When my youngest girl was born previously, it was a difficult delivery. It was the second time I risked death to give birth, where if I'd been born before modern medicine, that would have been the end of me.
After a baby is born, the uterus is supposed to return to its normal size and stop bleeding.
Well, my uterus decided not to do that - I hemorrhaged badly. For the first time in my life, the uterus needed some help, and I got a shot of pitocin.
That was one of the worst pains I'd ever felt in my life.
I'd learned to relax through contractions during normal birth, but there was no relaxing through that, and I needed pain medication to get through it as well. Felt so glad for all the things I'd learned about giving birth, and how to do it in an unmedicated manner.
Yet, when I got my beautiful curly raven-haired baby home, that feeling remained...the feeling that I still wasn't done.
And that was frustrating to me. Because I felt utterly, completely spent.
My boss, having seen my work, and having learned to trust me for quality work, allowed me to continue to work from home, despite the head accountant's protests (George was my nemesis). So I was working from home again, and on top of that, Sam was hired to be my in-office liaison, so he was working with me, and we were making a very comfortable living for the first time ever.
But my frustration remained. If you've never worked from home, while trying to balance three babies on your lap and all their needs, I don't recommend it. My brain was burning out.
And there was another child on the way on top of everything else. I knew it. Mentally, I fought it.
I spent a lot of time praying through this challenge - grateful to be working from home again, but dying from all the work involved. How were we supposed to take on more children after this?
I went back and forth, one day open to the idea, another day absolutely against it.
Then, one night, about a year after my youngest girl had been born, I had a dream. Only I wasn't asleep...it was more of a vision.
All I could see was an outline of two people. One of them I knew was Jesus. He stood next to the outline of a small child - a boy - who was standing and looking at me expectantly. I couldn't see faces.
The thought came to my mind - "Do you want this one?"
I realized in that moment that it wasn't about the problems to solve, but the people. This little boy, that wanted so badly to come to our family I could feel it, even though I couldn't see his face.
I said yes. I knew the problems would work themselves out, but I didn't want to disappoint this earnest child.
Almost immediately after that, I got pregnant, and our youngest boy was born. I never had a sonogram with any of my children to determine their sex before birth - only to see if the baby was healthy. I never asked for the sex beforehand, because I didn't really care whether it was a boy or girl. But with this one, there was never any question in my mind he was a boy.
He was my biggest baby, weighing in at over ten pounds - and also my easiest birth, since with him, we found a midwife group in Alexandria, VA that would agree to come to our home when it was time. Since I lived close to a hospital in case of emergency, and since my births were largely uneventful, they felt it was safe for me to try.
There was only one problem - my birth doula, Pam, would be out of town on his due date. She'd been to every single one of our births, and it was important to us that she be there. So we went over the due date, waiting for her vacation to finish up. As soon as she got back, down went the castor oil, and out came that baby, in the middle of our living room! The midwife weighed him on a fish scale, and then Grandma brought back our other little ones to meet their new baby brother.
As soon as he was born, that feeling that there were more children coming to our family went away, and it's never been back since. We were complete as a family unit at last. And right on time too - my body was flirting with gestational diabetes at this point, and I wanted to stay healthy to raise the babies I already had.
Many years later, I came across a painting of the exact scene I saw in my vision, only I could see the faces - Jesus standing with his hand over a little boy, who was looking expectantly out. I don't know if I might have seen this image before somewhere, but I didn't remember ever seeing it before. I looked at that painting kind of flabbergasted for a long time.
Why did you give him his name?
We named him Hyrum, after the brother of the first prophet of our church, Hyrum Smith.
His middle name is 'O'Brien', taken from his father's grandmother's Irish side of the family.
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