Benaiah Aiden

Wow! What a weekend. This has definitely been one of the highlights of my life (as if you couldn't tell from the pictures :)) Amanda and I both apreciate all the prayers and for all the kind words/visits and gifts over the past few days.

I'll try to recap as best as I can (which really isn't all that good because words really can't describe ow great this has been):

Abouts 2am Saturday morning, Amanda woke up. She wasn't feeling well and she was having some spotting. She waited around til 2:30, but she was still spotting, so she woke me up. For the next half-hour, we tried to see if her condition would get better. We even called the OB/GYN, and he sayed we should be ok. Of course, Amanda was worried that something had happened to the baby. I knew she wouldn't be able to sleep until she was able to talk to a doctor face-to-face. So we loaded up in the car and headed to Brookwood at 3:30.

When we left the house, I fully expected to be back home in just a short while. Amanda was not having contractions and the due date was over 2 weeks away.

When we got to the hospital (at 4) and got out of the car, Amanda froze in pain. I tried to pursuade her "Come on, we're here now. Let's just get inside teh door." We got inside and they put us in a room (probably because Amanda said, "I think we may be having a baby today.") We got in and when they hooked Amanda up to the contraction monitor and then checked to see if she had dialated. When they did, her water broke. And we discovered that the pain that Amanda had experienced in the parking lot was in fact a contraction. In fact, they were starting to come every 5 minutes or so. So our "quick trip" to calm our nerves turned into "Wow, we'll have our baby today!" :)

Our doctor was on vacation, so we met Dr. Gams who would be our substitute physician. After about 2 hours at the hospital, Amanda hadn't dialated any more, so they gave her a hormone that increased the rate of her contractions. She also got an epidural, so from about 5a on, she was pretty comfortable.

When they checked Amanda an hour later, she had dialated to 7cm. Every time they checked it got closer to the goal. By 11, she was at 9 1/2 cm (or so we thought)

About 12:45, the Dr. popped in again and checked to see if she made it to 10cm. But, he delievered some discouraging news: Amanda was not at 9 1/2, she was at 7, maybe 8 at best. He said that the labor had stalled out and that we would have to have a C-section.

There's a verse in Job that sums up how I felt in the moment: "I am terrified." That's actually probably an understatment, but I don't know if there's a strong-enough word to describe how I felt. I tried to be calm and brave because Amanda was even more shaken that I was (obviously). She had never had surgery at all--or even been admitted to a hospital. So that compounded the fear. They set the time for 1:30p to do the surgery.

During the down time, we tried to comfort each other. I got to put on my surgery scrubs. They wheeled Amanda back and came back to get me a little later. It was probably only 5 minutes, but it felt like 30. When I got to the operating room, they had Amanda sliced open. I got to sit at her head behind the curtain (thank God for that because I would have straight passed out). It took only 3 - 5 minutes and we heard the most wonderful sound I have ever heard. Little Benaiah Aiden was here (at 1:47p) and he was letting everyone know about it. Because he was a C-section baby, he had a lot more fluid in his lungs, so his first yell sounded like he was under water.

Amanda's cousin Amy--who works in the NICU at Brookwood--was in the room and was one of the nurses who handled the baby. She even got to give his official weight (7 lbs. 8 oz.). Then mommy got to hold the baby for the first time. Then daddy got to take him to the nursery to let everyone else see. Amanda's dad lucked up and found our path so he got a sneak peek.

After everyone got to see him through the window for a coule of minutes, we carried him to the recovery room, were the nursing staff gave him a bath, checked his temp., gave him a shot or two, measured him (21 1/2 in.), put medicine in his eyes, etc. Then Daddy and Aiden got to wait for mommy. About 20 minutes after we got in the recovery room, they wheeled mommy in and she REALLY got to hold baby.

We stayed in recovery for about 2 hours. I know it killed our family because they couldn't come back. Then at 4p we moved into our suite and the family got to see baby and Mommy for the first time.

So many other small things happened that would take too long to explain. But needless to say, we are overjoyed (an understatement indeed) to have little Benaiah Aiden with us. Also, August 1st happens to be my late grandmother's birthday. So God gave us a little poetic miracle in that too.

7 Lessons on Parenting

*Disclaimer: I found this pic on a Google search, this was not an experiment of mine

Ok, so I haven't had a lot of extra time to come up with my own posts this week, but there have been some AMAZING posts on other blogs that I read. I can't post every good thing I see, but in light of the baby that's almost here and my journey into fatherhood, this post spoke volumes to me:

(oh yeah, I found this on evotional.com. Mark Batterson's blog)

Can I take a little blog survey?

I ask this question of other parents all the time: what is the greatest lesson you've learned as a parent? Would love to hear about some of the lessons you've learned at different stages of parenting. Nothing ismore rewarding or more challenging than being a parent. We need to help each other out. I know it's tough to boil it down to one thing. So feel free to share a few lessons learned.

Here are seven lessons I've learned:

1) Your greatest failures as a parent can turn into your greatest successes IF you simply apologize. You are modeling one of the toughest skills to learn: how to handle mistakes.

2) A great marriage is one of the greatest gifts you can give your kids so focus on your marriage first and your kids second.

3) You create memories via engineering shared experiences. Be intentional about setting shared goals. Become a student of your kids. Learn to love what they love.

4) Parents are prophets. Don't just use your authority to speak correction into their lives. Use your authority to speak encouragementinto their lives. Otherwise you will become a prophet of doom.

5) We have a Heavenly Father who compensates for our parental weaknesses. So take a deep breath and relax a little. Even if you're a single parent, you're not alone. God will make up the difference!

6) One of the greatest gifts you can give your kids is time. A little one-on-one time opens channels of communication like nothing else. If you hang with them when they are young they'll want to hang with you when you're old.

7) If all else fails, teach your kids to say please, thank you, and sorry. Especially to God.

Friday Download

What a week it's been. Here's a recap of a week that has flown by:

• Visited Kingwood Church in Alabaster Sunday. Had a great time. Love the people there. Several of their staff have invested a lot in our church and I for one am very grateful for their efforts/sacrifice.
• My brother, Daniel, came up Monday to stay with Amanda and me for Spring Break. Pretty amazing what God is doing in his life. Just wish I would have started living for God at that age.
• Filled out my tournament bracket. So far I'm 12 for 16 (not all that good). I have a tendency to try to pick too many upsets. Of course, I didn't help that favorite Clemson got beat by Michigan of all teams. Their basketball team suffers from the same "do-awesome-the-first-half-0f-the-season-and-then-completely-melt-down" thing that their football team usually does.
• Got to help some of the youth make a video for Fine Arts. I may be a little biased, but I'd be surprised if it didn't advance to Nationals.
• Had a great service Wednesday night. There wasn't a whole lot of people there (Spring Break), but the worship was very powerful and raw and I felt like the teaching/preaching time went well.
• I tried something new with my sermon this week. At the end, before I gave an altar call, I opened it up for Q+A. It's easy for people to get lost even when you think you've covered all the bases. Teens get to ask questions everywhere except church...so why not let them be more informed about spiritual things?
• Went bowling with Amanda and Daniel. I had a pretty decent second game--for me anyway. I think the baby was throwing Amanda off because her bowling ball kept veering all over the place.
• This pregnancy is going be really fast. I thought it would take forever. But it's already almost here. Yes!
• Got to watch some NCAA tournament action last night. Thought American was going to pull off the upset but in the end we see why Villanova was a 3-seed and they were a 14-seed. Great teams always find a way to win games.

Everything is Meaningless

The last 24 hours have really re-emphasized for me and for many around Vincent just how short life can be.  Thankfully Tab, Sarah, and Kara are all going to be fine and were mostly just banged up real bad...but we so often get caught up in trivial matters:

*What clothes we're going to wear

*The test coming up in class

*What we're going to eat for dinner

*What we're going to do this weekend

My mind was turned to this Scripture in Ecclesiastes:

Meaningless!  Meaningless! says the Teacher.  Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless.

--[Ecclesiastes 1.2]

During times like these, we're are presented with what really matters in our lives:

1. God
2. Family
3. Friends
4. Life
5. Happiness
6. Health
7. A Beautiful Day (this one brought up compliments of Tab)

Thank you Lord for keeping the girls safe.  Let our hearts return to you and let us enjoy all that is good in the world.  Amen.

Holiday '08 Rundown

Well, this is my first post post-holidays, and I must say it has been difficult catching back up.  I've been checking emails and blogs and fantasy football for almost 2 hours now.  Once you get behind, it's difficult to catch up.  Here's a small recap of the past couple of weeks:

Thanksgiving was great.  We stayed up here, so it was my first Thanksgiving without my parents.  Almost panicked because I thought there was no Dressing--but the day was saved.

Went to Nashville for our annual Staff Planning Retreat.  Had a blast.  Nashville is one of my favorite cities.  Still think I only saw about half of the Opryland hotel (I think I read somewhere that it has around 70 square acres of space INSIDE).  

Upon returning from Nashville I was stricken with the rotavirus (see pics on earlier post).  That sucked!!!  I would not recommend the rotavirus to anyone.  Uncontrollable puking.  Fatigue.  Can't sleep.  Miserable.  (As I side note, I believe it was Jack's in Harpersville that got me sick.  Anyone who wants to join my boycott feel free to do so).  

Drove to my Grandma's (Dad's mom) in West Va for Christmas.  It took us 14 hours to get there, but only 12 to get back (I know we ate an extra meal, but that still leaves and extra hour.  Perhaps driving downhill helped???).  I love my family.  Dad's side is definitely more lively than my mother's (and louder!).  We saw a little snow, but there wasn't enough to play in.  :(  We froze our tails off when we visited D.C. (I think it was around 20 w/ 30+ mph winds).  Saw Bush's dog chasing a frisbee.  There was a U-Haul in front of the White House (I guess to move Bush out).  I got hustled by a semi-homeless guy.  When went to 1 of 5 (?) Smithsonian buildings--and didn't get to see all of it!!!  D.C. is also probably one of my favorite cities (I love the city, in case you can't tell)

Had a great Christmas with my family (though there was no Dressing).  My Grandmother fixed the SHARPEST homemade mac-n-cheese I've ever tasted.  Had a little bad news.  My Dad's brother has been given a year to live (lung cancer).  On Christmas Day, he had to go to the hospital.  The cancer has spread to his other lung and throughout his body.  Remember him in your prayers.

There was tons of other details, but right now my mind is going hay-wire (I had two cups of coffee this morning).  I am glad to be back.

Thanks to everyone who reads and posts comments.  I love you guys.  I look forward to a great 09!  

Instructions

Found these great tips on Brad Leach's blog.  I think these will definitely help my parenting skills:

Hurricanes in December

I would like to start off stating the obvious: Hurricanes don't occur in December.  And though a meteorological hurricane may be far from present, a "life hurricane" is not.  Last week was--in a word--crazy for me.  Things started off slow.  I had a hard time focusing--especially at the church, I lacked energy, and nothing was going on.  It was setting up to be quite a pedestrian week.  

Then Wednesday came.  I'm not entirely sure that I've ever had a day like Wednesday.  The closest I could compare Wednesday to would be an experience I had in 3rd Grade:  Hurricane Opal.  I lived in Southeast Alabama then, so we lived relatively close to the Gulf.  Hurricane Opal came through and wreaked havoc on our area.  We were without power for a day or two, there were trees down (my granddad lost his barn/shed).  It was chaotic.  Wednesday was kind of like that.  For whatever reason, I felt depressed (I guess that's the right word) when I woke up.  Then the day continued to get worse as several "flare-ups" occurred.  Then there was a mediocre worship service, which got slightly better because I actually didn't feel like the teaching went that bad, then slightly worse because people didn't respond to the altar call.

So I went home and my wife and I unpacked the day's happenings and were about to head to bed, when one of us got the wacky idea to check if Amanda was pregnant.  Three minutes later we went from extremely low to the top of the world...we are pregnant!  

So the rest of the week was spent telling family and friends about our exciting news.  So this week has definitely been like a hurricane.  Turns out the hurricanes in December aren't that bad :)  

On the Way

I had a really cool way I was going to announce this, but I don't have time to get the stinkin pic to upload, so here it is>>>

Amanda and I are having a baby!!!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled (really quite an understatement)!!