New Years, memories

Do you have plans for New Years Eve/Day?
As of now I have no idea what we'll be doing. We'll be childless, though- the kids are headed to Alabama for a spontaneous trip with MIL to go see her mother. My babies are gone! :( They'll be back on Friday, which is Jackson's 10th birthday. We're planning his party for Saturday, a food fight! :D

This time of the year always brings me back to when I was pregnant with him. It was such a fun, peaceful pregnancy despite the 52lb weight gain ;) I cooked allllll day long New Years day, ham, collard greens, black eyed peas ("traditional" southern New Years food). I started contracting at 4pm. If I had known that 10pm "weird" contraction was him actually flipping into breach position he could have been born before midnight and been a New Years Baby, but that wasn't God's plan for him. The cord would wrap around his neck twice, and he would be without oxygen until he was born at 4:32am.

I had a fill-in doctor that did not really want to be bothered with a first time mother's concerns that night. He hung up on me around 2am with the words "do NOT come to the hospital until your contractions are 2-3 minutes apart- goodbye!". With my contractions spacing between 2-4 1/2 minutes apart, about 2:40 I said that doctor could kiss my ever lovin' butt I was going whether he liked it or NOT (we weren't in church at that time, hadn't been since a few months before he was conceived). We called everyone, packed up what was left, and went to the hospital. I was checked and asked if I knew the baby's sex which we "didn't" (had an idea but didn't know for sure), so they were talking in a "code" of sorts to avoid sharing that instead of feeling a head they were feeling testicles ;)

So I was 5 cm dialated with a baby whose feet were resting on my hip bones (basically), saying "Nope, not tonight!". After five days of being "dropped", that's what Mr Jackson decided to do. So the doctor when he come in to check me, said "your baby has decided to be difficult and is in breech position, you are going to get a c section .." then looks to the nurse to say "prep her" and walks away. Oh what support! When they pulled him out, I saw Jay's face drop, his mouth falling open. I thought it was amazement at the birth process, but found out later that Jackson's skin was SO dark (black, I caught a blip when they took him to the baby station) having been without oxygen for so long, Jay immediately thought it was possible I had cheated on him with a African American guy but come right back to his senses to realize something was wrong.

It took Jackson one and a half minutes before he cried for the first time but once the first cry come, they came in LOUD waves. The nurses later confirmed that he was a rather LOUD newborn- it sounded as of you were killing him he cried so intensely! Jay later shared that it was in that minute and a half that he prayed for the first time in months and months and months- asking God why he let us get that far to just take our baby from us, and to please save him. I, drugged at the time, did not realize what was going on and Jay was instructed NOT to tell me because of my state of being cut open and whatnot. As far as we were from God that night, it amazes me that he answered Jay's prayer, but that night he started a ministry to us that only hindsight would reveal. It would be 16 months later before we would return to church.

By all rights Jackson should have had some developmental delays with the length of time he suffered, and I give God the glory for delivering him, us, from those kinds of difficulties. He was a hard child to parent for the next six years, and I still believe God has used Jackson to prepare us for something yet to be revealed. It was only after his sixth birthday that parenting him would become easier, and it was miraculous.

On his sixth birthday, he accepted Christ as his personal Savior. So his birthday and "re-birthday", or spiritual birthday, is both on January second. That birthday was on a Sunday, and he got saved during the service at the beginning in a sunday school room. We were talking about sin on the way to church, like we always did, for months I recited Romans Road to him every Sunday night on the way to church, but this night, the lightbulb went off and the Lord might as well had been sitting there beside me telling me it was time. He was so proud he went before the church that night and professed his salvation, and te next baptismal service, February 16th, the was baptised.

Every year he asks about the story of his birth, and then he tells me about the story of his rebirth with a sparkle in his eyes.

What sweet memories.