charlie is sitting contentedly in his kick and play bouncy seat watching me. I’ve been finding myself with less free time as he spends more and more time awake and alert during the day, but at least he is happy to sit still for a while. Plus, he slept for six hours straight last night, which is his new record! Of course, I was only asleep for five of those hours, but still—awesome!

I must say that having a baby living with us is really making me feel the size of our small house. When our bathroom sink multitasks as a place to scrub yellow stains out of tiny night shirts and onesies and I can barely move around in our living room without stubbing my toe on something or another because of all the baby equipment sitting around, I really start looking forward to building our new, bigger house.

Who knows when that will be, though, if things keep up the way they’re going. Every time we figure out a way to pay down some extra student loan debt, something happens: the hot water heater last month, a maternity hospital bill that was higher than we expected, and now Daniel’s car. It wouldn’t start for him this afternoon (Thursday), and it’s not the battery, so we had it towed to a shop nearby. I’m still waiting to hear what the mechanic has to say about it. We really got a lemon when we bought that car last September—we’ve already had to have several repairs done. It makes me never want to buy a used car again. Anyway, I’m praying that whatever it is, it’s not too big of a deal and they can have it fixed and ready for Daniel to drive home this evening. Otherwise Charlie and I will have to drive an hour to pick him up tonight and then Daniel will need to take my car to work tomorrow, which would mean I couldn’t drive down to see my friends tomorrow afternoon like I had planned. Stupid piece of junk!

Still, I have to keep reminding myself that even with our small house and a difficult automobile, we have it so much better than most of the rest of the world. We are comfortable, and we’re happy. Especially with an adorable seven week old bringing so much joy to our lives every day! If we had waited another year before having a baby, we could have paid down all of our student loan debt because I would still be working and would be that much closer to getting our new house… but having Charlie is infinitely better than that. Like I said last week, I wouldn’t change a thing (except for perhaps buying a different car last fall).

Now that I’ve vented a little bit, it’s back to work/play. There’s a little boy that would like my attention, and that is perfectly fine with me!

Loves and Misses

I love babies; I always have. I love how perfectly peaceful they look when they sleep. I love the dozens of faces they make while they’re dreaming. I love wondering what they could possibly be dreaming about at such a young age. I love their tiny noses, fingers, and eyelashes. I love their chubby cheeks and their gummy smiles. I love their little coos and gurgles and the way they wave their arms in the air while they’re cooing and gurgling.

I love the way they nestle into my arms or against my neck and just fit perfectly, like a puzzle (when they’re content, that is). I love the way they smell after a bath—thank you Johnson & Johnson and Burt’s Bees baby washes. I love the way they smell anytime; milk breath, or even spit-up breath, it doesn’t matter. It’s the best smell in the world. I love how soft their skin is, especially the bottoms of their feet. Only babies’ feet could ever be so soft.

And then there are the particulars to my baby: *my* baby. It’s still so incredibly awesome that I can say that—that I have one of my very own. I love his adorable double chin and the innumerable rolls on his arms and legs. I love the funny balding pattern that leaves an ever-shrinking semi-circle of newborn hair around the back of his head, like a man with a receding hairline. I love the look on his face when he’s been fussing and suddenly realizes that he is finally about to be fed. I love the way he clutches at my shirt while I’m feeding him, and his other little meal-time mannerisms.

I love the way he smiles after he dirties his diaper, and how pleased with himself he looks when he misses his diaper. I love his infatuation with our living room ceiling fan and that he can at times have a fifteen or twenty minute happy conversation with it, regardless of whether the fan is on or off. I love how cute he is when he wakes me up in the middle of the night smacking his lips and turning his head back and forth without opening his eyes, as though it would be too much trouble for him to open them. I love the funny swirly shape of his belly button. I love that lint collects in the palms of his hands and between his fingers because of how tightly he clenches his fists most of the time. I love that, oddly enough, rock music seems to settle him down. I love that dazzling grin that he is bestowing more and more generously every day. And I LOVE that I am his mommy.

All of this love doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that I miss from before Charlie was born. I do, of course, miss sleeping through the night. I miss being clean, as I’ve discovered that being the mother of an infant is about being dirty—between being spit-up, peed, and pooped on and barely having time to take a shower myself. I miss going grocery shopping, since we’ve found that it’s way too difficult to take Charlie out at this age, so I’ve been staying home while Daniel does the shopping. I miss riding in the front seat of the car with Daniel and holding hands when we go somewhere.

These things are all pretty simple, although not an all-inclusive list, but when I am overtired they can sometimes feel a lot bigger than they are. Thankfully, Daniel and I are able to talk with each other openly about what we miss without judgment, and with the security of knowing that no matter what, neither of us would change a thing.

It’s already been six weeks, and things get a little easier with every passing day. Besides, the loves totally outweigh the misses.

P.S. Happy Birthday (Thursday) to my wonderful husband, Daniel! I love you!

Earthly Dearest

I recently came across the following quote from C.S. Lewis that I had never seen before:

“When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving toward the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”

This quote really struck me as a reminder that although I find my time taken up more than ever before by others (namely, Charlie), I shouldn’t allow my faith to fall by the wayside. Even though I don’t have a lot of free time, it is more important than ever for me to remember to pray throughout my day and to offer up in service to God every seemingly mundane task done in service to my “earthly dearest”—my son and my husband.

My new prayer is going to be, “Lord, teach me how to love you better so that I can become the very best wife and the very best mother that I can be.”

In other news, Daniel and I have chosen wonderful godparents for Charlie and set a date for his baptism: September 26. Also, Daniel’s brother and sister-in-law are going to be in town from Alabama that weekend for a wedding, so they will be able to be there to see him baptized—an added bonus. We are so excited! September still feels like so far away, but I’m sure it will be here before we know it…

Home Improvement

Charlie is one month old today-- I can't believe it! We had his one month checkup this morning, and the doctor says he is perfect. He has already grown an inch and a half and is three and a half pounds heavier than his birth weight. And for the last two nights he has given us a four to five hour stretch of sleep at night, which has made Daniel and me very happy.

For the past week, my little family has been staying at my parents' house (about ten minutes down the road from ours) because last Thursday we discovered a leak in our hot water heater that was flooding the closet in which it was located and spreading out into the nursery. It was a very slow leak that we never noticed before, so it must have been like that for a long time.

Anyway, Daniel had to shut off the water at our house, remove the old water heater, tear out the laminate floors that had soaked up water and the drywall that was covered in black mold, scrape the mold off of the particle board subflooring and bleach what was left, then set up fans to attempt to dry it all out before a new water heater could be installed. The drying took a couple of days and it seems like all the mold was killed; Daniel installed the new water heater on Tuesday. Since then he's been putting things back together, including laying new flooring where it had been torn up.

We are going back home tonight, which I am very glad about-- although it has been quite nice to spend the week with Charlie's aunts and uncles, who are always happy to hold him to give me a break. The timing was pretty good, actually. We slept in my sister Marie's basement bedroom for the first few nights while she was in Florida babysitting our cousins, then moved up to my parents' bedroom when my parents and two of my siblings left for Nashville, TN. They've been gone all week, so Daniel, Charlie, and I have had a place to stay while helping to keep an eye on things at my parents' house.

Since Daniel went back to work last week, I have had a lot of time to get used to taking care of Charlie on my own. Daniel has been off at his full-time job, his part-time job, and his summer course, plus working on fixing the flood mess at our house while we've been at my parents' this week.

That pretty much covers how things have been for us-- pretty crazy. Soon, though, they will hopefully be less so. Daniel only has two more weeks of class before he is finished with his master's degree completely, and he will be starting a new job on August 4th that pays better and should allow him to work from home some of the time...

I guess that's it for now!

Once Upon a Time...

…there was a land where people went to bed at night, slept for a while, and then woke up in the morning. I know this to be true because I spent many happy years calling this land home—now I am beginning to wonder whether I will ever be able to return.

Daniel’s time off has come to an end. He went back to work today and I am embarking on that journey I have so long dreamed about but never quite been able to imagine: stay-at-home-motherhood. My days are now going to be spent feeding, burping, changing, and playing with my son as he grows a little every day. And at this point Charlie eats so often that I feel like my time is almost completely devoted to feeding as I spend very large portions of every day glued to the couch.

These early days have been so special as Daniel and I have attempted to settle in as new parents and get acquainted with the brand new little person God has put into our lives. It has been such a blessing that Daniel has been able to be home with Charlie and me for over two weeks; I really don’t know how I could have gotten through that time without him.

I went into labor on Tuesday June 15, just as Daniel and I were going to bed. At 11:30 I had one contraction that hurt significantly more than any of the Braxton Hicks that I had been having for several weeks. I fell asleep only to be woken up by another contraction at around 1:30 a.m. and another less than ten minutes later.

I stayed in bed and began timing them using my cell phone; they lasted between 30 seconds and a minute and came every five to ten minutes all night long, but I didn’t think I was really in labor since they weren’t consistently getting stronger or closer together. Still, they hurt enough that I wasn’t able to fall back asleep that night. Daniel woke up around 3:30 and he stayed awake with me, but we didn’t get out of bed until around 6:00 when we remembered that if they were real contractions, they would hurt less and be more productive if I wasn’t laying down. So, I ate a breakfast of waffles with strawberries and whipped cream sitting on my exercise ball as the contractions continued to come.

We had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for 11:20 on Wednesday, so we made sure our bags were all packed and brought them with us just in case the doctor wanted us to go into the hospital that day (which we doubted). I had a sonogram when we got there since I was past my due date, which showed that the baby was doing fine but that my amniotic fluid level was very low. For that reason, the doctor said she would like to see me have the baby that day and asked whether we would be able to go to the hospital that afternoon for an emergency induction. I was hungry, so we stopped at Panera for lunch; I got a bowl of chicken noodle soup since I was supposed to avoid eating anything heavy, and I ended up eating only a few bites of it since I was so nervous.

When we got to the hospital, I was hooked up to an IV and monitors for my contractions and the baby’s heart rate. The doctor on call wanted to see how my contractions were doing on their own before inducing me. After about two hours, she said that although I was not even two centimeters dilated, my contractions were pretty consistent and I might be able to go into labor on my own if I walked around the hospital for an hour. I was happy to get out of bed, so Daniel and I walked around for around 45 minutes and my water broke while I was in the bathroom (very convenient).

After that I was really in labor; my contractions started coming every two minutes and within another hour I had gone from two to five centimeters. It somehow wasn’t quite as bad as I had imagined labor to be, but it still hurt—a lot. At five centimeters I got an epidural, and from then on we watched the movie Freaky Friday on TV until it was time to push.

At that point, it was just another couple of hours before our son was born. Daniel was an awesome labor coach. He held one of my legs, and he was the one counting to ten with every push. I thought that June 16th sounded like a nicer birthday than the 17th, so I kept asking Daniel how much time I had left—and I made it! Charles Edward was perfectly healthy and placed on my stomach at 11:24 p.m., with 36 minutes to spare. Daniel cut the umbilical cord. All three of us cried. I’d never been so happy, or so relieved, in my life.

Thus concludes my labor and delivery story, and thus begins my new life.

By the way, it turns out that my fluid levels hadn’t been low after all—they figured that out after my water broke. God is so good! If I had been waiting at home until my water broke, we would have had to drive the half an hour to the hospital with my contractions coming every two minutes apart, and I would have been miserable. Just an interesting side note…

Almost Two Weeks Later

Our son Charlie will be 13 days old tonight, and 13 days have never lasted so long. I hardly know where to begin! I also have hardly had the time to begin (or the ability to sit comfortably in our computer chair to write a blog entry for that matter) but things are beginning to settle down… at least somewhat.

This is just a brief entry to let you know that all is well; Charles Edward is a calm, happy, and healthy baby who loves to sleep so much that his worry-wart of a mother has at times been concerned about his so often apparent lack of interest in waking up to eat. Of course, he is a big baby with an adorable double chin who was back up to his birth weight within his first week. I really don’t need to worry!

As for Daniel and me, we are just as was to be expected: exhausted. The nights are very long, and no matter how tired I am the first light of day is always very welcome. We have been spending our days changing diapers and onesies, taking hundreds of pictures, and having movie marathons (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc.) while I nurse Charlie on the living room couch.

Daniel doesn’t go back to work until next Tuesday, and for the first several days he did an excellent job of taking care of both me and Charlie. I’m feeling much better now than I did, but I still don’t know how I’m going to manage when Daniel isn’t here all day. I’ll be fine I’m sure, but it’s going to take some getting used to.

I’ll get into more detail as soon as I can—later this week I hope! Thank you all for your prayers; I can’t believe our son is actually here! God has been so good to us.

IT'S A...

BOY!

Charles Edward Hammond (Charlie) was born at 11:23 PM on June 16. 9 pounds, 2 ounces. Congratulations, Sarah and Daniel!

No Baby Yet

Any day now, I hope, since my official due date is tomorrow. The hospital bag is packed (except for some clothing for Daniel and me that is currently dirty—I need to do laundry today). The house is clean (enough). The pantry and freezer are stocked. The nursery is ready, except for hanging some artwork, which will be done today. The cradle beside our bed has been emptied of the clothing I had been tossing into it for the past few weeks. The baby swing has fresh batteries. The grass is cut. The infant seat is installed in the car. The gas tank is full. The GPS has the hospital saved as a favorite destination. Daniel is now finished with work until after the Fourth of July.

Our doctor appointment for next week has been set for Wednesday, at which time they will do a sonogram to check the level of amniotic fluid and schedule an induction (if I haven’t had the baby already, of course). They won’t let me go more than ten days past my due date—I really, really hope this baby doesn’t want to wait that long.

I think that today Daniel and I are going to start taking evening walks, hopefully to help move things along…

So many thoughts have been going through my head in the past few days. My whole life is about to be drastically different, and I worry a little about how my relationship with Daniel is going to change as we really and truly become parents. 24-hours-a-day parents. Would anyone care to share what their experience was with this big change and offer any advice?

Despite all of the experience I have had my whole life with helping to take care of babies and children, I’ve never been “the mom” before. The mom is the one who seems to always be able to make things better and has all the answers. What if I just can’t/don’t? And what if our baby is a psychopath?

Haha, I just had to throw that one out there! No kidding, I really did ask Daniel that question quite seriously the other night after we watched the season premiere of the show “Lie to Me,” because the plot line for the episode was about dealing with a psychopath. Since psychopaths are born, not made, as a woman about to give birth the question did cross my mind. I know, I am a little crazy! Or maybe a lot…

Anyways, that was perhaps a strange ending for this entry. Hopefully Charlie or Samantha will have been introduced to the world before I write another entry; I just can’t wait much longer to hold my child in my arms! Daniel will make an announcement here ASAP afterwards. Please keep us in your prayers!

39 Weeks!

We’re getting so close now. I once heard someone say that God must have made the end of pregnancy so uncomfortable and tiring so that women wouldn’t dread labor and delivery so much by the time it came, just to get it over with. I think that could very well be the case. In fact, I would be wishing to go into labor right now, except for a couple of things.

One is that our house is still not quite ready. The other is that as Daniel and I have been counting down the days until the arrival of our firstborn, my very good friend Kristen has been counting down the days until her wedding. Her countdown is now ending; she is getting married tomorrow, and I really would rather not go into labor right before the event causing me to miss it. Even less do I want to have my water break in the middle of their vows or start having contractions during the reception. I hope you’re paying attention, Charlie or Samantha!

We have another doctor’s appointment this afternoon—as of last Friday the baby’s head had dropped but I wasn’t at all dilated yet. We’ll see if that has changed!

I’m sorry about the brevity of this entry. It’s so hard to come up with something interesting to write about when it seems like my day consists of the following scrambled thoughts: “Baby’s coming soon, I have to get ready,” and “Oh my goodness, I have go to put my feet up and read a book.” The latter is not very productive, in case you were wondering.

Until next week!