Presenting...Grant Joseph Williams

I finally have a few minutes to post our news. Our precious son (yes, just one--we were very surprised!) was born early last week.
He was born at home into his father's hands on 18 July 2011 at 3:47 a.m. after 6 hours of hard labor (the easy parts having taken up the better portion of the previous 6 weeks :). Steven was indispensable to me during the whole process--I would not have survived without him! Labor was much harder than I expected, due mostly to the baby's size (see below), but with God's help and Steven's support and encouragement, I made it through and was rewarded with an incredibly beautiful son.

 

Vital Statistics
Weight: 10 lb 4.5 oz
Length: 20 3/4 inches
Head circumference: 14.5 inches
Eye color at birth: blue
Hair color at birth: dark
Eye color now: purple-brown and changing
Hair color now: medium blonde and lightening

We are gradually adjusting to the new way of life little Grant brings. Sleep is getting better, and I am learning how to get things done quickly while the baby is sleeping and/or not crying. He has only four modes, it seems: sleeping, crying, awake but not crying (rare), or eating. We try to take full advantage of the sleeping and awake but not crying states! We will be posting more pictures on our picasa web album and will let you know and post a link when that has been done.

Thank you for all your prayers, encouragement, and support. We are greatly blessed by this little life God has entrusted us, and each day is better than the last.

In Your loving arms we lay
This wordless one so new,
The incarnation of our love
We dedicate to You.

Hopeless, yet so full of love
We make our solemn vow, 
Not knowing when the time will come,
Not even knowing how.
And though it seems we try to make
A promise that is true
We really only claim for him
The Promise that is You.

In Your loving arms we lay
This wordless one so new,
The incarnation of our love
We dedicate to You.

The holy sleep which falls so deep,
A blessing from above,
Will now embrace our little one
In simple, trusting love.
We offer You this child
Who's only ours for just a while;
How could we keep him back from You
When You gave Your only child?

(Michael Card, "Wordless Ones")

Or not...

So, nothing happened on Tuesday night. Like before, labor just petered out when we tried to get some sleep, and no real developments happened in the next couple of days.

Today is seeming more promising. These babies have seemed to prefer Sabbaths, so it is fitting, and not surprising, that I've been having "labor signals" yesterday and today. I might not post again for a while if the babies come, but I'll try to get at least a little blurb in if I'm right and they make their appearance today.
We covet your prayers!

Tonight's the night!

So, babies went along with statistics and did not arrive on their "due date". We thought it might be kinda cool for them to be born on 7/4, but that was not to be, either. This morning I woke up early (after getting to bed late) and couldn't sleep, so I got up and ate an early breakfast and did some reading, then went back to bed to try to get a little more rest. I did finally get back to sleep and woke up around 0945 just feeling lousy. I still can't quite describe how it felt--I was hot and sweaty and crampy down in my abdomen, but not really contracting. This went on for a couple of hours.

My parents came by at around 1130 and picked up a few things before they headed back to Spangle, then Steven and I took a walk. I felt much better after the walk, as long as I didn't sit for too long.
Things picked up in the afternoon, and now we're just waiting for the babies! I will try to post the whole story in the next few days.

Keep us in your prayers!

40 weeks

Well, here we are. Today is my official "due date", so as of today I have carried these babies to term. As much as I've been impatient to go into labor the last few weeks, I must say that I feel a bit of pride in having carried twins to term--it's a rare thing these days. My grandmother carried her twins to term (my dad is a twin), so it runs in the family, I guess.

Will I go into labor today? Statistics say that only 5% of babies are born on their due dates (and how much of that is due to routine induction is hard to say), so my odds aren't too good. I can tell you one thing for sure, though: we won't be going too far from home in the next few days!

Learning to be thankful

As I count down the days till the babies are "supposed" to arrive, I am having to think of reasons to be thankful for many things I could just as well do without.

1.) Swollen feet and ankles: at least I have feet! And the pain from the swelling tells me that my nerves are working, too.
2.) In spite of having swollen feet, my blood pressure is still in the normal range, which means I am one of those lucky first-time moms (of twins, no less) who does not suffer from preeclampsia.
3.) My very large belly indicates that my precious babies are alive and growing.
4.) The frequent and sometimes painful movement they love so much affirms #3 and helps me to remember that my belly is so large because it is holding little lives inside who are almost as eager to get out as we are to have them out.
5.) Every day the babies are still not born is another day I get to enjoy with just my wonderful husband--something we won't have for a long time once they are born.
6.) Babywearing will never be more effortless and convenient than it is right now (though the clothing options are limited at the moment).

There are so many more things for me to be thankful for. I have been blessed with an incredible husband who is working long hours as well as finishing up summer classes so I do not have to work. I have a beautiful (if somewhat cluttered) home and flourishing garden that is helping us meet our food budget goals. Steven has several work possibilities for this fall and we know that God will lead us to the right one.

God is so good to us. Even when things are not as I would like them, I know that He is in control and is working hard to give us His best, if only we will reach out to accept it.
Thank  you, Lord, for teaching me to be patient and to be thankful for every day.

Still pregnant...

Well, I know I said I would post periodic updates on how the pregnancy was progressing, but no news is good news...right?

About 30 weeks along Steven and I were doing some poking around in my belly and realized there were more body parts than one baby usually gets. We have not had any ultrasounds done, so there was no suspicion up to this point, though maybe there should have been--I felt movement very early (around 13 weeks--highly unusual in a first pregnancy), and was showing a lot earlier than would be expected. But it is my first time, so who knew what was normal for me?
Anyway, this is all to say that we are expecting....TWINS! I am getting much larger than I would like to admit, but it's all for a good cause, right? And they say that nursing brings it all off again pretty quickly.....

So, with that news in mind, we were not surprised when at 36 weeks minus one day I started having strong, regular contractions. This was a Sabbath, so instead of Steven having to skip classes we just skipped church and got everything ready (we're planning on having a homebirth). We didn't really call anyone right off because we wanted to be sure. Well, to shorten a long story, after several hours of regular, strong contractions we went to bed, hoping to get some rest because we were sure the babies would arrive that night, or at the latest early the next morning. Come morning...no babies...no contractions...nothing.

This pretty much sums up what the last three weeks have been like. I've had strong, convincing practice labor every couple of days that just dissipates into nothing after several hours. Last weekend it was really frustrating--contractions 2-4 minutes apart for 7 hours, only to disappear altogether by evening. God is trying to teach me patience.

I am very ready for these precious babies to be born. I can feel their little feet in outline on my belly, and their little bodies pressing against the sides (there's not much room left!). I want so badly to hold those precious bodies in my arms and play with those little feet. But "His ways are higher than [my] ways and His thoughts than [my] thoughts...". I know that He who created these tiny lives within me will bring them out in His own time.

What is God trying to teach you right now?

Catching up...

Wow, I didn't realize just how long it's been since I posted anything. My short engagement to Steven seems very long ago now.
We were married, as planned, in a beautiful ceremony in the Spangle Church. I should post pictures sometime....
We honeymooned on the Olympic Peninsula (after spending the weekend between Spangle and Walla Walla so Steven could play in the WWU graduation brass ensemble--it was worth the $150 we got out of it!) in a beautiful cabin on Lake Cushman. We drove around the peninsula and spent two nights camping near Forks, WA, where my family likes to vacation.

Work restarted for me on June 25, so we hurried to get moved into our little house near the University. We were very fortunate to get it, too! It is small and VERY old, with a bathroom the size of the shower in a hotel I visited recently, but just right for us. It has a good-sized backyard, too, and Campus Housing said we could plant a garden, which we did. We had a late start, so didn't get much out of some of our produce, but we got lots of zucchini and summer squash, some tomatoes, lots of carrots, two pumpkins, several cucumbers, kale and mustard greens, and some herbs. This year we have a much more intense garden planned, and I am eager to get planting.

We took Labor-Day weekend to do some long-postponed backpacking. Steven and I drove up past Sandpoint, ID, to the trailhead of Harrison Lake. Our favorite place in the world to backpack is a little cat's-paw lake two ridges over from Harrison (we call it Little Harrison). We had a rough time getting in, because the last 2 miles of the hike are cross-country (no trails) and we struck out a little too low, resulting in the necessary navigation of many rock fields and woods that we would not otherwise have encountered. We were supposed to hike back out later in the evening to help some friends in who were going to join us, but decided against this as we were both completely exhausted and it was too dark to safely navigate. We were pretty sure that our friends would make camp at Harrison or thereabouts after waiting a while.
Steven woke us early so he could hike out to find our friends. I stayed behind in camp to get breakfast ready and such. I took my sleeping bag and mat down to one of the large rock slabs that surrounds the lake (it is essentially a basin of rock) and enjoyed the sunshine and breeze. I even took a bath in the water, after figuring out how to chase away all the insects that were floating on the surface (some kind of flying ant covered the surface of the lake, for what reason we never learned; I don't remember seeing them in the air). After seeing the bugs I decided just to sponge bathe, but found when I rinsed my soapy washcloth that the detergent made the ants "magically" flow away from the edge. I spent a wonderful couple of hours enjoying the sun and spending time with God in nature.
Steven returned with the others about 5 hours after he left. It turns out that they had way more stuff than would have been wise to haul over that track, so they ended up just taking a day-hike in to where we were and we visited for a little while before they went back to their camp.
On Sunday we had an interesting adventure. It was very cold when we got up in the morning, and by the time we got around to making breakfast it was raining "hail flakes" as I decided to call them. The same stuff is referred to as "corn snow" or even "hail" by others, but I thought hail flakes was a good term, and fit better. We had a hard time finding a good place to make our food as it was so windy and precipitating heavily. We managed with breakfast and decided to hike out that day instead of waiting until Monday. By the time we were packed it was about 12:30, and still raining/snowing. We dressed warmly and hiked out in the wetness. It turned out to be a wonderful trip, as the cold was just enough to keep us from overheating with all the strenuous hiking, and the slightly snow-covered mountains were incredibly beautiful. We found an easier way out than we had found in and had a wonderful time.
We headed back to Spangle and spent Steven's birthday with his parents, then went home.

Steven started school in late September, and it's been a challenge to balance school, work, and house cleaning, but we are getting along fine. Christmas was a different adventure, with two families to visit now, but we had a good time with that as well. We took a trip to Canada with my family to visit my great-aunt Alyce, and had an exciting time on our way back, as there was snow on the roads and we didn't have snow tires yet. We went off the road at one point and nosed into the ditch, but my dad was able to pull us out again and we had no further mishap. We got our snow tires fitted that evening on our way into Spokane. :)

Here's our most exciting and wonderful news for the year: We are expecting our first baby in July. He is growing like a weed (and so am I!) and it is so exciting to feel the changes in myself and also feel his little body exercising! He is kicking and boxing pretty frequently these days. The most wonderful movements, though, are the movements of his daily life: rolling around, feeling the walls surrounding him, and fluttering his little limbs. These make me feel that I am truly getting to know him.

Now we are planning a garden and getting ready for the spring. It is so much more exciting to see the growing things around me now that I am feeling another little thing growing inside me.
I will do my best to keep you all posted on how things are going.