Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk...But What About Fruit Punch?

This morning while I was feeding Samuel, Judah needed a refill on his fruit punch. So he got a hold of the pitcher on the counter and managed to spill it...all over the carpet. I was so mad and annoyed. It was really really hard to do as I’ve been asking Judah to do, not act out in sin in my anger. I know I actually blew it, in my attitude and lack of patience with him after the event. I’m still processing it, but the anger is coming somewhat from the fact that its probably not going to come out, so we’ll be living with this big pink spot for years (cause what’s the point in replacing carpet with two young boys and a dog?). I was thinking about that in the moment, that I had the choice to look at this pink spot for years and choose to love and forgive my son (who was really really sorry about the accident) or to continue to stew and be angry that my “stuff” got ruined. I have to be ok with stuff getting ruined, (which is hard for me) I do have two boys, its going to happen. As Jamie said in his text, “Take care of his heart, we can replace the carpet”.

Heeey Brother....

Meet Samuel John Zaehring
Born March 23rd, 2014 at 9:18 am

9 lbs, 21.5" long, 13.5" head

More later

Samuel's Birth Story - All Natural VBAC Rainbow Baby

Below is the full version, it's a bit long, so I wrote an abridged version:

Friday night early labor 2-7am, died out during the day Saturday, picked back up at 7 Saturday evening. Lasted ALL night long, 5min apart for 40 seconds long - blah! I was so hoping they would die out so I could sleep Sunday. Laid down at 6 am to try to sleep, second contraction laying down, woosh went my water. Complete rupture, no meconium, thank God we were having a baby today! Jumped in the shower to manage some pain, called the doula and the neighbor for Judah, started for the car. Took 45 min to get into the car at 7:30! Another 45 min to get to the hospital. Arrived at L&D and into our room at 8:30 after feeling pressure in the parking garage. Was checked and was 10 cm complete and baby was at +2 station! Started pushing, baby was delivered at 9:18! All natural VBAC, in God's providence in the same hospital room we labored for 36 hours in with Judah before heading to a c-section. Samuel John was 21.5" long, 9 lbs, 7 and 9 Apgars. We are so incredibly blessed.

The full version is as follows:

We had a nice family time Friday evening, watching Frozen with Judah and then having some dinner of white chicken chili. I had been inspired that day to cook because this bacon cheddar scone recipe was super appealing to me. I ended up actually making that and dinner! Judah headed to bed and I was having some contractions, which wasn’t unusual, this was usually when I would get a few Braxton Hicks. Jamie was still recovering from his head cold that had popped up on Wednesday and wiped him out for two days. I think I just had a premonition that we needed to head to bed so we did early (for us) at 10. I’m pretty sure I slept through contractions until 2 when Judah woke up scared, after getting him settled back down I couldn’t sleep through contractions any more and headed to the living room to watch tv and work them out on the birth ball. They were averaging 8ish minutes apart for a minute in duration.

My fear going into this labor was another OP (sunny side up) baby, which was the reason for my c-section with Judah, and it had made for horrible back labor. I was feeling some pain in my back so I did lots of hands and knees on the ball and while talking to baby about turning over and getting into the right position. It all seemed to work and the contractions mostly stayed in my lower front abdomen. I headed to bed to try to rest in an exaggerated SIMs to keep baby in good position. I alternated between these over the rest of the night and Jamie joined me at some point watching tv. So neither of us got much rest. Once Saturday morning came and Judah woke up things tapered off. I talked to my doula who recommended we put a movie on or find an activity for Judah so we could rest. We had a nice breakfast and had some family time and I called a friend who offered to take Judah to the reptile zoo with her family for the day so we could rest while we could. Jamie and I slept a few hours and had a restful day at home together. We also did a few items on my “need to-do” list including vacuuming, getting toys put away, and rearranging Judah’s room (this should have been a clue that I was in labor). Our sweet friends who live two doors down brought us chicken soup and our other friend dropped off Judah for us, as well as a pizza, so we could have a “normal” night with him. We set up our neighbor friends to be on-call for Judah during the night if we had to leave for the hospital. After dinner it was off to bed for Judah again and a big pick up of contractions for me.

Contractions came back averaging 5 minutes apart and 30-60 seconds in duration. They were a bit more intense than the night before. Much harder to even “rest” through. I had about two conversations with my doula before 10:30 where she continued to encourage me to rest as much as I could. Jamie headed to the guest room to try to sleep and avoid keeping me awake. He didn’t last long there as it was not as comfortable as our bed (especially with still being under the weather). I was a bit insistent that he go to bed since I needed him to be better rested if I couldn’t be. My thinking during the time was this could be the start of a nightly pattern of prodromal labor that goes away in the day, similar to some experiences of my friends that had lasted days. My In-laws had also called that evening to say they would be coming down regardless of what happened the next morning, on Sunday, which was a relief to me to know that they would be able to help with Judah during the day so I could just sleep. My Mom also said she was coming baby or not on Monday morning. So this all made me feel ok that I could make it through nights of not sleeping, since I would have support for Judah and be able to rest during the day.

I don’t remember much of the early part of Saturday night until about 3 am, the witching hour. Jamie was sleeping and I was hitting a wall. So I called my doula. We talked for about 40 minutes which was so helpful. Trying to figure out any new strategies we could. I got my heat pad out which did help take the edge off. She also mentioned that she had seen midwives give the advice of a Tylenol PM to help get over the sleep hump. I mentioned that I knew my sister had been given an Ambien when she was in early labor induction at the hospital. My doula indicated she had seen these given at the hospital, but of course, that would technically require a trip in.

After hanging up I made it my mental goal to make it to the “morning” when hopefully these contractions would go away and I could sleep, possibly with some medical aid if needed (I had an ambien stashed away in my medicine cabinet). At 5:00 Jamie came out and I started trying to convince him of my plan. While discussing this, Judah woke up at 5:30 and Jamie had to put him back to bed. After that he suggested we try waiting another 30 minutes and resting again and then re-evaluate before taking any sort of sleep aid we might have on hand (wise man). I laid down in bed and got hit with an unexpected contraction that was pretty bad. Then five minutes later at 6:18 another one. this one, though was different, and seemed to travel down further into the birth canal and then there was the pop and gush of my water breaking completely. Thankfully we had a waterproof mattress pad and I’d put 3 towels under my sheets that week.

I waddled into the shower, Jamie called my doula to come right away, called our neighbor friend for Judah-care, and we both said, “oh thank goodness”. (JMZ - I seem to recall a bit more emotion. I know I was close to crying when I looked into your eyes standing in the shower dripping amniotic fluid. Overwhelmed by the fact that the unknown was finally known, that you weren’t going to go through 3 days of this, and we were going to finally finally have a baby today).  At least we knew this baby was coming for sure today! I must have got an extra little burst of hormones, because I was no longer as tired as I was 30 minutes earlier! At this point I was hit by the fear of back labor, as I had been having some of my contraction pain in my back. My doula, via speakerphone coached me into the hands and knees in the shower with the water stream hitting my back, doing pelvis circles between contractions. The contractions started coming quicker, like 3 minutes apart and I started vocalizing during them which I hadn’t been doing before.

At this point I told Jamie we needed to have our neighbor friend come over right now, we needed to get going and I needed to know that Judah was being cared for. Jamie was working on getting all our stuff together to leave and it turns out that I needed our neighbor friend actually for me, not Judah. She had been through a similar labor and jumped right into helping me, knowing just what to do. Between her physical help and my doula on the phone we were able to get me out of the tub, dressed, and headed to the car between contractions. (I should note that she is actually a really good friend who happens to live two doors down) Jamie woke up Judah and explained to him what was happening so he wasn’t afraid, that we were going to go meet baby brother and he was going to go over to his “best friends” Charlie and Kaci’s house.  Then Jamie got him ready while my neighbor and I met my doula on the way to the car (doula came in front door as I was going out garage door.  was kind of humorous). My doula strapped a TENs unit to my back and then I proceeded to puke in my rose bushes, to which my doula said, “well you’re either a 4 or a 7!” We finally got into the car about 7:30. (after standing in the driveway for about 20 solid minutes)

Thankfully it was a Sunday and there was no traffic heading south (or people out watching us labor in our driveway). It was quite the ride. My thoughts the whole way went something like, “I am never doing this again, I am getting an epidural and sleeping as soon as we get there, my friend Sara who has natural home births and wants lots of kids is crazy.” We arrived at the hospital and began the mile long walk to Labor and Delivery. Jamie realized that shuffling 5 feet and having a contraction was going to take 3 hours to get to L&D (considering it took 40 minutes to get into the car in our driveway).  So Jamie sent the doula to the wheelchair return to grab a wheelchair.  I got about 50 feet and said to Jamie, “I feel like I need to poop.” At which point, he left me standing in the middle of the parking garage to run over and get my doula’s attention and tell her that.  My doula’s eyes went wide, and she and Jamie hightailed it into high gear getting me a wheelchair.  As soon as I sat down I had another strong contraction and took my feet off the footrests and put them on the ground.  Realizing where we were, Jamie and the doula nicely but firmly told me “No, honey, you’re going to have to labor through these contractions with your feet on the footrests.  We gotta go!”  During the ride down to when we arrived at L&D I got into a quiet “zen” state working through contractions, at one point my doula asked if I was sleeping. My doula later said I looked like a mom at 2 cm dilation.  When we got to L&D, the charge nurse was explaining to Jamie he couldn’t bring all our bags but could leave them in the hallway.  He was confused and asked why and the charge nurse, looking at me sitting in a chair, said, “We go to a triage room to get checked out first”.  At this point my doula got assertive (I was unable to speak at this point) said, “No, we need to got to the delivery room”, and gave her the rundown that I was feeling the urge to poop in the parking lot and was not a first time mom, etc.

She immediately turned us around and found an open room to put us in and started calling for a Dr for a cervical check. We were rolled down to L&D#6 at about 8:30, which was the only room available (the other rooms were being cleaned), which providentially is the same room we labored in for 36 hours with Judah before ending in our c-section 3 years previous. It was the only room available. We were really struck by the power and reconciliation of this ‘accident’.  They mistook our emotion for fear and concern and asked if it was going to be ok, I think it was the first words I spoke since arriving, “It’s perfect.” They got me onto the bed (JMZ - hands and knees for a little while, then had to roll onto my back and the Dr did the check) I was fully dilated and +2 station and she thought baby was OP! The last part sort of struck me a little, but my doula jumped in and assertively told me we’re going to get into hands and knees on the back of the bed as that’s the best way to work with an OP baby. I also grabbed hold to the fact that I was +2, Judah never left 0 station after 4 hours of pushing, and my body had already got this baby to +2!

At this point they were working to get baby on a monitor and having a hard time. They asked me (who hadn’t uttered but 2 words) if they could put on in internal heart rate monitor. I have no idea if I said anything (Jamie says I muttered ok), of course I didn’t want that, what the heck were they asking me for anyway? Interestingly, I was not at all worried about this baby, I just had peace that he was fine. Of course when they asked this to me Jamie was 10 feet away and was slow to react, so my doula started her BRAIN exercise with me to stall. Jamie finally came back over and heard what was happening and asked gently but with much emotion, “We really, really, really didn’t want an internal monitor, but we care most about baby’s health.  But is there any different tricks you can try, or try a little longer before we go there?”. The nurse explained she was uncomfortable because they’d been trying for 3 minutes and they usually want a heartbeat within 5 minutes.  And just as she said that they found his heart rate. It was really close to mine so that was what was causing them issues.  So they used the pulse oximeter to get my heartrate and compare with the doppler.

After this, I asked if I could start pushing, still in utter disbelief that this was happening. Yes of course was the answer. It took me a little to figure out how to push, but soon we got into the flow. My doula kept saying, push into the pain and breath and push, which was really helpful.  Jamie was at my head counting through my contractions at about half speed, saying “1 and 2 and 3 etc” in the most calm, beautiful, and sweetest sounding voice I could ever imagine. :-)  After about 15 minutes my doula asked Jamie if he wanted her to take over with me so he could see the head starting to emerge. He watched through a series of pushes as it really started to come out, faster than he expected. Looking around he noticed that there was just one nurse in the room. And the nurse was trying to keep the heart rate and call for the Doctors and looking a little concerned at how fast the head was coming out (it was maybe 3 contractions away). So being the former EMT that he was Jamie grabbed some gloves and gloved up, just in case. Thankfully the Doctor team arrived just in time, introducing themselves to my butt. The on call Doctor turned out to be my Doctor’s associate Dr. Micks, who we had seen several times. It was great to actually know her and such a relief seeing a familiar face - doubly special because of our past relationship with her (D&E pre-op visit). Later I recognized our resident Doctor as one we had met with during our 29 week L&D “trial” run, when I was having a concern with possible preterm labor.

I just remember during pushing when I started feeling the head move down and starting to worry about that ring of fire I had heard so much about. It definitely was really sore and painful feeling but it went so fast for me I didn’t have to work through it for too long before it was over. And out went his head! Surreal. At this point I didn’t realize that I actually needed to keep pushing to birth the shoulders and body, for some reason this escaped me or I had never heard about it! So after being told I kept pushing and after a bit of maneuvering he was out. Perhaps because of the speed of the delivery or the hold up on shoulders, Samuel was a bit stunned when he came out and the Peds team was called. We had planned for delayed cord clamping but because he barely tried to breath, and looked “stunned”, they slapped a pair of scissors into Jamie’s hand and said “Cut now!”, after which Samuel finally took a deep breath and cried and they were able to call off the Peds team (stopping them at the door to our room) and allow immediate skin to skin with me. His Apgars were 7(1 minute after birth) and 9 (5 minutes after birth). Born 3/23/2014 at 9:18, his due date.

I was in literal shock after he was delivered. It was amazing to no longer be having contractions and I felt so much more myself (after the shock wore off a bit). Talk about some crazy awesome hormones, better than drugs! We chilled out together for probably 2 hours, delivering the placenta, doing all the assessments on me and getting me fixed up. I had a second degree tear, probably from his shoulders but it hasn’t been too bad. Right after I delivered my Doctor (Prager) arrived, she was paged but didn’t quite make it in time. I really appreciated her coming in from home and it was again so special to have her there at our successful birth to meet our Samuel (she was the doctor who did my D&E) and she ended up overseeing my stitch up with the resident. He latched onto my left side probably 30 minutes after birth and nursed like a champ. I should note that I never ended up getting an IV or a saline-lock at all, the nurse said after that she looked at me and my arms straining in pushing on the bed and just decided against it :) (interestingly enough it was commented on almost proudly by a few of my later nurses, “Oh you’re the one without a hep lock”).

All in all, it was such a redemptive birth, from the perspective of our previous birth with Judah to all of our losses in the last year, we saw God’s hand at work in it in so many ways. I so appreciate the gift it all was from God, that it’s actually all His story at work in our lives. We pondered a few biblical names, and had it down to 2 in the labor and delivery room.  We looked at our beautiful son (no cone head, perfect birth story) and when we read the meanings, we were overwhelmed and tears fell through our smiles to the Father.  That is why we loved giving our son the name Samuel (“He Hears”) John (“Grace or Mercy of our Lord”).

Judah's 3rd Birthday

This weekend we had Judah’s friend birthday celebration. We started off by heading to Mill Creek for the Casper Babypants concert and some donuts. Judah got a kick out seeing him play in real life and he also loved the donuts. While Judah was down for nap Grandma and Grandpa Zaehring arrived to watch the Seahawks playoff game. We had a nice quiet afternoon watching and preparing for the party. This year we planned a low key party with just three families and the grandparents. We did dinner, cake, presents and relaxing. For dinner we had tri-tip, potatoes, and salad. Funnily enough all the kids started immediately playing together downstairs when they arrived, leaving all the parents upstairs. So we decided to capitalize on the situation and eat! Imagine all the adults around the dining room table casually enjoying dinner, what an amazing party already! Soon enough the kids made their way upstairs and rotated in to eat dinner. Once dinner was wrapping up we sang and cut the cake, we made another Dusty airplane cake with our new pan. And then it was on to the presents. We got Judah the airport set from Costco that he had wanted since before Christmas. It was a big hit and the kids all enjoyed playing with it. Overall I think it was a pretty successful party and I think Judah enjoyed it.

The Joys and Pains of Learning to be a Father

An interesting couple of anecdotes for you to emphasize the magnitude of grace present in the love of a son for this Dad. After a week apart, there's nothing more amazing than checking in my family for my flight home, and hearing my son call "Dadddyyyyyy" across a busy airport terminal, and leaping into my arms to hug me around the neck and play with my beard as he tells me how much he's missed me. Brings tears of joy to my eyes to think about this precious bundle that loves me far more than I deserve (case in point coming up...) At a birthday party in a park, my son finds a 5 foot almost completely straight branch on the ground and picks it up, overjoyed to have found such an amazing sword/poking tool. Concerned for the eyes of other children at the park, I start walking towards him as he pokes his friend Chloe in the chest and she exclaims "Owww!!". I ask him to be careful as I'm approaching him, and he stops poking and starts swinging it around like a 2 year old Jedi Knight. I reach him, and gently take away the stick (which was quite amazingly straight), take his hand and tell him that if we can't keep from poking people, we can't play with sticks. I now have a 4-5 foot stick that I'm trying to think of where to put that another kid won't just pick up and start swinging, and I do the only thing I can think of....using the hand that isn't holding my son, I hold the stick and step on it 5 times, breaking it into 10 inch sections that no one could ever enjoy. Judah sits down and slowly starts to sob big heaving sobs, after picking up the remains of his stick and holding them to his chest. Wow, I still feel horrible and it's days later. I'm thinking I'm too responsible for other people's kids eyeballs...

Drinking Problems

So remember that scene in Airplane when he says “that’s when my drinking problem started” and then throws the water in his face? Well, seems I’ve developed some of that. It has been going on for years but recently I’ve had a flair up. Yesterday I was drinking from my Starbucks reusable cup (the plastic ones with a lid that look like their disposable ones). Its actually like a sippy cup because it has a lid, even so, I managed to miss the drinking hole and pour my drink all down the front of my shirt. Then today I went to take a big swig out of my wide mouth Nalgene, which I have a drinking spout inserted into, and overshot my swig and the water came out of the second hole on y drinking spout, all over my face and down my shirt. Anyway, this happens way more frequently than I like to admit, just thought I’d share because its a bit humorous when it happens, unless it happens to be red colored and land on the carpet or a nice shirt. So if I show up with a wet shirt you’ll know what’s going on :)

Rendering Lard

Some back history on how we got to rendering lard, something I never thought I would do. First, we bought half a pig last Christmas and as a part of that got a bag full of frozen pig fat, which I had no idea what to do with. Someone mentioned rendering in passing but I brushed it aside since what do you do with lard? Anyway, then a few months ago I was invited to a soap making party where a bunch of us got together to make several large batches of various soaps. It was lots of fun and a neat thing to learn how to make. After getting excited that evening and doing some internet reading I realized that hey, you can make soap from lard! Wouldn’t that be an interesting experiment? And what do you know, I have a bag full of fat in the freezer right now that we could render into lard! Queue more internet reading, this time on rendering lard, and a few weeks go by before I really get serious about doing this thing.

I should also note that I made use of some excellent resources on this subject not found on google, my Grandparents and Great Aunt Arlene! Imagine that, they actually remember their mothers and grandmothers rending lard on the farm. We had a fun discussion about life on the farm in North Dakota back in the “olden days” when they were growing up. Interesting stuff, I am really blessed to have the ability to sit down and share in these memories with them. Life was hard on the farm in those days, they worked super hard all summer and fall to store up food for winter. They used root cellars for storage and when those were too cold in the ND winter, they would put food into the grain bins which provided better insulation. Some of the fun ones were Grandpa and Arlene remembering coming to their Grandma’s (My Great Great Grandma’s) house and finding the door locked, something that never happened in the small town of Parshall, ND. Turns out Grandma was inside ironing all of her money. You see she saved away all her egg money in a jar in her coal bin for years and years and it was time to take it to the bank, so it needed to be ironed (obviously). The kicker? There was something like $20,000 in there!

I found a great resource online HERE about rendering lard in a crock pot which seemed an excellent way to go. Funnily enough I mentioned this method to my Grandparents and Arlene and they had to think about it a bit because during their experience there were no crock pots to use in rendering lard! The other piece that gave me the courage to just go for it was having our friend Adam, who is a butcher at our house at the time. He had done it before and made it much less an intimidating thing to start.

I really debated about when to start it cause it could take like more than 15 hours! I didn’t want it to be all ready to go at like 2 am so didn’t know what to do. On the advice of Adam that it could take a really long time I started it at like 11 pm on Friday night. The benefit of this was that he was leaving to go to the ferry at 5 am and could double check it for more before he left. So off we went, with two crockpots full of fat to render. And it took a really really really long time. I started pulling it out into cans midday on Saturday (like 12 hours in) and continued that all the rest of the day. When we got home from our date on Saturday night I pulled more and then consolidated to one pot and let her go over night all the way to Sunday afternoon. Not sure if this is what its supposed to be like but even with all that time we never got those awesome cracklings they talked of. Maybe we needed to let it go even longer but I was kind of done at that point. In the end we ended up with 6.5 (16 ounce) jars of nice white lard and 1 jar of the “savory” lard from probably around 10 pounds of fat.

Jamie was anxious to try it out and we had planned on making some cornbread for a BBQ we were going to, so he substituted it for half the butter and to anit-stick the cast iron pan. It seemed to make the best crunchy textured crust on the cornbread. We’ll have to keep experimenting and see what other tasty things we can make and if all else fails we can make soap!