Iona Elizabeth
Sunday we went to the farm to feed the animals, and I wanted to walk to get excercise, because I wanted to have the baby. As we walked down to our new fully operational spring box snapped a few PHOTOS, and walked back up, Bruce guided me up out of the spring, the very vertical choice of paths, not the path I had specifically requested,”the yome way” as we left the spring. Halfway up the pasture I saw the dig site through the woods behind Bruce, I was like this isn’t the way!” It is like climbing stairs straight up into heaven. I went on and on making the poor child feel guilty, he just kept trying to sell the way we were taking as the best, fastest, shortest way. We made it, no problems.
Monday morning I was scheduled to substitute for a first grade teacher at our local elementary. I had stayed up late Sunday drawing in my sketching journal and I woke up at 1:45, about 2 hours after I laid down.
Wait, Sunday the tenth, Bruce had mentioned that it was only 2 DAYS until the baby was due, repeatedly all day. I spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to explain that it was actually 3 days until the thirteenth, but this little blonde boy with his sparkling smile and hip circling dance in the kitchen….there was something startling about his words of impending baby. I prayed “Dear God, please let me do this for this sweet boy and girl,” as they high-five each-other and competed in an exaggerated 5-7 year old dance off.
I am glad something led me to choose not to eat anything Sunday night, I had eaten a bowl of cereal before I made dinner and have been trying to eat based on how I feel rather than just eat whatever I feel like eating. After the kids went to sleep and Billy was snoozing away, I wrote in my journal and decided to order a “Moses Basket” for the new baby. I went to bed around 11:30 and woke to use the restroom at 1:30. I noticed immediately my lower abdomen was aching and things were moving into the space below my navel between my hips. A lot was happening there, I knew I would not be able to substitute and work with 6 and 7 year old children in this condition, so I cancelled my teaching position on my phone. After I “got off the fence” and called in basically, my body seemed to take that as permission to go ahead and start to make it clear “these are contractions that are happening.” So I set a timer on my phone to see how long the contractions were and how far apart. Well, because I hadn’t practiced this, I just set the 5 minute timer and watched as the contraction came to and end, another started and came to it’s completion before the 5 minutes had passed. So my husband notices all the commotion, leans up on his elbow and asks, “ARE you OK? Is something happening??” “yes…. something is definitely happening, the baby is coming, today or tomorrow, for sure.”
The next most important task, in my mind only, at that time was to have my older two children run down to our friend’s house to be away from the cabin when the baby arrived. Josie seemed ready, she was like ” I’ll just take this flashlight and go.” Bruce was messing around looking for his hat or other miscellaneous thing, so using my most dragon/batman-like voice I convinced my husband to have him go.
As soon as the kids left, we began to turn on each other. Here is a glimpse of that dialogue…
“Where are the bags? aren’t there supposed to be bags in here?’
“I do not know, you will have to look in the bag yourself.”
“These gloves don’t even fit on my hands!”
“OH GOSH! OH me OH my.”
Well…this is gonna be….dupd dldklsk slhed,”
“WHAT DID YOU SAY!!!???”
” I say things, I get to talk to myself if I want to, during this…”
Well how far apart are the contractions supposed to be?
I was just getting to that part when this contraction started! It’s in the book, probably in one of the sections labeled….”To the coach…”
We hugged, got back on team Ervin, and as soon as he said “Ok, I think now if you push, it will happen, it’s right there.”
I smiled at him and said, ” Good! this is the fast part for us!”
I pushed, twice and the baby was crying, I nursed and then looked to see it was a girl! Iona Elizabeth came in to our world on “one” while we were planning to count to “three.”
The YOME STARTS NOW.
With all of the new baby and new constant nursing routine, it was very exciting to learn today that our Yome is going to ship out next Monday and should be here by the end of the week. We can begin to build our platform and put our Yome up! I look forward to living in the Yome as we build our sites on the property. Our original kitchen and root cellar will be the basement of our own little home which we plan to build with our own materials we will harvest from our land and local sources. We found a nice smaller wood stove that will fit perfectly into our Yome, plus it has 5 triangular windows and two doors. We just need to start on the decking and set it up, it is finally ready! I will be sharing step by step as we transition from our large pasture and forest, to a home. We have been here for a little over 3 months, sometimes it is easy to forget, we are making progress!