The Baby Poll

It's time to cast your vote for when you think the baby will arrive. Sometimes these are called Baby Pools, but I went with "poll" because "pools" are more complex, often involve money, and remind me of small, blue plastic tubs with two inches of [warm] water in them. "Poll" makes much more sense. Here are the factors to consider when placing your vote:

1. My original due date was May 9.
2. My due date based on the 20-week ultrasound was May 7.
3. Babies are rarely born on their due date.
4. This is my first baby.
5. I rarely eat spicy food.
6. I like Mexican food, but don't eat it that frequently.
   
7. There was a full moon on April 20th.
8. May 11 is Mother's Day.
9. May 18 - 24 is National Dog Bite Prevention Week.
10. May is National Correct Posture Month.
11. Miss Lippy's car is green.
12. Mondays child is fair of face,
    Tuesdays child is full of grace,
    Wednesdays child is full of woe,
    Thursdays child has far to go,
    Fridays child is loving and giving,
    Saturdays child works hard for his living,
    And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
    Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Okay, so maybe that will help you as you make your decision. Vote over there (to the right). Remember, you can only vote once, and I have no way, unfortunately, of knowing who voted for what, so I won't hate you if you select "Later than May 11."

38 Weeks

No progress in my baby-delivery-world. Yesterday's doctor's visit was what I kind of expected: still 3cm, 70% effaced. No change. That's okay. I've been telling people how good I feel and that because I feel so good, I might as well enjoy this time. Not working, getting sleep, getting things done around the house, visiting with friends, and being a couple without children! Our world will forever change very soon!
Let me tell you how awesome our doctor is... Last week, after I had progressed so quickly, she gave us her cell phone number and told us to call her if I went into labor. I was impressed with this but was even more so impressed when she told us yesterday that she was thinking about us all weekend, had even called the hospital to tell them we might be coming (and to call her if we did, and not the doctor on call), and that she wanted to buy us a stork thing at Bi-Lo for our hospital door. She even rushed in a lab test that I needed done before delivery and called the lab personally to get the results. I've also heard stories about her staying at a patient's side throughout the entire labor process, not just delivery. I'm sorry, but this might be the kind of service Doc Baker gave the Ingall's family in Walnut Grove, but this is unbelievable for a modern day doctor, at least in my experience. To my last doctor, I was number 189756...she didn't even know my name. Props to my current doctor...She is awesome! (thanks for suggesting her, Dewa!).

D and I celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary on Wednesday.

Nursery Ready...Please Add Baby

The sheets are washed, diapers are out... all we need now is a baby! Thanks to Donald for the countless hours he spent painting the furniture white! Thanks to my mom for helping me with the projects on the walls, including the awesome valance she made (using the material we cut off of the crib skirt!). Thanks to my dad for being so meticulous in hanging the letters over the crib... what a nightmare job! And thanks to everyone who contributed to something in the room... Check out the brown and pink diaper bag Kelly R made me...it's awesome!!

Click on pictures for larger view, but be sure to hit the "back" button to get back to the blog, or it will close on you!

37 Weeks

I'm in the middle of my 37th week, which means 2.5 weeks to go! That may translate into 3.5 weeks or maybe even 4, or maybe only 1.5. The Lord only knows. I went to the doctor today, and I am 3 centimeters dilated and 70% effaced. Sparing you the details, 10 centimeters and 100% effacement are the magic numbers, but most women go into labor and head to the hospital before that. Otherwise, they'd have the baby in the bathtub. In addition, the numbers don't really indicate a whole lot considering some women aren't dilated at all on the day they have their baby, and others sit at 7 cm for two weeks! For me, it just means one thing: progress! I just knew the doctor would say, "Hmmm...that's funny... It looks like you have 3 more months to go! Congratulations...you're having a horse!"


So I guess it's time to pack our hospital bag, although it really doesn't make much sense to me considering everything that they suggest you bring is something you use on a daily basis. I just ran through the list, and I was like, "umm, need that every day, need that, need that..." (for instance, clothes, toiletries, bathrobe, hair dryer...). I started packing a bag anyway, and I'll let you decide how prepared we are:


Yes, Chapstick and a massage thing that I probably won't even use. I need to wash a few baby clothes to stick in there, and our cameras are packed in a separate bag... Everything else is just going to have to wait until my water breaks. I can't go two weeks without my comfy slippers and favorite maternity clothes!
The nursery is almost ready!! I'll post pictures soon.

Successful Trip, Safely Home

Donald is home! Here are a few of the awesome things that happened...(all were prayer requests in an earlier post).

• Travel: The team made all of their flights; including running from one terminal to the next at Dulles Int'l...the plane waited on them!
• Luggage: Everything arrived in one piece (and even made it on the plane when they had to run across the airport, although Donald witnessed the luggage guy cussing up a storm on how heavy their bags were...funny!).
• Health: Everyone remained healthy on the trip, and continues to be okay (if you don't count jet lag...D fell asleep in mid-sentence last night at about 9pm). Praise God for their health!! This was a huge answer to prayer.
• Safety: The team is safely home! The only outbreak of violence they heard about was an hour away from where they were. Apparently the village they were in is considered a "safe haven."
• Energy: The team survived four very long days of seeing people at the clinic. Even a team member who didn't get much sleep on the first half of the trip was able to pull through and work until the work was finished each day. He was a very huge asset to the team.
• Impact: 1200 people were seen at the medical clinic, hundreds of teeth were pulled, 30 people made the decision to follow Christ. A very cool thing is that there were pastors there from the local communities who will be able to come along side these people in the upcoming months. This is awesome! So much better than a team coming in and then vanishing...
• Baby: She's still in there! Hallelujah.
• Me: I was very well taken care of over the last 11 days. Molly came and visited the first weekend...we had a great time! Bailey stayed with me for 4 days...it was nice to have our old roommate back, and it was so awesome of her to leave her husband for several nights to come babysit the big ole pregnant lady. My parents came this past weekend... I am so grateful for their company and their help with projects around the house.

Soon I will post about 1000 (yes, that's three zeros) on our web site, but here is a sampling...

The landscape in Kenya was gorgeous...

This is beautiful tea field that they passed on their journey to the clinic site.

A group of people waiting to enter the clinic.

This is the tent where Donald talked to the people waiting to be seen.
When's the last time you had your teeth worked on while sitting in a lawn chair on a dirt floor?

This brave little boy was one of many people who had a tooth pulled.
Yep! D was really there.
This is a refugee camp that houses some of the 500,000 displaced people within the country.
Here are some pictures from their "safari."
This is one of the many beautiful flowers from the area... Donald took lots of flower shots for me!

This is the church that Grace is partnered with in Kenya. The clinic was held about 2 hours north of here. It was the pastors from this church who helped organize and staff the clinic with nurses and other pastors.

There are many stories Donald would like to share with you, but I'll leave you with just one. This morning he was telling me more about how the people at the clinic thought it was so bizarre how he looked like them but did not speak Swahili--he was often introduced as "Jerogi" (a local name that just meant "man"), and so the people would say, "How is his name Jerogi even though he can't speak Swahili?!" They would laugh about this. The people were also amazed that the "Christians" came and provided a free clinic. Apparently, some groups had come in previously and charged for medical services and/or left earlier than planned after running out of medicine. One of the pastors overheard a woman down the street talking to her friend... "Christians are here and they are providing a clinic -- and they aren't even charging anything! And they'll be here four days!" The pastor told Donald that this clinic will affect generations... that the 80 year-olds who were at the clinic had never experienced something like this and that the little children who where there will tell people about this over and over again until they are 80... about the Christians who stuck to their word and the black Jerogi who came with them. Donald said this morning how awesome it is that Christ will be glorified for years and years to come after what little they did in those days at the clinic. Praise God!

Kenya Update

The medical clinic finished today... they saw over 1,000 people in four days! Many people made the decision to follow Christ! I was able to speak to Donald over the last few days. I am so grateful for those conversations! He said that 98% of the people had never met or even seen a black American. They asked, "Why don't you speak Swahili?" and they have given him a name native to their tribe.
Today I was sent a link to a blog that has updates and pictures of the team! I was thrilled to hear more details about their week, and see pictures of Donald! What a blessing... here it is.

Safe Arrival

After many hours (days) of travel, the team has reached their final destination in Kenya (see last post for more details if you don't know what I'm talking about). I have had the opportunity to talk to D for about 3 minutes over the last three days. He called this afternoon to let me know that the phone they are traveling with isn't working, so he had to borrow one from a local to call me. I'm sure we owe that guy about 100 bucks for that less-than-two-minute conversation, but it's totally worth it...I'm so grateful! I didn't get a lot of details about what's going on, but I do know that everything is good with them, and they will start up at the clinic in the morning. I assume their luggage arrived safely, because he didn't say otherwise. Hopefully I will get to hear from him sometime this week!
Thanks to those of you who are praying for them (and me) and for your phone calls. I really appreciate it!

Off to Kenya

Donald is leaving for Africa on Friday. He will be gone for 10 days, traveling with a team from our church to conduct a four-day medical clinic in an area somewhere in the middle of nowhere Kenya. The team consists of two doctors, a dentist, two medical assistants, a teacher, and a team leader/logistics person. Donald is the "teacher." He will speak to the people waiting in line at the clinic about hygiene, preventing diseases, and what to do if you get a disease, etc. The plan as of now is for him to have a 20 minute or so monologue that he will repeat over and over again for the entirety of each day... sun up, to sun down. If there is an overwhelming crowd, he may have to ditch those efforts and assist the doctors inside.

Our contact in Kenya sent a report last week on the latest news regarding the recent violence there. Thankfully, in the last few weeks or so, new developments have been made towards peace, healing and reconciliation. If you are not familiar with what's going on, here's a good summary that I just found online:

The scale and speed of the violence that engulfed Kenya following the controversial presidential election of December 27, 2007 shocked both Kenyans and the world at large. Two months of bloodshed left over 1,000 dead and up to 500,000 internally displaced persons in a country viewed as a bastion of economic and political stability in a volatile region.

To give you another idea, one of the team members called an emergency jet service to inquire about the possibilities for service in case of an emergency. The company responded, "There are three places in the world that we will not fly to: Iraq, Iran, and Kenya." Lovely... But things are better now due to some political movement that I don't quite understand, and I don't want to bore you with. You can read about it here.

The area they are going is somewhere between Ethiopia and Tanzania, to the east of Uganda and northwest of the Indian Ocean.

People have asked how I feel about him traveling so close to the baby's arrival date. The answer is that I am okay. We will be okay. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit anxious, but the anxiety lies more with getting him home safely than with her arriving early. I cannot wait until the day he returns. Ironically, I just received a phone call (while writing this) from the team leader letting us know that they won't be returning until Monday night, the 14th, instead of Sunday night because of some rescheduling after one of their flights was canceled. Just another opportunity to trust the Lord and give my anxiety to Him! Easier said than done.
There are many specific things you can pray for:

• Travel. That the team will be safe and remain healthy throughout the long route to and from Kenya.
• Luggage. That their luggage with all of their medical supplies arrives safely and un-pillaged.
  
• Health. The team has been immunized against most major diseases, but of course there are a few that have no vaccine. One that is prevalent in Kenya is a type of tuberculosis that is airborne. It is not treatable. It is scary. And I don't like it! A huge prayer of mine is that these team members will remain healthy and not contract this or any other diseases.
  
• Safety. That the team will be protected from any violence that may arise (probably won't and hopefully not) between two feuding tribes.
• Energy. They expect to see hundreds of people at the clinic everyday. The team will be worn out! Our prayer is that Donald's voice will hold up. We all know that he's a "talker," but 12 hours a day is a lot... even for the most experienced. :)
• Impact. The team's primary mission in Kenya is to treat, medicate and educate as many people as they can while they are there. It will mainly be women and children...some who will have walked miles and miles and miles to get there. While this is a primary objective, it is also a prayer that they can make an eternal impact on these people and the people they are serving with. It has been arranged for several Kenyan doctors and nurses to work along side this team. Also, there will be translators that they will work closely with. Please pray that these people will see the love of Christ in our team. That they can come to know a savior who loves them more than they can imagine.
• Baby. That our little girl will stay inside long enough for her daddy to be one of the first ones to hold her.
• Me. That the ten, now eleven, days go by quickly for me. That I can look to the Lord for strength and not in people or busyness. I praise God for this opportunity for my husband to serve in such a mighty way and the opportunity for me to put him in my Father's hands -- which is where he always belongs... this trip has really revealed that to me. I thought I had it mastered, but as the trip nears, my dependence on worldly comforts, like my husband, is made evident and my true dependence on the Lord is dwarfed.
  

I will keep you posted. Thank you for praying.

5 lbs 8 oz

Great news! We had an ultrasound this morning to determine the size of the baby. As I mentioned last week, I have been measuring about two weeks ahead. However, based on today's measurements, we are right on track to deliver around the due date. With Donald traveling next week, that is music to our ears! Hopefully, our little girl will be here sometime during the first full week in May (the 4th - 11th...give or take a few). She currently weighs around 5 lbs 8 oz. She is head down and her little booty and legs are in my ribs (as I suspected). Praise God for our little miracle!