My Blessed Life

Happy 2nd Birthday

Judah Gabriel!!

(born Feb 11, 2010)

Dear Judah,

So you are now two years old! I can't believe that 2 yrs ago, I held you for the first time! I remember during my whole pregnancy, we were convinced that you were a girl and when my midwife put you in my arms for the first time and I felt your little boy privates, my heart leaped with joy when I realized I was blessed with another son! I love you so much my precious. Your personality has really been forthcoming lately! You are such a funny boy and yet you also have so much spunk! You are a feisty one and keep me on my toes to say the least! It is also funny to watch you try to keep up with your older siblings all the time. Your favorite one is still Malachi, of which you call him bubba. You have recently started calling Josiah, bubbie and Aliyah, ihe (sounds like sissy with an h sound for the s). You even call your baby brother baby "e". You love to play with star wars lightsabers with your brothers and your favorite toys are cars and dinosaurs. I love how during school you will climb up into your own school chair and color pictures, pretending to be doing school. Yet you also drive your siblings crazy as you try to steal their school work to scribble all over it! I love how loving you can be with all your sweet hugs and kisses, yet sometimes you will pretend to hug or kiss then you will run away! Some of your favorite things include milk, cookies, cars, dinosaurs, markers, paint, light sabers, and dogs. You try to say a few words now including: milk, cookie, doggy, sissy, bubbie, bubba, mommy, daddy, where daddy?, poop, pee, please, stinky, butt, eye, nose, baby, bye bye, hug, me, and mine. Now you can't pronounce them all exactly but you sure try to! You also continue signing a few words and have been potty trained for about 6 months now! You have potty accidents but that is to be expected at this age, yet you do so well with it most of the time. You are growing up my sweet boy! I love you so much as you are a blessing to our whole family!

Happy Birthday my sweet son! I love you with all my heart little one.

love, mama

This past month has been a whirlwind of so much going on. I delivered our baby, family came to visit, we celebrated Christmas, more family came to visit, we bought a house, moved and unpacked. I have not had a chance to blog about our newest little one either. So let me finally introduce you to our sweet baby boy, our fourth son....

Elias Israel Carr

(Elias; a form of Elijah= My God is the Lord; Israel= God perseveres)

born December 16th @ 6:13am

at birth: 8lbs 2 oz; 20ish inches

Homebirth Story:

On a Friday morning, 13 days before my due date, right before 4am, I woke up out of the blue and didn't have to use the restroom :) This happened twice in about 15 minutes before I decided to crawl out of bed about 4am to decide if I was in labor. Yes this was my 5th labor and I still wasn't positive it was labor pains that was waking me up. So I went downstairs for about 20 minutes and made some homemade laundry soap. I then decided that I was probably in labor yet it wasn't really painful....however, I know my body's tendency in labor to go from barely painful to very painful in about an hour or less and then a baby in my arms.....I decided to wake up Frank about 4:30am and tell him I thought I was in labor. I then called my midwife and her husband informed me that she was at another birth. My heart sank at this point. You see, I discussed with my midwife prior to this day about what would happen if I went into labor and she was at another labor since I have short labors and she delivers on her own. She basically said that it rarely happens and hope that it doesn't happen with me. Anyhow, I proceeded to call her on her cell phone and informed her that I was in labor. She basically said "oh dear, I will be here for at least 5 hrs and you won't last that long. I will need you to probably prepare yourself to go to the hospital. In the meantime, lay down, don't move around, sip on some wine to try to slow your labor down and call me back in 30 min to see your progress. in the meantime, I will think about what we will do." I ended the call with her in tears because I did not want to go to the hospital. After experiencing 2 hospital births and 2 homebirths up until this time, I had my heart set on another homebirth as it is such a more relaxing, desirable birth. So at this point, I went ahead and laid down and sipped wine while I watched my husband quickly pack a bag to take to the hospital. I also called my neighbor to try to get childcare provided for the other kids in the case that I had to go to the hospital. Now I will say that laying down and sipping the wine did in fact slow down the progress in my opinion, however, shortly after 5am when I called my midwife back, I knew that I barely had an hour if that. I was so very thankful and relieved that my midwife told me that she did in fact have an assistant that she uses occasionally and if I was comfortable with her then she would send her. I was comfortable with the idea of an assistant as I've experienced it before with Aliyah's birth. For her birth, my labor progressed so fast that my midwife missed her birth but her assistant made it and delivered her. Anyhow I was so happy that I was going to be able to deliver at home after all! Shortly after getting off of the phone, friends of Frank's arrived as he called them as well to help with the kids in the event of a hospital trip. The midwife's assistant arrived sometime in there as well and she immediately came in the bedroom and started prepping everything. She asked if I wanted a pelvic exam done to see how much I was dilated and I told her I didn't need one and was between 8 and 10 cm....less than 10 min later I told her I was definitely 10cm and needed to push. By this time, all the kids were awake and Josiah and Aliyah joined us in the bedroom to watch while Malachi stayed downstairs with Judah to watch him. Anyhow, I decided this time I would kind of do a squatting thing to deliver and so I had Frank behind me, holding and supporting me so that I could prepare to push. On my first push, my water immediately broke so I stopped pushing to calm down. I began pushing on the next contraction and less than 3 minutes from my water breaking at 6:13am, Elias Israel was born. Thus in all, my labor was barely over 2 hours and less than 3 minutes of pushing. The pushing was longer than normal for me but that is because I paused to calm down and prepare for the big push :) It was an another amazing delivery at home! I am so blessed! So without further ado.....the following are tons of pictures of the little guy :)