I enjoy listening to audio books in my car on my way to and from school; it is a way to sneak literature into my day when I don’t have time to read on my own.  There is some irony here, as I am an English teacher, but I do love audio books, and it makes the commutes go so much faster.

Just this morning I finished The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.  We have a class set in our book room at school, and I’ve always meant to read it.  It’s a neat book; it reminded me a bit of The Help in that it takes place in the 1960s south and explores the relationship between black and white Americans through the narration of a sweet but rather naive white girl (and is always found on book club lists).  The narrator, fourteen-year-old Lily Owens, runs away from home in an attempt to get away from her abusive father and find answers to the death of her mother.  She winds up living with a trio of black sisters, working in their beekeeping operation.  She eventually gets the answers she’s looking for, but is extremely sorry when she finds out the truth.  By the end, Lily discovers the love she seeks in the women she stumbled upon, and is thankful she made the journey.  It’s not a particularly life-changing novel, but I enjoyed it a lot.  I finished it at the end of a long week working in my classroom, when I was feeling extremely tired but pleased with all the things I accomplished and blessed at the opportunity.  I’ve been writing a lot of thank you notes lately, what with baby presents and baptismal cards, and I thought I’d take some time to write a few lengthy acknowledgements here while our newest blessing, baby Spartacus, takes a much-needed nap.

Thank you to…

My midwife.

A friend of mine recently wrote a post about her wonderful birth experience in army medicine, and I feel like the wonderful people in it don’t get praised enough.  This afternoon I had my post-delivery follow-up with my midwife.  I came straight from school so Spartacus was with me, and she was thrilled to meet him.  My check-up was stellar, and as we wrapped up, she took a few minutes to thank me for being a compassionate and pleasant patient; even when things got stressful, I was always a joy and an inspiration to work with, and she was incredibly sorry to see me go.  I felt a little teary at this goodbye; I felt the same way about her.

I swear he was smiling the entire rest of the appointment!

One of the reasons I was so devastated to learn I had gestational hypertension – besides the obvious health risks and ultimate early delivery – was that it meant I needed to see a physician and couldn’t continue on with her.  She is the sweetest lady; a stalwart Catholic, when she brought up the birth control discussion early in my pregnancy she said she only counseled natural family planning; if we wanted something else we’d have to see another provider for it.  Conveniently we practice NFP (more on that too-much-information later) – not because we’re Catholic, but because it’s awesome – but it is so rare to see someone stick to their religious convictions in such an non-religious environment like an army hospital.  Perhaps this isn’t so rare, but my experience is limited.  At my numerous appointments, she always made me feel as if I was the only patient she had that day; I could get all my questions answered and never felt like she was rushing me out to see more patients.  She also laughs at all of my jokes, which is extremely gratifying. If we were to stay where we are and have all our future babies here, I’d want them to be with her.  After she paid me her sweet compliment, she gave me a big hug and walked Spartacus and I out.  I told her I’d pass along her compliments to…

My mother.

Because she has always been a role model of being polite and pleasant to everyone, and I know I’d never act the way I do if I hadn’t seen her do it first.

Spartacus is super lucky to have so many awesome role models.

It seems unfortunate, that my behavior as a patient was so unique as to be complimented, but our nurse in labor and delivery said the same thing.  When we came in for induction back in July, she remembered me as having called the night before inquiring about a time to come in.  She told me I was so polite on the phone; the woman who she had called previously to tell there were no beds cussed her out and hung up.  She promised that if a bed had come available right then, she would have called me – even though that woman might have been higher up on the list than I was – just because I was nicer.  She escorted us all the way down to the Mother-Baby Unit after delivery, and our Mother-Baby nurse escorted us all the way down to our car when we were discharged.  Maybe that is hospital policy, but everyone there had a way of making us feel very appreciated.  If they were only so nice because we were such good customers, then I have my mother to thank for it. Also, people should be nicer to their doctors; I know having a baby is excruciatingly painful, but that’s no reason to take it out on those around you!  Especially not…

My husband.  

Everyone asks, “So how’s dad doing?”  And the answer is, “Awesome.”  Hubster is such an awesome daddy.  He comes home and takes the boy and changes him and talks to him and genuinely enjoys hanging out with him.  Daddy’s the one who reads to Spartacus (in his own admission last night, my voice “is too soothing” to read aloud – it puts him to sleep).  Few things are sexier than a daddy reading to his child – even if the book isn’t exactly age-appropriate (last night it was a chapter of Bernard Cornwall’s The Winter King and Adam Mansbach’s famous children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep).

My best friend’s college roommate and bridesmaid.  

This is sort of a roundabout thank you.  I met this lovely lady my sophomore year of college, when I spent my spring break in the popular spring break destination of St. Paul, Minnesota, where my best friend went to college.  She loved Legally Blonde and I went to Harvard, so we instantly became Facebook friends.  We liked and commented on each other’s posts with some frequency until we met again when my best friend got married last summer.  She drove to the wedding and stayed with me and my parents for the week, and we got to talking.  Having married the summer before, she and I talked about married people stuff late into the night…and we got on the topic of birth control.  She and her husband are strong Catholics, and only practice natural family planning.  She expressed frustration with how often people would respond with something like, “So you’ll have a kid in nine months, right?” as if this was not a legitimate form of birth control – because everyone knows a family that practices the rhythm method who has five children.  [Possibly TMI alert – skip next paragraph if you don’t care to know about my birth control choices]

My best friend’s college roommate and her husband use the Creighton Model, which is a scientifically-studied method of observing certain biomarkers that indicate fertility.  Various fertility clinics and OB-GYNs across the country teach it, and there is a whole system – we had to attend an intro seminar, then meet about a dozen times over a year with a practitioner to make sure you’ve got it down.  Rather like the pill, it’s 99% effective if you do it correctly.  It’s drug free, can be used to prevent or achieve pregnancy, and doesn’t require any hours sitting in the PX pharmacy for hours waiting on a drug refill.  Perhaps none of you want to know, but approximately two weeks after we decided we wanted to have a baby, we had a positive pregnancy test – and it was not remotely a surprise.  My midwife said she was so thrilled we loved natural family planning; she said few people even are willing to hear her out (probably because of that five-kid family everyone knows), but I am a huge proponent of NFP, and think more people should consider it.

Our godson and his parents.  

We are actually blessed to have two godsons, but last October friends of ours from church (the Teacher of the Year and her husband) had their third child and asked us to be godparents.  When she went into labor, I was in charge of picking up their kids from school and daycare and taking them to the hospital.  I got to hold him when he was mere hours old.  When my husband held him at church a week later, he commented that it was the first time he’d ever held a baby since his youngest sister was born (and he was seven then).  Baby Caleb was baptized a few weeks later (a bit hastily planned, because my husband was getting ready to go to the field for five weeks).  37 weeks later, Spartacus was born, so if it wasn’t for Caleb, we’d still be hanging with Annabelle right now.  Finally, I need to thank…

Caleb was a good practice baby for us.

God.  

Now, I don’t say this to be trite.  Obviously, all our blessings are God-given, but Spartacus’ entry into this world seems to be under a set of circumstances that had to be God-ordained, because the timing literally couldn’t have been any better.  Numerous times in my life things have happened that were completely different than we had planned but worked out way better than I could have imagined.  That’s how my father ended up at seminary as a second career pastor after getting laid off from his job; that’s how I ended up at Harvard; that’s how I ended up a teacher.  Hubster and I had planned on not trying to start a family until we had paid off all our debt and preferably not before he made captain (the salary increase from lieutenant to captain combined with no debt would mean I could comfortably stay home if I wanted).  In any case, I wanted a summer baby so I wouldn’t have to worry about going into labor in the middle of a lecture on Shakespeare.  We had tentatively planned to start trying this coming fall and have a baby sometime in 2015.

Anyway, if it wasn’t for my conversation with Molly last summer about birth control, I never would have switched to the Creighton model.  If it weren’t for our godson Caleb, we wouldn’t have had the conversation on the way home from church in October about how, if I got pregnant that month, we could still have a summer baby.  Had I still been on the pill, that conversation would have never happened, because it often takes at least a month to get those hormones out of the system.  Back in October, we didn’t know that my husband’s aspirations to attend seminary would mean we’d most likely be moving in the summer of 2015.  Had we waited until when we had originally planned, I would have delivered shortly after an inter-state move, and had a newborn when I was trying to find a job and my husband was starting grad school.  Who knows what our health insurance would have looked like, and Spartacus would have been delivered by someone I’d never met before [or worse – in the back of a U-Haul with all our worldly possessions on the road to seminary].  We changed our debt-free goal to getting both our cars paid off before the baby was born; unfortunately based on our budget, my Mariner would take until August, so we wouldn’t quite make it…cue the crazy college student who totaled my car two weeks before he was born, requiring us the pay off the loan in order to get the balance of our insurance check.  Because of all of this, we can afford for me to take a few weeks of unpaid maternity leave so instead of going back to school on Monday after seven weeks with the boy, I don’t have to go back until he’s three months old – what a blessing!

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…as I finish this, I’m listening to Hubster tell Spartacus about his textbook he got in the mail – his first seminary textbook. Spartacus keeps interrupting his reading with cries as he attempts to fill his diaper.  Hubster just told my baby that if he insists on interrupting his studying for the next four years with cries, he may have to feed him to Annabelle: “You’d be the cutest thing she ever ate, but still.”  [DON’T WORRY, Annabelle would never eat Spartacus. Lick him to death tootsie-pop style, maybe.  But we won’t feed our baby to the dog…]