Modern Day Revelation Saved My Life

While Brent was unemployed I felt like I had to hold it all together, to be strong for him and the kids.  I was treading water and my family was holding onto me and relying on me to keep them from drowning.  It was exhausting.  Brent has been open to friends and family about the fact that his last job lay off was the one that sent him spinning.  He had been hopeful and tried to think positively with the other layoffs he had experienced. This one sent him straight into depression.   I was so proud of him and grateful that he worked to combat it by going to counseling and then eventually including me in the sessions.  Towards the end of the six months Brent was unemployed, I started to tell both Brent and our counselor, Kevin, that my strength was beginning to run out.  I had been struggling for months to stay calm, to keep faith and to hold it together for Brent’s sake. But, after the delivery of our third baby and the trauma that I went through during the delivery, I started having moments of going under and sucking in water.  I would force myself to the top but I desperately needed Brent to take over for a little while so I could regain my strength.  Brent had given me a blessing a couple years before (also during a period of unemployment) that told me the Adversary wanted to take me down.  I was the rock of my family and if he could take me down he could take down the whole family.  I remembered this blessing and it kept playing in my mind during this time. I knew that it applied to my life at that time more than before.   Sometimes we receive more strength when we go under the water and sink to the bottom.  We are then able to push off from solid ground and break through the top of the water and can continue to swim.

Even though Brent was struggling with depression he was still able to feel guided to give me the most remarkable and revelatory priesthood blessings.  He gave them to me often and they were detailed and gave me hope.  Most of the time blessings were my life line.  I have recorded them in my journal and I consider them very personal and sacred.  I have also felt there are small parts of the blessings that I can and should share.  Many of the blessings I received referenced the story of Moses and used symbolic language to the story of the Israelis exodus from Egypt and their deliverance from captivity.  Heavenly Father really does know each of us individually.  He knew that I love that story and find it inspirational.  Weeks before Brent received a job offer, I was told in a blessing that I would soon be delivered but that just as with the Israelis things would get worse before they got better.  Things did get worse.  To be honest I’m not sure how either Brent or I physically survived the stress and heartache we were feeling. I would plead with the Lord to deliver us.   It felt like we were teetering on the edge of certain doom and help was not coming.  Week after week Brent applied to job after job, have interview after interview and nothing would happen.

 There was one particularly difficult moment Brent looked at me and told me how much he wished I could give him a blessing.  He didn’t want a blessing from a home teacher or a friend but from his wife who knew so much of his heart and his mind.  Of course neither of us support nor feel that women should hold the Priesthood but he desired revelation to come and he really wanted it to come through me.  So, instead, I would pray on Brent’s behalf and ask the Lord for the desires of his heart and I would listen for what the Lord wanted us to do and wait for the answers to come.

Brent finally received a job offer in Las Vegas.  He accepted the job and then I fell apart.  I remember physically falling to the floor in sobs with the news.  I didn’t even care that we were moving back to Las Vegas.  I was so very relieved.  Brent left two days later.  We had family coming into town the weekend after he started work for Ethan’s baby blessing, so Brent did fly back.  But, I was a wreck during that first week he was gone.  I was barely able to get the older children to school and I often did not feed them dinner until after their normal bed time.  I remember one time that Parker asked for a sandwich.  Between nursing the baby, trying to prepare for the baby blessing, and working on the move I kept putting his request off until he moved a chair over to the cupboard, got what he needed, and made the sandwich himself.  His new independence was actually a pretty big relief.  I had the overwhelming drive just to get us to Las Vegas and be together again as a family and that was about all I could do. 

The move had gone terribly wrong and it took moving heaven and earth just to get us here.  Shortly after moving to Las Vegas I lost all strength.  I longed for my friends and Relief Society sisters in Colorado that had given me such amazing help and support. The time came that I could no longer swim.  I knew that time would come.  I had seen it from afar, the impending doom of a title wave so massive it was sure to take me down.   I just kept falling deeper and deeper. I was losing the energy and desire to pray.  I continued to pray often but most of my prayers consisted of me asking God how he could have let our suffering be so severe.  I would beg Him to help me get through every minute of every hour of every day.   The unpacking with my children and a nursing baby was a nightmare.  All the hurt and the injustice kept going through my mind.  My patriarchal blessing talks about paying tithing and gives a promise that I would be given more than I could receive if I paid my tithing.   We were honest tithe payers through everything and I was hurt and felt betrayed.   I know it sounds strange that I was experiencing these feelings after Brent had gotten a job and was finally working again but every day I was slowly cleaning up the destruction left behind and it wasn’t pretty.  I was finally letting myself grieve and it felt like I was drowning.  I have always had a closeness with Heavenly Father and a deep, abiding love for Him, but He never felt further away than He did at this point in my life.  I have always loved the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” because it describes perfectly my fear of ever feeling the way I felt at that time.  “O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”

 Brent wasn’t fully healed himself and was also struggling.  He kept telling me that I’ve always been the rock, that our family couldn’t handle me falling apart (that was easy for him to say).  Just before General Conference he offered to give me a blessing.  I was admonished to gain comfort and encouragement from the talks given.  It is an enormous blessing that we have Prophets and Apostles to give us hope and guidance when things seem so dark and it’s hard to find our way out of the water.  Elder Bednar told the story about his friend getting his truck stuck in the snow and it wasn’t until the truck was filled with fire wood and was heavy before it was able to move forward.  Then he said, “It was the load”.  Those words sank deep into my heart.  Then he quoted the Bible, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).  What he said next gave me the strength to begin to change my heart and to find strength in the Savior’s Atonement:  “Consider the Lord’s uniquely individual invitation to ‘take my yoke upon you.’ Making and keeping sacred covenants yokes us to and with the Lord Jesus Christ. In essence, the Savior is beckoning us to rely upon and pull together with Him, even though our best efforts are not equal to and cannot be compared with His. As we trust in and pull our load with Him during the journey of mortality, truly His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”

Bear Up Their Burdens With Ease 

I finally hit the bottom where I could put my feet  firmly on solid ground and brace myself to get a good, solid push up to the top, above the water.  Falling apart was the cleansing I needed.  It caused me to reach out with all my strength towards the Savior’s healing Atonement.

The hurt was melting away.  I then remembered the promise in my Patriarchal Blessing about tithing.  I had been upset, not about paying my tithing but about the lack of blessing being “poured out.” Then I realized the blessing being “poured out” was revelation.  It wasn’t money or cars or even a job that I was being blessed with from paying tithing.  The blessing was sacred, amazing, personal revelation.  Revelation in many forms had been pouring into my life over our seven years of trials - especially during the six months that Brent was out of work.  God had opened the Windows of Heaven and I had been given more than I had been able to receive.   It’s going to take years of reading through my journals to absorb all the revelation that was given during that time and all that I learned.  I have been reading through my journals lately and I cannot believe what I’ve found.

I wrote an entry about a blessing I received on December 2, 2007 that not only shocked me but has brought me great comfort.  It was a blessing that seems to pertain more to December 2, 2013 than it did when I wrote the blessing down.  At the time I received this blessing, I was in the first trimester of our first baby after four years of infertility.  Brent was approaching his first lay off from the job he had at that time.  My parents were also living close by and had moved to Colorado just by chance right before we had.  They were an enormous support to us while we lived there and also seemed to catch us many times when we would fall.  This is what I wrote:  “….I was told that Heavenly Father blessed me with our baby and that it was a miracle.  I was reproved and told that Brent and I needed to be more grateful for the blessings we have received, our baby, our family and our ward.  I was told that Heavenly Father wants to test us to see if we will walk in the darkness like Nephi did when he was sent not knowing beforehand what he should do.  I was also told that Heavenly Father will rescue us like Limhi’s people that were in bondage but not until after a time of suffering and like with Isaac, He will come in at that last moment when we feel all hope is gone.  I was told that we had been blessed to have my parents close by and that the Lord has done this for a reason so they could be instruments in the Lord’s hands to help us in our time of need…”

There are no words…….There are just no words to describe the feelings in my heart.  The shock I feel, the knowledge I’ve gained.  I have no way to describe it.  I remember thinking at the time of this blessing that the darkness would only be a few months.  It was actually years, seven years.  I know that there is no expiration date on Priesthood blessings and personal revelation.  It is so incredibly important to me to keep a journal and to review it.  My journal is a mess.  It’s filled with misspelled words and horrible grammar.  But, it is also filled with priceless, golden personal revelation.  One thing I have learned in my life is if I want to remember the lessons God has given me, I need to write it down in my journal.   If I review it along with the scriptures, talks given by the general authorities, and sincere prayer, l can and will be rescued in my greatest hour of need.

It has been a year since Brent accepted the job he has now.  How he found the job was a miracle and has been a tremendous blessing.  My job has been an amazing blessing as well.  Our lives are so different now, it’s difficult to even compare to where we were last year at this time.  It took about 9 months and a lot of hard work to feel like our finances were stabilizing and the stress was dissipating but I feel so happy and grateful now.  I’m even falling in love with Las Vegas (which is another miracle!)  I do worry sometimes about the inevitable hard times ahead but I can’t help but feel optimistic and hopeful for our future.  A fraction of revelation has come into my life over the last year as it did during those six months.  Believe me that is a blessing as well.  It gives me a chance to look back at what I did receive and to learn from it.  Now that I am healthy and I am healing I can search for the lessons and be even more grateful for the revelation that I’ve been blessed to have fill my life.

A True Love Story

Brent and I met in in a singles ward. I know, it’s so original.  I moved into his ward and the first Sunday I was so sick I barely made it to church.  I only went to prayer night out of pure curiosity and because my roommate Cori really didn’t want to go by herself.  Brent introduced himself to me then promptly started to hug another girl and joke he was going to start a rumor that they were dating.  The next week I was feeling much better and saw him before church.  I said hi to him and he walked right past me without saying a word. He claims he didn’t even see me because I’m a foot shorter than him.    Obviously things didn’t go so well the first couple times we met, until that night at prayer night.  He and his roommates were hosting it.  Cori and I showed up on time which meant no one else had gotten there yet so Brent started a friendly conversation with both of us.  At some point while we had been chatting Cori got a phone call and she went outside to take it, then Brent went in for the kill.  Suddenly his hand was on my knee and he was telling me how pretty I was.  Be still my heart, it worked!  I was swooning and could barely make out complete sentences.  Cori came back in and looked like she was totally shocked at the change that had occurred.  Then I remembered, I left an apple crisp in the oven!!  I shot up and told him I had to leave.  I should have invited him over to have some with me but my brain wasn’t functioning correctly.  At this point Cori was standing behind Brent motioning with her hands and trying to whisper something about me getting his number.  I was so panicked that he would turn around and see her I just left.  The next day Cori and I went over to his house and was lucky to catch him at home.  He was there to eat dinner then he was going to head back to the law school.  The first thing he said to me was, “I’m supposed to get your number at 9 o’clock tonight.”  The executive secretary was going to give him a call back at 9…..

He came over to our house the next night for pizza with a few other friends.  He asked me on a date for that Friday and after that we started to see each other every day.  It was right in the middle of his finales and he was leaving in two weeks for an internship in Las Vegas for the summer.  Seriously, the timing was both horrible and wonderful all at the same time.  I’m so glad we met before he left for Las Vegas but little did I know it would require me to use a lot of faith in the upcoming weeks and months.   

I had been engaged a few years earlier to someone else and swore I would date the guy I married a lot longer before I would get engaged again.  The problem is once you know, you know.  I remember a week before Brent left we were coming home from a date and I told him that we could just see where things would go after the summer and that we could take it slow. Ha Ha!  Not a chance.  It was so contradictory to how I really felt.  As soon as I got home I told my other roommate Mel that I was going to marry Brent.  She blurted out, “WHAT!!  But how do you know?”  I just knew.  Knowledge had been placed in my mind and there is no other way to describe it.

Before he moved to Las Vegas, Brent ended up having the guts to tell me he loved me and he intended to marry me regardless of my plan to wait him out.  During the conversation I had never felt such great warmth and peace.  He was telling me what I had already discovered in my heart and the Holy Ghost was reassuring me so I wouldn’t panic in the middle of our long distance relationship.  I do remember falling back on that feeling multiple times during our long distance courtship and engagement.  It would calm me down and help me move forward with our plans (that were moving very quickly I might add).

I won’t go into all the details of our courtship (because they are borderline PG-13), but I will say that after having a previous wedding called off I kind of panicked if Brent and I went longer than two weeks without seeing each other.  Our Bishop, Larry Gelwix, suggested we fix that by making an effort to see each other every other weekend.  He also called Brent and got after him for not helping me feel more secure with the distance between us, it actually helped a lot.  On those weekends Fridays were amazing.  By Sunday I would start crying on and off all day before we had to leave each other.   Brent proposed to me over the 4^th of July weekend after asking my dad for my hand in marriage.  (My dad said Brent could have all of me, not just my hand!)  We were at my home in New Mexico and we hiked up to my favorite spot on the mountain behind my childhood home.  He gave me a necklace called a teekee he got in New Zealand on his mission.  Then he pulled out the ring, told me he loved me and asked me if I would marry him.  It was perfect.  Brent moved back to Utah to start his third year of law school and I started the Occupational Therapy Assistant Program.  We got married on a beautiful fall day in the Bountiful Temple in Utah and had a reception in Salt Lake City at a bed and breakfast next to the capital.  To this day I wouldn’t change a thing, except maybe I would not have had a receiving line during the reception so Brent and I could actually enjoy the reception, as well as the food we didn’t get to taste.  Then we lived happily ever after……..

My severe stubbornness combined with Brent’s intensity and quick temper made for an interesting and explosive first year of marriage.  It was also during this year we discovered how amazing and wonderful being married is.  The combined personality traits of stubbornness and intensity ended up being our saving grace and helped us to push through some very difficult and unexpected times.  Not long after our first year of marriage I lost my older brother.  Brent and I were also in the middle of infertility caused by a lovely thing called polycystic ovarian syndrome.  I won’t go into detail but I will say that one of the side effects is also weight gain…….oh for real!  It's a continuous battle.

Brent’s first professional job was in Las Vegas.  I was determined to be happy with it but after six months I finally came to Brent in tears and told him how unhappy I was and that I COULD NOT imagine staying to raise a family.  Being the loving husband that he is he asked if I could live anywhere, where would I live?  Denver, Colorado, or anywhere in Colorado.  My family used to vacation in Colorado and I fell in love with it.  Nothing could be more perfect.  We actually had a conversation about moving there right after a Saturday night session of our Stake Conference and both of us felt the Spirit prompt us very strongly that we should move to Colorado.  Brent studied for the Colorado Bar for 3 months.  He would go to the library after work and often not come home until 10 p. m.  This made him pretty grumpy.  After passing the Colorado Bar his boss in Las Vegas heard about the potential move and gave Brent a raise.  Three months later he gave him another one.  His boss obviously wanted him to stay and this strategy worked.  Brent came home one day and without talking to me about it he told me he decided we would not be moving. Colorado didn’t pay enough money for him to leave this job and he would not go.  This resulted in the biggest fight we have ever had in our married life.  Soon after we moved to Colorado (happy wife happy life).  The whole time we both felt lead and guided there and to this day I cannot figure out why.  We must have accidentally broke a mirror during our move because we had seven years of bad luck from that moment on.

Many of the experiences we had over those seven years I have shared or I plan to share in more detail in other posts.  Layoffs, pay cuts, unemployment and awful bosses as well as some very difficult behavior from our oldest child that caused our lives to be filled with professionals.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg, I almost needed to be institutionalized, Brent definitely had his moments as well.  Through it all Brent and I have grown closer.  It didn’t tear us apart like it could have but created a love that is deep and binding.  I know for a fact that the closeness we have gained has been a choice that we made to never give up on each other and Heavenly Father nurturing our love.  Not long after I delivered our first baby, Parker, the result of the stretch marks and the dramatic change in my body was upsetting and embarrassing.  I went to go change my cloths in the bathroom and I remember Brent grabbing me by my shoulders, looking me in the eye and softly saying, “I am your husband”.  Those three words said so much to me. That there were no conditions on his love for me.  That he accepted me with his whole heart and that he cherished me.  Years later Brent’s world fell apart and the ground came out from under him. I wanted to make sure he knew that I felt the same way, I am his wife.  No matter what we experience I will love and support him.  I will be there for him in his hour of need.  That is a true love story.  

True love is when both of you put your selfishness aside and put each others needs ahead of your own.  Brent has made changes in himself for the good of our marriage and the good of our family.  It has inspired me to make my own changes.  I believe that one of the reasons marriage and family is so important to Heavenly Father is because it changes you in a way you could not otherwise be changed.  It helps you become more like the Savior in a way that nothing else could.  Marriage is not always a pleasant experience but it can give us the opportunity to try to pattern our lives after the Savior’s life.  There are also often moments of failure and a chance to rely on the Atonement.  Marriage also puts someone in your life that will support and champion you when you need it most.

 There are times I look at Brent when he comes home from work, in a raw moment with the craziness of the kids and the house and I can’t believe how much I love him, how sexy and sweet he is to me.   I feel old and beat up and he is aging gracefully, it is so unfair.  But then he will pull me into his arms, kiss me passionately and tell me how beautiful I am.  Sometimes all I can think is, “He can’t be serious!”  But I’m grateful for the love as I hold back tears (because he teases me when I cry). 

A few weeks ago we were having a conversation about last Christmas and how awful it was.  Then Brent said, “I just always felt like you deserved better.”  My answer is, “How could I get anything better?”  I have a loving, faithful husband who honors and cherishes me, who honors the priesthood and his temple covenants, who leads our family with faith and righteousness.  Even when he felt God couldn’t love him.  He has walked through hell and back and has kept me by his side through every minute of it.  He is the hardest worker I have ever known.  He comes home from work tired and warn out but he hits the ground running to help with the house, the kids and the endless chores.  He make me feel beautiful (even though I think he needs his eyes checked).  I have everything I ever deserved and more.  God knew who I needed and even though life with Brent hasn’t always been easy or perfect, I have been blessed to have a marriage beyond my wildest dreams.  I have had the windows of heaven open upon me and Brent has been a blessing that was poured into my life and it has been almost more than I can receive.  

Struggles That Turned into Tender Mercy’s

 I’ve always had an attitude a little bit like my dad.  Yes, things are difficult now but I believe things are going to get better if I just keep working at it.  Over the last few months I’ve been feeling myself change and I’m not happy with the change.  Is there any hope for my family’s future?  Are we ever going to overcome the absolute destruction we’ve encountered? There have been so many years of working hard to recover from pay cuts and unemployment or just life in general.  I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel and then BAM!!!  We slam into another financial brick wall, often something totally out of our control.  The list has been endless! I have had faith for a long time, but now I feel life beating my faith out of me.  I am grieving over it.  I’m losing a part of me and I need to get it back.  That is one of the reasons I am writing this blog; to dig deep and find that faith in me again.
 

With Ethan’s first birthday coming up, I have been thinking about the labor and delivery I went through to get him here.  I remember sitting in an exam room crying as my time to deliver approached.  My obstetrician, Dr. Lamb, had informed me an on call doctor may have to deliver the baby if I went into labor when he wasn’t on call.  Dr. Lamb, who had delivered my older two kids and helped me through a miscarriage, quietly handed me a tissue.  I told him I wasn’t sure I could handle the instability of having an on call doctor deliver my baby after all the instability our family had been experiencing.  The fact that my family was living in a friend’s basement and a lot of my baby stuff was still hiding in a storage unit was almost more than I could handle.  It was January and it was COLD.  The negative temps sure didn’t help my negative attitude at the time.    

During the first week of January 2014, I was having very painful contractions and I was totally miserable; but, I wasn’t going into labor.  Because I had been induced with Parker, and because of the pain I was experiencing, I ask Dr. Lamb if I could be induced with Ethan a little earlier than my due date.  He said that it was fine with him and scheduled the induction for Thursday the 9^th of January.  He also told me that I could have the nursing staff call him even though he would not be on call. Brent had an interview scheduled at a law firm in Denver for the following Monday. After 6 months of unemployment it was as big of a deal if not bigger than the baby being born.  It was the first interview Brent had scheduled in Colorado since September and it felt like our last hope of bringing our baby home to a family that was no longer unemployed and relying on charity.  The timing would be perfect!  Go in, have the baby, be discharged by Monday so Brent could go in for his interview. I finally had relief in sight!    

A friend at our church, Trish, offered to take our older kids while we were in the hospital.  I was scheduled to check into the hospital to be induced at 10 pm on the 9^th of January.  Little did we know at the time that things wouldn’t be so simple, like they had been with my previous two deliveries. 

Prior to checking into the hospital we went to multiple places trying to find something to eat.  Most places were closed.  We finally made it to the hospital only to encounter a grumpy nurse who informed us that many expected moms had gone into labor just before I got to the hospital.  She also informed us there had been a scheduling error.  They had scheduled me to be induced on Friday the 10^th.  There was no room for me.  I told them there was a mistake and asked them to call my doctor.  The grumpy nurse told me there was no way she was going to call my doctor.  I kept telling her that he told me to have them call him and she just snidely remarked, “That’s what everyone says about their doctor, then we call the doctor and they get mad at us for not calling the doctor on call.  I am not calling your doctor.  You should just go home and come back tomorrow night when you’re scheduled”.  All Brent and I could think about was his interview on Monday.  I was having painful contractions and asked the nurse if she would at least check me before I left.  I was checked and told that I was having contractions but I wasn’t dilated.  

By the time we were headed back home it was midnight.  I was sobbing and Brent was driving angry.  It ended up being one of the most emotionally difficult and painful nights I have ever had.  I prayed to God that night and asked why things were always so difficult and why He couldn’t just give us a break.  We didn’t end up going to sleep until 4 a.m.  At 8 a.m. I called our friend, Trish, who told me she would come to get the kids so we could sleep.  My doctor also spoke with me and said he would call the two hospitals he delivered at until one of them had space for me. Both hospitals had been busy and full but Sky Ridge, the hospital I was originally scheduled for, sounded horribly busy.  Women were laboring in the triage rooms and in the hallway.  I was also told that there had been something like six emergency C-sections that night as well.  This was double their usual number. 

After trying to get rest that day and feeling stressed that both hospitals were too busy to take us, we finally got a call from Dr. Lamb, who told us that Parker Adventist would take us that night at 7 p.m. and that he was also waiting to hear from Sky Ridge.  The charge nurse from Sky Ridge Hospital called me around four in the afternoon and told me to hurry; the hospital finally had a spot for me in labor and delivery.  We left as fast as we could.  When I walked in, the first thing I told the charge nurse was that Dr. Lamb said to call him even though he was not on call.  She responded with, “I KNOW!!  He’s been calling us all day about you”.  Then I was informed that the nurses were going to place me in a shared room but five minutes before I arrived a private room had become available.  The nurses assured me they would give me that room. 

I was shown to my room and the nurse checked me and then gave me a medication that would help start the process of labor.  I felt horrible and didn’t ever really sleep through the night.  During most of the night my amazing nurse had to keep coming in to find the baby’s heart rate on the monitor.  About four in the morning I noticed the nurse was in my room a lot watching the baby’s heart rate.  She told me with each contraction my baby’s heart rate was going down and the reason could be something as simple as the baby holding onto the cord and squeezing it with each contraction.  I remember not being too concerned by it because the nurse seemed calm.  Little did I know at that time these labor and delivery professionals always seem calm, even in the most extreme emergencies, so that you will stay calm.  It’s probably a good strategy.

When the morning nurse came in to check on me she checked to see how far along I was.  I was dilated to a two but she commented on the fact that the baby felt really high and she seemed a little concerned about that.  She was in my room a lot.  She could tell that Brent and I had some anxieties and wondered what was going on.  I let her know that it was because of the last 24 hours and how frustrating they had been and because of Brent’s unemployment and the worry we felt about him making it to the upcoming interview.  I kind of remember her saying something like, “So you’re not worried about the delivery?” and me saying something like, “Should I be?  Is there something wrong?”  As far as the nurse could tell nothing was wrong.  So I told her I wanted to have an epidural because I could no longer handle the pain.  The anesthesiologist came soon after.  He gave me the epidural, which felt a little different than the ones I had gotten during my first two deliveries.  After an hour the epidural was not working at all and my nurse was not leaving my room.   For some reason I still thought everything was fine with the baby and that the nurse was just there because of how distraught Brent and I had been feeling about our life situation. 

I was beginning to feel really frustrated that we had been hitting so many road blocks and that when things were already difficult to bear I had to bear more.  You know those experiences when you plan to go to the temple and your whole day falls apart and even the elements are against you going to the temple and you become exasperated.  That’s what this was beginning to feel like, but worse. 

The nurse called the anesthesiologist and asked him to come figure out what was going on and why the epidural wasn’t working. From this point on things seemed to go in fast forward.  The anesthesiologist was baffled, tried a few things that didn’t work and even told me this rarely happens if ever.  He had me sit up and I noticed blood on the sheet.  When I asked about it both the anesthesiologist and the nurse said it was maybe a bloody show and the nurse said she would examine me after my epidural was looked at.  While focusing on the questions the anesthesiologist was asking me I overheard Brent say, “That is a lot of blood.  Is it ok for her to be bleeding so much?”  Then the anesthesiologist told me he was going to pull out the epidural and give me a spinal tap since I was in so much pain.  During all this the baby’s heart rate was still going down with each contraction and the nurse was becoming more concerned with it.  I finally felt the sweet relief of my lower half going very numb, very fast.  The nurse examined me then told me she was going to call my doctor and have the doctor that was on the floor at the nurses station come in to look at me because of the bleeding.  I overheard someone tell my nurse that Dr. Lamb’s son had to get him out of the shower but that he was on his way.  When the doctor on the floor came in the room and saw my bleeding and the baby’s heart rate, he told me it looked like the placenta was partially detached but had to still be partially attached in order for the baby’s heart rate to keep going back up after each contraction. At that point he told me I might need a C-section.  I started crying and Brent kept asking me what was wrong.  I finally admitted that I was feeling guilty about being induced and was worried that I may have caused the problem.  The floor doctor reassured me that I had done nothing wrong and that this would have happened whether I had gone in labor naturally or if I had been induced.

I wanted Brent to give me a blessing but the nurse would not leave the room so I finally just asked him for the blessing and told her she could stay if she wanted to.  She told me she would monitor the baby from the nurse’s station and come back in 10 minutes.  Brent gave me a short but powerful blessing.  I was told that Ethan would not die and that God had a great work for him to do.  There was more that was said that brought me great peace and helped me through the rest of the ordeal.

Dr. Lamb and my nurse, Rachel, came into the room a few minutes later.  At that point it was as if pure chaos was upon us.  Dr. Lamb watched Ethan’s heart rate go from 130 to 30.  He broke my water then checked to see how far I was dilated.  He also placed a fetal monitor on the baby’s head so he could keep track of the baby’s heart rate better.  I was dilated to a 4.  Then he said, “We are going to go forward with a vaginal birth but plan for a C-section to be cautious.”  He left to get dressed.  The nurse gave papers to Brent to sign to give permission for blood transfusions and a C-section.  Then Brent was rushed off to get changed into scrubs.  The anesthesiologist came by at that time and said, “Wow! It looks like there may be a change in plans.  It’s a good thing we gave you that spinal tap.  Otherwise, if you have a C-section you would have had to go under and your husband woudn’t be allowed in the room when your baby is born”………………Come again, what did he just say?!

Dr. Lamb came back, watched another drop of the baby’s heartrate and said, “We are still going to plan on doing a vaginal birth but we are going to the operating room to deliver the baby just to be safe.”  They began wheeling me down the hall way and I heard Dr. Lamb tell me, “We are really lucky that we aren’t running you into the operating room to get the baby out as fast as possible.  This is a good thing.”  I remember thinking that it felt like an emergency but I was glad that it wasn’t as bad as it could be.   

When I got to the operating room it seemed like there was at least ten people waiting for me.  Dr. Lamb checked to see if I was further dilated and I heard him say, “She’s still at a 4.”  Then he turned to the monitor to see the baby’s heartrate during another contraction.  Everyone in the room was silent.  Then he said, “We’ve got to get the baby out, he’s not going to handle this much longer.”  The next two minutes went by very fast.  Everyone started running around. A different anesthesiologist was up by my head and started pushing things into my IV and epi line.  He was explaining what everything was and why he was giving it to me.  Dr. Lamb went out in the hall to scrub up and was casually talking to Brent and asking him about his job interview while Brent watched me with a panicked look on his face through the hall window.  Dr. Lamb came back in and kept asking for the floor doctor to come in and help him. Brent was brought in and sat next to my head on a stool.  I had been crying through this whole process but I felt at peace and knew everything would be okay.  I felt pressure in my abdomen and then I heard Dr. Lamb exclaim, “He has the cord wrapped around his neck twice and it is really tight!”  I then heard crying for about 30 seconds.  The crying stopped and I heard a nurse say, “Come here dad and cut the cord.”  Brent got up then told me how calm Ethan was.  They brought Ethan over to me and his face was smooshed and puffy but he was looking all around and didn’t seem too upset about being released from his cocoon.  Ethan was probably just relieved that the umbilical cord wasn’t choking him anymore. 

     

The nurse came to take Ethan to the nursery to get washed, weighed and measured and Brent went with him.  The two doctors started to sew me up.  At first they were chatting with each other and then Dr. Lamb started to talk to me.  He started to say, “Well now we know what was wrong.  Because your baby was wrapped up in the cord he was pulling the placenta off the uterine wall. That was also preventing him from descending down the birth canal.  Because the cord was wrapped up every time a contraction happened it would cut off his oxygen causing his heart rate to go down.  It is a really good thing you were induced.  If you had gone into labor on your own you both wouldn’t have gotten help soon enough.”  Then he started to ask about Brent’s job interview.  

Later when I was in recovery I asked my nurse, Rachel, if what Dr. Lamb said was true and she bluntly told me that being induced saved both our lives.  She said that I would have had to have a C-section no matter what and that if I had gone into labor on my own I most likely would have bled out and the baby would have died before help could have gotten to us.  I couldn’t believe it to be honest.

Then everything that had occurred over the last 48 hours came flooding back to me.  In a matter of 40 minutes every struggle we had encountered, every wall we had hit transformed from a struggle and a burden into lifesaving tender mercies.  God was very much intervening in our lives and He was doing it by giving us what seemed at the time one trial rolling into another.  I even remember thinking in the midst of it that it was ridiculous how many things were going wrong and that it seemed someone was setting us up for failure.  No one can have that bad of luck.  In reality we were being watched after and cared for.  

Just to organize it for you the following are the miracles that led to Ethan’s birth:  1) Having been induced before, 2) My contractions being severe enough that I asked the doctor if I could be induced early, 3) Having my induction misscheduled so that I would be turned away during a very busy night with nurses who maybe would not have been as attentive and who refused to call my doctor because he wasn’t on call, 4) Not being at the hospital during a night the operating room was busier than normal, 5) Being given my own room because of the attention Dr. Lamb had given me the day before,  6) Dr. Lamb providing me extra attention because of the upcoming job interview Brent had and the fact that we were in such a desperate situation of being unemployed, 7) Sky Ridge Hospital having an open spot before Parker Adventist and putting us with in a five minute drive from Dr. Lamb’s home,  8) My epidural not working the first time, causing me to sit up and discover the hemorrhaging, 9) Receiving a spinal tap so I would not be put under for the C-section and so my husband could be part of the delivery,  10) due to Brent’s unemployment I was on Medicaid and had much better coverage than we would have had if Brent was employed.  It could have financially destroyed us, more so than the unemployment.

Just before Christmas I was at a Relief Society progressive dinner.  At each home we went to a spiritual thought was given about the Savior’s birth.  I remember being caught completely off guard when the presenter mentioned that the angels didn’t visit the rich or the wealthy but the humble in heart.  I could feel warmth fill my soul and the spirit give an impression to my heart.  I felt it telling me there is significance in a humbling experience and that there was a purpose in our humbling experience and the humble circumstances of Ethan’s delivery and birth.  Ethan has been such a joy and a blessing to our family.  I can’t imagine life without him and I’m so grateful to have had both our lives spared nearly a year ago.