Looking back over this past year, I realize that adding a 6th child to our family has NOT been easy. People will sometimes say that once you have a lot of kids, adding another one doesn’t change much. There is SOME truth to that. It is true in the sense that you already have all the baby gear, all the kid toys, and you have some idea of what to do. It is true in the sense that you have older kids who can help out and also kind of know what to do. This last point has been very true for us. My older kids have been a HUGE help during Peter’s first year of life! They love to take care of him and play with him, and entertain him most of the day! They are also very capable of helping out with household tasks and helping with other siblings who need help.
However, there are still some things that, no matter what, fall on the mom brain. Things like signing up for activities, planning social events, buying birthday gifts, planning things for homeschool, etc. Every kid adds slightly to this mental to-do list. A baby adds more than slightly to the list…. the baby needs new pacis, the baby needs to sleep better, the baby needs to eat, the baby’s schedule etc. etc. etc. All of this to say, I think my brain has been a tad fried over the last year lol! This is why I haven’t posted Peter’s Birth Story until he is 14 months old! It makes me laugh to think about how dedicated I was to posting about my pregnancy with Lucy and how frequent blog posts were about chronicling her early life 🙂 However, I treasure those posts because it is a peek back into my brain at a time when my life was so different!
So back to Peter….He is a dream come true in so many ways! My dream was always 4 kids. 5 was an absolute bonus, and 6 has been unbelievably full of joy! I’m one of those people who always wants more kids though lol! After having girl, girl, boy, girl, girl in our family, I was definitely hoping and praying that baby #6 would be a boy, but our track record proved that we were more likely to have another girl! I have always been nervous about health issues for pregnancy, especially as I got older, but after praying, my husband and I both felt at peace with a 6th when we were a tad older. However, waiting on the genetic results was a memorable faith-testing experience and led to a lot of prayer! We were on our anniversary trip to the Biltmore when I got the call about his genetic results and gender. We had just gotten our lunch and sat down in this beautiful outdoor courtyard area where many couples and families were eating together. I took the call and immediately broke down in tears of relief when I heard that the baby was healthy. Then, when they told me it was a boy, I was just in happy shock and more tears flowed. My husband joked that people eating around us would start to think that he was a jerk and had made me cry for some reason haha.
The pregnancy seemed to be pretty similar to my other kids. One memorable thing is that my husband went on a pretty long missions trip to Africa during my first trimester. That’s normally the time when I’m so tired at the end of the day that I don’t help with the normal household chores. Well this time, there was no option other than to ask my older kids for help or do it myself. A few times on that trip I would NOT do the chores, put my kids to bed, plan on doing the chores right afterwards, then suddenly fall asleep on the couch only to wake up at like 11:30 pm with a messy kitchen – glad that’s over!
During my pregnancy, I was also teaching Narnia Literature at our homeschool co-op for the first time. I really enjoyed teaching it, but the funny thing was that I had already planned many years prior that if we ever had another boy, I would love to name him “Peter”. I had even specifically prayed to God that he would give us a “Peter” one day! At the time I prayed it really seemed impossible. But turns out, not only was it possible, but my 9 months of pregnancy was filled with reading about “Peter” of the Narnia books!
We live in Augusta, GA and rent out our home for the Masters Gold Tournament. It is one of the many ways God has provided for our financial needs and allows me to not work full time outside of the home (this very topic is another post for another day….) We rented out our home even before we had children. Each year it gets more and more complicated to make our home look like a hotel or VRBO, instead of the very kid-filled, “lived-in”, cluttered abode that it normally is. Peter’s due date was early May, and we rent out our home in early April. It is a lot of work on the weekends to pack up our clutter and superfluous furniture in bins and move it out to the garage, organize and go through all areas and closets, deep clean our home, etc. Since I knew I was going to be about 8 months pregnant, we hired someone to do the deep clean, but that still left us with the declutter and organizational projects – which coincided quite well with the pregnancy “nesting” instinct haha. We also had multiple sets of renters during the week, so we were tasked with doing the light cleans in between renters. I worked with my two older daughters to teach them how to do these light cleanings and they were a HUGE help during the before rental jobs and for the turnovers during the week. When I couldn’t make a bed easily due to pregnancy, they were so helpful!
During Masters Week when we were displaced from our home, we stayed with my in-laws who live 5 minutes away. I remember going to the zoo with friends that week and being in a lot of pain. It felt like Peter’s foot or something was so jammed into my ribs that it was impossible to move in certain ways. I remember almost cancelling our trip but went anyways… I also love walking in the mornings and kept walking during this time even though I had gotten slower and slower. I also had stopped my weekly weight training workouts. All of these were signs that I was getting close to labor. I don’t think Peter enjoyed all of that Masters pre-prep and post “moving all our stuff back into our house” work, because I went into labor just days after we had moved back into our house. So much so, that we had moved all of the “baby stuff” into our attic temporarily. When I went into labor on that Tuesday, and was packing my hospital bag, I realized that we didn’t have a single baby onesie in the house! I distinctly remember climbing up a ladder from our garage into the attic and going through bins to retrieve infant clothes – probably not the best idea in hindsight hah!
The morning of the day I had Peter, I had a follow-up ultrasound to make sure he was growing okay – I think they hadn’t been able to get a good picture of his heart or some other organ. I had some of my other kids with me, and they enjoyed seeing Peter on the ultrasound. I got home and had some early labor signs (not contractions) and texted my NP/Midwife (who is also a friend from college). She said she wasn’t working that day but would be willing to come to my house and check to make sure I wasn’t going into a sudden, quick labor since Jason was at work and I was at home alone with my kids. She came and checked my progress and said she didn’t think I was in labor or would have him that day. We discussed getting a shot to help with his lung development in case he was born (because I was 36.5 weeks), but she said it wouldn’t help if he was born in the next 24 hours. We opted against it.
Well, after she left, I started having contractions. Very slow, light, and not close together. I remember telling my kids it was nothing and that the odds of me having Peter that day were like 20%. We went along with our day. I packed my hospital bag just in case, and texted a friend to see if she could watch out kids overnight if I went into labor since my in-laws were out of town. I also told my friend the odds were low I would have Peter that day. One funny memory is that my kids were very aware of all that was happening and kept asking if there was a new “%” chance that Peter would be born that day…finally, I was like “I have no idea!”
Well, labor continued to pick up gradually, and eventually I realized it was the real deal, texted Jason, and soon he and I dropped the kids off and headed for the hospital! We were trying to be very cautious and get to the hospital well in advance of delivery so that I would have time to get a room, epidural, etc. This was all due to the memory of Hannah’s unplanned natural labor, which I didn’t feel like repeating haha.
All I remember now is that it was nice that I actually knew how to get to the labor and delivery area (when I had my son Josiah, I was literally wandering the halls searching and asking strangers for how to get to the labor and delivery area!) I also remember how nice it was to NOT be in advanced labor while doing so! I checked in and waited for my husband to park the car. But as always seems to happen to me, it was a crowded time and there were no rooms! I felt like Mary in the Bible – “No room in the inn….” Everyone else in the waiting room seemed to be doing better than me, as labor was now quickly picking up and becoming quite uncomfortable. My husband Jason suggested I lay down on my side to help with the pain, (and to look more pitiful lol!) Well, eventually (after some prayers!) we got a room, and after even more hours of waiting got an epidural too! Everything went really smoothly, the epidural didn’t work completely for like an hour or so but they eventually got it working right. I think it was actually a longer wait than average for me to get to completely dilated so I was able to relax and read a bit. My NP/Midwife was off that day and busy with another activity and wasn’t able to make it, but the other doctors did a great job. When the time came to actually push, there was a crowd of people around waiting and watching due to it being a teaching hospital (luckily this was my 6th baby and I had no sense of privacy left….) But the awkward thing was that suddenly there was a HUGE pause to my contractions and we were all left waiting for like the longest few minutes of my life! Finally, a contraction came, and he was born in a push or two.
When he was born, he was immediately given a CPAP thing to help him breathe. I remember not being able to see him very well from my bed and asking for help scooting up so I could see him off to the side better. I asked my husband to video tape him so I could see him but he said I wouldn’t want to see this unpleasant part…. 🙁 He had help breathing for like 30 minutes and then he was okay and got to stay in the room with us! From then on, all his checkups showed that he was perfectly healthy. Praise the Lord!
Now, 14 months later, he continues to be such a JOY and BLESSING to our lives! We found out a little after he was a year old that he tested positive for a DNA issue called NF1. Even though I had had genetic testing during my pregnancy, this was not a condition that that test was able to detect. Peter had had light brown spots popping up on his skin that weren’t there before and weren’t going away. He had enough of these spots to cause us to take him to the pediatrician and ask about it. This is the symptom that led us to get genetic testing that informed us he had tested positive for NF1. While this had been an extremely hard and scary thing to walk through, it has brought me to my knees in tears so many times, crying out to God that Peter will be okay. It has brought our family to countless times of prayer for Peter together. With God all things are possible. We are thankful that there is a chance he could be symptom free even with this condition. We are praying for a MIRACLE that he could be one of these cases. We pray daily against the negative symptoms that the condition can bring. If you are reading this post, I would humbly ask for your prayers that the God of Heaven would show his glory by allowing Peter to be completely unaffected by NF1 and to live a completely healthy, strong and normal life – for the glory of God. And that our family would use every opportunity to point others to Christ and the hope we have in Him.
