Baby Arwen has arrived! Reflections on my quiet morning with God and my baby

I have so many things to reflect upon in the events of the last 3 weeks, and I will probably spread it over a few posts. 3 weeks ago we recieved the diagnosis of Cholestasis in Pregnancy, and faced the reality that my baby girl would be delivered a month before we expected her arrival, and my plans for a natural water birth in the birth center would be switched for an induction and the mainstream ward. As it turns out, God watched over us in this situation, and the induced birth went so much better than anyone ever imagined, with an outcome even the most encouraging of midwives didn't consider possible for my situation. But that's a story for another day.

Tuesday 1st of Feb at 6pm my darling Arwen Hope was born. Estimated at just 37 weeks 2 days (though, we believe now it was probably a bit further on than that) she came into the world as perfect as any newborn can ever be in our fallen world.

It has been hard. Bear wirh me, as this post does become positive. More than hard, my baby never took to the breast as she should have, and we didn't realise until Friday what had happened, because as a new mother I didn't realise the small amount of breastfeeding she was doing was nowhere near enough. We went from days of increasingly hysterical crying which we believed was gas, and now makes me cry to think about her desperate hunger, to spending the weekend forcing her to wake up to feed on a combination of expressed breast milk and formula. My milk is not co-operating with the expressing, and I spent the weekend expressing every 90 minutes, which, when it's a 30 minute process from start to finish, was completely emotionally and physically consuming, made worse by the fact even with that I could not produce even half of the amount she needed to be fed (I think it's a letdown issue at this point, we return to the hospital today to attempt to figure out what's going wrong now that baby is rehydrated and contented, I have stopped such regular expression as I couldn't handle it, but the amount recieved each expression is the same 10 or 15mL at 4 hour intervals that it was at 90 minute ones). This whole process becomes all the more daunting through the fog of hormones that course through every woman in the first weeks after birth.

It's so tempting at times, when the hormones spike especially, to give up. Thoughts run through my mind that I am a horrible mother, what good mother can let her newborn starve without realizing, what good mother can't get her breasts to produce any milk, as if I didn't already have enough things 'broken' within my body. This weekend my husband had to feed our beautiful girl while I sat and watched, pumping at my already aching breasts for what I saw as nothing. The fact he was feeding her and not me broke me down. Friday and early in the weekend I couldn't even hold her, as the smell of my milk threw her into a fuss, and I felt so useless as a mother. I was frightened to become attached to her, I couldn't explain why but I called her 'the baby' instead of her name, Arwen, because of fear.

But God has given me peace, He has given me the strength to do this, in body and mind. I am so blessed to have the husband I do, who has been endlessly patient with me, and understanding of my emotions. He took so little sleep in the first few days that he became delusional, just to try and calm our screaming infant and allow me a little rest, as I had not fared much better myself. He has been strong for me where I can't handle it anymore, and he has taken on so much more responsibility than most men would ever consider doing, because on top of the regular challenges new parents face, he also has to help cater to my visual impairment, which often involves learning a process fully himself before trying to show it to me in a way I can manage (a particular challenge with bottle feeding, which I have only mastered this morning.) This man was created to be with me, as I was him, and God made him in a way to suit that. I have never understood that clearer than I have the past few weeks, as I see all he is doing to support and help me.

Last night my husband desperately needed sleep, real sleep, as even though he has been catching up it has been in two hour blocks, which his body has never coped well with. So I told him to sleep and remained in the lounge room with Arwen resting in her basinette. In this situation, in the quiet of the early morning, God has really spoken to me and used this time. I have only slept two hours myself, but my body feels good, I feel strong and capable despite it, in fact I have to force myself to stay off my feet, as I know rushing about doing a lot on my feet would be bad right now, but I am not suffering from the lack of sleep, and my body is quite happy to settle for a sleep 2 hours, wake one hour, repeat, routine.

(I can feel my breasts letting down right now, but I know, from having done it multiple times in the past two days, that by the time I get up, grab the pump, take my top and bra off and begin expressing, they will refuse again, which is almost more frustrating than not being able to express to begin with)

My relationship with God has suffered in certain areas over the past year. My understanding of God in a theological way has increased dramatically, but the complete reliamce on God, the sence of wonder and awe about His power and creation, the amazement at how He has blessed me, that spiritual, emotional, instinctual aspect has faded as I have become more consumed in the world and the physical things. These points, which are not just important as a christian but also such vital points to my personal testimony, are things I must never lose sight of. I don't want to lose the feeling of amazement when I see the beauty in nature, because I remember vividly the first time I felt that amazement and what a life changing event brought it on. I have always been strongly spiritual in my faith, but the busyness of life has a way of interupting that.

This morning, as I pumped milk at 6am and watched my 6 day old baby sleep, I sang worship songs. I then got up and began playing some through the stereo (Arwen will sleep through anything until she is hungry it appears. She can be passed from person to person without stirring, or sleep through a loud crash, but will wake hourly for food if she wants it!). This is something I once did on a weekly basis, but have not done in far too long. It was so refreshing to just sit and focus on God. I haven't done that in so long. Sure I have prayed, or sat in church, or worked through a bible study, but it has been a long time since I just sat and worshipped Him and opened up that spiritual side. The stresses may not have passed but I am peaceful about them now. I stood by Arwen's basinette and sang worship songs with her, and I saw that face and love washed over me. She's not just a baby anymore, she's my daughter, and that's the first time I've been able to say that. She's my daughter and she is beautiful, and I feel my heart swell up as she looks around, as she sleeps, as she hiccups (which she seems to do a lot!). I know day to day life will mean I will not always swell with joy whenever I see her, but in those quiet moments I will feel this feeling again, and I hope that will last as she grows from a baby, to a child, to a young woman and a mother herself. I am grateful to be able to appriciate these moments, I can't believe it's been a week already, and she will change so fast.

It's been a long time since I've spent the morning with my Lord, but it won't be a long time before it happens again. I am not the 'devotional and quiet time for half an hour before breakfast every morning' sort of person, I'm a 'peaceful afternoon of thinking and praying while worshipping and doing some light work' sort of person, I used to spend sunday afternoons doing a project or job that didn't require too much thinking, and just allow my mind to wander to the things of God as I sang and worked. But so many people tell me I need God every day and I have felt, how can I spend time with God if I don't do devotionals everyday like all the other women I read about and see. But I realise now, it's walking in it that's important, it's seeing it, it's feeling God's presence even after the devotional is finished. It's not relying on God when reading the bible that's hard, it's relying on God while scrubbing the bathroom, or while holding a screaming baby, that's hard. As for my focused time on God, whether it's half an hour each day or a restful sunday afternoon, does God really prefer one over the other? Or is he just happy we have taken the time to be with him, however that fits us personally.

I'm not sure how much sence this post makes, it's a bit rambling, and whether I feel it or not I am running off very little sleep, but it makes sence to me right now. At least it will help me remember these days, which I suspect will pass all too quickly.

Emergency Preparedness

One of the biggest problems in the flooding right now is simply how unprepared people are. There is panic for those who are isolated because no one keeps a pantry anymore and people are running out of food after only a couple of days. In the places that have not been cut off yet there is panic buying, and supermarkets are finding themselves with, quite literally, nothing on their shelves. There are huge lineups for sandbags, and families left with absolutely nothing but the shirts on their backs. There are diabetics coming to evacuation centers without insulin! It dosen't take much work or time to become prepared but it may make a huge difference if disaster ever struck. We can't plan for everything, nothing could have helped the people of toowomba when 5 inches of rain was dumped on them within a half hour period without warning. But planning ahead could have lessened the blow to the now isolated residents of caboulture, and they could have helped the evacuated townsfolk of ipswich. Forward planning would have prevented the mass panic we saw in the city yesterday.

I was fortunate to be raised in an old fashioned family, where having a stocked pantry was a must, and having emergency supplies was expected. I never realised how uncommon that attitude is these days, or how much people seem to rely on convenience. I couldn't comprehend only having enough food for one or two days at any given point in time. Some of these families don't even appear to own a torch! The fact food needs to be flown in only 24 hours after the towns have been cut off astounds me.

Having said that, I've discovered a lot of people genuinly don't know how to prepare. They don't know what they might need or what they should store. This is evident as, in their panic to store food, people are buying things like fresh herbs, or microwave meals, or fresh meat, apparently with the hope that their power stays on (meat is not a bad thing to store in case of emergency, but when you are storing as a reaction, rather than a prevention, and you know the emergency you are reacting to will probably mean your power being cut within the next 24 hours, it's rather pointless)

Andrew and I have been discussing lately the importance of preparing and what steps people can take.
Obviously not everything will work for everyone, for us right now we can't do everything on the list because we are living in a very small unit as caretakers to a commercial property. But it is a step in the right direction.


Once-off preperations

• Keep all your most important documents in one place. - With the technology we have today a lot of paperwork is redundant, but there are some items that are very important. Birth Certificates, Marriage Certificates, adoption/fostering papers, written wills, important medical reports/perscriptions, important bank details/stock certificates, and anything else you might need in an emergency or would take a lot of time to replace should be in one folder, hopefully with a waterproof cover or a plastic sleeve, and kept in an easily accessable but secure place. Make sure adults are aware of where these are, and that papers are returned if taken out. Try to make the place they are stored as accessable as possible, so that in the case of a fire you may have the possibility of grabbing them as you run out the door (do not go BACK for them, nothing is that important in the case of a house fire, but if they are in the drawer beside the front door, and the path to leave out the front door is clear, it should only take a matter of 5 seconds to open the drawer, pick it up, and go. Make sure you don't have to search through anything to find it.)
• Keep some cash on you - Bank cards are great, right up until the power goes out, or your bank decides to have issues at just the wrong time. We experienced this first hand yesterday, as the card to the only account with money on it stopped working, and we were unable to get to a bank branch to make a withdrawl. Being stranded in the city would have been bad enough, being stranded with a total of $1.65 accessable to us would have been far worse. I used to be very prudent about keeping a $20 or $50 note in my purse in a special pocket for emergencies, but had become lax over the years. I will begin doing it again now! You should also keep some emergency money in the house. This we had actually done, but we were caught without warning. You should always try and keep some savings on hand 'just in case', even just a couple hundred dollars will help should the worst ever happen. Under the matress, in a cookie jar on the top shelf, in an old jewelery box, whatever.
• Have torches, batteries, a battery operated radio, rope, and depending on your area perhaps a cheap blow up raft or canoe/dingy, and make sure they work!

  Ongoing Preperations

• Keep a First Aid kit in your house, and in your car - A few band-aids and some cream do not constitute a first aid kit. You don't need to go overboard, but keep things like a few gauze bandages, wound dressings, medical tape, safety pins, alcohol swabs, antiseptic cream, thermometer, tweezers, etc, as well as over the counter painkillers, and any other regularly used over the counter medications, all in one place. Keep it up to date and stocked.
• Medications - Obviously stockpiling medication is a big no-no for many reasons, but that dosen't mean you should never have any on hand. If you're on a regular perscription, don't wait until the last dose to go buy the next box, try to keep a week, or at least a few days supply on hand if possible. If you're on insulin keep an emergency supply. If you take an over the counter medication regularly, keep a box spare. I'm not talking about hoarding antibiotics here, just ensure if you have an ongoing medical problem that you don't find yourself taking the last pill and unable to obtain any more. If you have warning of the possibility of becoming isolated, try to arrange to see your doctor for an extra perscription.
• Keep Food! - Becoming isolated with no access to food is a scary prospect, and households that only keep a couple days supply are taking a great risk. It dosen't have to be expensive, or take a lot of room. At the moment I only have my husband and I to worry about. I always keep a few packages of meat and a bag or two of frozen veggies on hand. I also keep a couple packages of pasta/rice in the pantry. A loaf of bread in the freezer, some jars of simple pasta sauces or stir through sauces, and a few potatoes and onions can always be found in our home. Also remember the possibility of losing power, I keep a few tins of baked beans, ready to eat soups, canned fruit, muesli bars, oats and cerials, and long-life orange juice/milk. It's not as healthy as we would usually eat, the meals mightn't be the nicest ones ever, but they would be food. Right now the two of us could survive a month or so with power, or a couple of weeks without it, without too much trouble. It could last longer than that if it had to, depending on the circumstance.
• Keep Water - One of the major issues right now is a lack of clean drinking water. Those who have power are boiling it, but those without power or those not connected to the main water supply because they use tanks are in a bit of a pickle. Slabs of water bottles can be bought relativly cheap at the shops, or a large container could be used to store tap water, but do keep some on hand somewhere.
• Know where your most treasured belongings are - One of the things that keeps coming up is heartache over losing family photos. Things have changed in todays world of digital storage, but keep those old photo albums easily accessable and TOGETHER on a bookshelf, so that if there is a need to evacuate and you have more than two minutes to do so, you can race in, grab them out without looking through a pile of 100 books to find them, and race out again. I would also encourage people to keep a keepsake box so all those important little somethings are in one place. You cannot take your computer with you, but hard drives are not hard to remove if you are in a non-emergency evacuation situation, so have a little time to spare. Find out how to do it, or better yet, use one of the new online backup services to put the most important documents on.
• Keep a backup of fuel - Most of the time individuals can store a limited amount of petrol or gas in containers in their sheds. We are about to have a serious fuel shortage here because of people filling their tanks up fully at the last minute, even having just a few liters/gallons on hand can make a difference
• Teach your children how to deal with emergencies - If there was a flood or bushfire within view, do your younger children know to come to you and listen, that it is not the time to misbehave? Or are they more likely to go outside to see the fire coming because it's such an amazing sight? Far too many of the missing persons in Queensland right now are children who went outside and got swept away in the waters, or wern't being closely watched. If you tell your older children that the family is evacuating, do they know what to grab, or would they panic and find their iphone and favourite book because they are too paniced to think straight? If you were seperated in the chaos, do your children know where they can/should go and who to trust, or would they run down the street yelling out your name in a panic There is no need to make a child paranoid, but children aren't always good at being rational in emergency circumstances, and just like fire drills, if they know what to do it means they don't need to nececarily think straight, it will hopefully just be a default reaction. Preperation also biulds confidence, which will help to stop them from panicing.
• Remember preventative measures - Not every disaster calls for evacuation. Towels and Sandbags can help with minor flooding, as can moving items to the second floor of a two storey home or digging out a drainage channel (please don't dig your drain so it runs into your neighbours house! This happened to a friend of mine who was a pensioner, and he lost far more than he should have, plus the house was unlivable for a time. The position of the house meant it would not have flooded except for the drain dug by the neighbour). Running the hose around your home may be all that's needed to protect you from a small bushfire in a rural area. I don't know much about snow but I suppose there must be ways to prepare for all these blizzards in America right now. During storm season secure your outdoor belongings, keep some old blankets by the place you park your car or in the shed so if you see that telltale green tint of hail clouds you can quickly cover the windscreens before it hits.

At-the-time precautions

Sometimes the worst really does happen, and it's better to be safe than sorry. If you find yourself in a flood or bushfire affected area, don't wait for the emergency services to tell you to evacuate before you get things together. If there is any chance of the emergency hitting your family, do something. Backpacks are a great thing to keep on hand. They needn't be fancy, the ones on $5 clearance after school goes back will work fine for this purpose. Hand held bags are heavy and need to be lugged around, they are a pain and do not make for an easy and quick exit, especially for children. Packing up shopping bags is just dangerous. But backpacks are much easier to slip on and go, and less likely to get too heavy, or get in the way, or get dropped or slow you down. As soon as an emergency begins threatening your area pack these bags with some basic clothing, including warm clothes, and blankets, plus a little food and the paperwork/keepsakes/torches/first aid kits/medications etc we have been talking about, none of these items should be large. If it is a fire risk and you'll be able to drive, then just pack the car. It's easy enough to take it all inside should it not be needed, then it is to grab it on the way out the door.

If you have no time, it's happened suddenly or overnight and you need to go quickly, you should be organized enough to be able to grab what you can COMFORTABLY AND SAFELY carry out the door. Depending on the ages of your children, they may be able to quickly pull out a set of clothes, a jacket, and a blanket each on their way out the door. Even in this emergency situation where you have little time, unless the house is actually on fire make sure you pick up your document folder and any current medications, as there is no garuntee you'll be able to get medication away from home, and while for some people this isn't a big deal, for others it may be life threatening. Nobody who has warning of an impending disaster should show up at a shelter with nothing, the limited resources available need to be reserved for those who really didn't have warning or time.

I hope this might be able to help some people. Of course like anything this checklist will vary from family to family and from area to area. There is no need for me to ever prepare for snow, but there is basically no need for my friends in central Australia to ever prepare for flooding. My town becoming isolated would be a very different situation to my grandmothers town becoming isolated. But just a few inexpensive steps could make a huge difference should they ever need to be used.

Flooding and my Emergency Survival List.

While no one really reads this blog yet, I am going to type an account of the flooding so I have something to link worried family and friends to.

Queensland, Australia, is going through it's worst flooding since 1974 right now. I'm told news coverage is now international, and I wish I could say it was being over-dramatic like usual, but unfortunately this time it is not. My husband and I found ourselves caught yesterday, as the inner city was officially evacuated yesterday afternoon. This is a major event. To understand the severity you have to realise that Australia is sparsely populated. There are a lot of towns around, but only a handful of true 'cities', Brisbane being the 3rd largest. Despite having a river run right through the middle of it, Brisbane was thought to be near floodproof after the 1974 floods caused council to biuld a very big dam as a buffer. That dam is now overfilled to the point that they have no choice but to release water. Even this wouldn't be such a big deal, except that the massive amount of water that has fallen further north is flowing into Brisbane at the same time. Up north they had what can only really be described as an inland tsunami, as a wall of water 2 meters high hit the township of Toowomba without warning. The flood affected areas are reported to be larger than the state of Texas (You Americans really like comparing things to Texas don't you?) 

It was amazing to see the river break it's banks, and the city evacuate yesterday, so many people! We were at the hospital due to pregnancy complications, and saw doctors and nurses packing up and rushing home to families before they were flooded in. Only a core staff remains there, and the families from the homes nearby have been sent to the emergency shelter. We are very thankful to the Lord that we were able to be seen yesterday, and got home before we were completely cut off. We're now on our own and praying the Lord watches over us, that nothing gets worse in the pregnancy until the roads reopen. We are on high ground, and even had sun today, but we are completely cut off from all family right now, made worse by the fact that at least two of those households are flooded in because of water along their own driveways (rural towns, these driveways are a few hundred yards each)

They have stopped comparing it to the 1974 floods now, and have instead begun comparing it to the 1890's flooding, an event we do not even have living memory of anymore.

But we are safe, and very fortunate as it turns out. Even though the local river has also burst it's banks, it would take a lot more water to make it to us personally, though some friends are begining to get antsy as the water creeps nearer. Prayer for the families of those who have already lost their lives in the floodwater, especially the children, would be much appriciated by all. Also, prayers for the many people still missing, and the emergency services risking their lives to find stranded survivors, especially up north, where the worst of the devestation remains.