It is time!

Well, Wyatt's passport is almost here and by next week we should be in Thailand where we will get him circumcised (they don't do that here) and will get him an Indian visa. We will probably be there around 2 weeks and then will fly into Delhi, get our bags and drive back to Shimla! Hooray!!! We have enjoyed this time in Delhi but our hearts long to get back to our little village area and get busy with what we are here to do. We can't wait to introduce Wyatt to life in the mountains and take him to the villages that we go to all the time. It is still freezing cold in Shimla so when we arrive it should only be 2-3 more weeks of frigid weather. Then it will warm up during the day at least. Can't wait!

one point for the parent team!

We are on week 3 with Wyatt and all of a sudden a new cry has developed: the tired cry. I have come to realize that this is the cry that I will battle for many days to come. It happens when we take him out, when he is in his car seat riding down the road, when we are in situations where we pray that he is the perfect baby. This cry becomes angry very quickly and often results in situations where I think he will stop breathing and it will all be my fault. The key to stopping it is pretty easy sometimes....just hold him and rock him and he will stop for a little while. I would lay him down in his crib (aka pack n play) and he would automatically wake up and scream until I picked him up and then he was fine. I would put him in the car seat this week and he would cry until his face was turning blue and I would quickly get him out and hold him until we got to our destination. Wyatt was winning the battle for about 5 days. Every nap I held him, at night he slept with us, ect. Needless to say, I quickly became exhausted and needed some support. India has no laws about car seats. In fact, it is very rare for anyone to have a car seat. Most people just hold the babys. It is also considered cruel to leave a child to sleep alone. Most kids sleep with their mom and dad for several years so they won't be lonely. I have learned that I can't go to my Indian friends for support on this one. Levi and I would have to do it alone. Last night I cracked and called my mama whining about our situation. She gave me a pep talk and today Levi and I were ready to take on the battle. We laid him down after he fell asleep, he woke up and cried and we waited 5 minutes each time to check on him. We would pick him up, calm him down and put him back in his bed. Whew! Those 5 minutes felt like FOREVER! But after 15 minutes of that, our little man finally went off to sleep and we had 3 hours to be "normal". (and I took a nap ;) So Levi and I feel that we have had a victory today. When Wyatt woke up and I told him how proud I was that he slept in his own bed, Levi came behind me and told me how proud he was of me! haha!

Daddy's love

Can you believe the first thing Levi said to me after holding Wyatt is..."I love him so much! When can we have another one?" I almost said, "when you can deliver him yourself!" Levi's pride in the life of his new little boy is almost comical at times. He begs me to take Wyatt out all the time and when we do, he carries him around with the biggest smile on his face you have ever seen. He constantly tells me how much he loves Wyatt and how Wyatt is the cutest little rascal he has ever seen. This week Levi has even taken up the chore of changing some of Wyatt's diapers. A chore that I feel shows the love of a daddy! Levi takes lots of naps with Wyatt. I think this must be their "bonding time". They are just so sweet. The day we took Wyatt home from the hospital, Levi brought his suit and changed for the trip home. My mom couldn't believe he wanted to do this, but after he did it my mom said that it was cool. That Levi made that time special by dressing up for it. I agree. I'm so glad he had that suit made just for the birth of his son. What I thought was just and excuse to get a suit made that he will never wear in Shimla, turned out to be a pretty special event. I, on the other hand, did good to find some shoes to wear out of the hospital. I ended up wearing my house shoes!

For I know the plans I have for you...

I must be honest here. Levi and I are very passionate about living overseas. We love it. We are complete, fulfilled, and fill as if we have a purpose here. Every day we are reminded why we are in India and we are thankful for the gift of living and being here. But as we were preparing for Wyatt to enter the world, we battled with the Lord over raising him away from Mississippi. We LOVE our homes and we Love our families and friends and just can't imagine Wyatt growing up away from all that. We wanted him to have strong roots and were not excited at all that the Lord may call Wyatt away from that one day. We saw Wyatt being a "strong warrior" on the battlefield with us, and then going back to MS one day to make a difference. This is so crazy but the day he was born was the day that the fight was over. The moment I held him and looked at his perfect face, was the moment that I realized that God has already formed him, given him a purpose, planned a path for him to follow. The choice was never mine and it never would be. We would be obedient to the Lord and the Lord would lead Wyatt Taylor Lance where He wants Wyatt to go. We prayed that God would take this precious life that he created and use it only for His glory, for His purpose, for His praise. What an amazing way to learn a lesson from the Lord.

Sleep when the baby sleeps?

We are now getting close to Wyatt's 2 week birthday! Time is flying by. I feel like my own days and nights are getting confused. I'm constantly up at night feeding, changing diapers, ect. This is Wyatt's day time. By 6 am I am exhausted, Wyatt is handed to Levi and for some crazy reason just falls asleep until 9 when of course, he eats again. How on earth Levi has the gift of making him sleep during his time I have no idea! Sometimes I feel like the moment I get within 2 feet of Wyatt, he realizes that he is hungry! We as crazy parents thought we had him on a schedule the first week because he was waking up every 3 hours to eat. Now his appetite has increased and he is waking up a lot more! During the day only 3 hours still. But at night, it is like every hour and a half! Passifiers do not satisfy this boy at night and neither does any amount of cuddling with mom. It is milk or let me throw a fit! So, I am now the dairy cow in this house and it is crazy how exhausting it can be! The problem is, the moment I scream for my independence and let little Wyatt know that his mama is not meant to be "this type of mother" that I am meant to live overseas and change the world, he looks into my eyes and suddenly I am reminded that this little man is my world. That I would lay it all down for him. That my life is different forever and that is not such a bad thing.

14 hours and you want to do what?!?

Well, as many of you may know by now, our birthing experience was far from blissful! It all started when the doctor noticed a small level of amnionic fluid in the last ultrasound (on his due date) so she said I needed to induce. She would see me again on Monday (this was a Thursday) with a major possibility of being admitted. So Monday morning we all went to the hospital with our bags and the doctor said we would wait until Tuesday night. They would admit me then and on Wed. start inducing. For some reason, I was so sad about this. I really wanted to know what it was like to feel contractions and get excited and everyone go to the hospital. I had seen it on the movies and really for some reason pictured this to be the best way. So that night while I was sleeping, Levi prayed that the Lord would bless this strange desire to go into labor naturally. At 4 am I woke up feeling like I had food poisoning. The day before I drank some water that I thought tasted weird so I just knew that I was about to be sick for a few days. My stomach was really sick and I kept having pretty intense cramps. It didn't hit me that it could be labor until about 6. Then the pains were coming every 8 minutes or so. At 7:30 I thought I better wake up my mama just to see. She started timing and by 8 the contractions were 5 minutes apart. Levi woke up at 8:30 and wanted to call the doctor right away. I didn't really want to because I knew she would want me to come right in and then if it took too long she would want to do a c-section. But, Levi couldn't wait and he called her. She did want me to come in because she was going to be at another hospital all day and wanted to see where I was in the process so she could know when to come in for delivery. So around 9 or 10 we head to the hospital. Levi and I think this hospital is one of the nicest in all of India. It is totally fancy in our minds. My mom, on the other hand, had a different opinion of the delivery room. She was not impressed to say the least. By 12pm my contractions were under 2 minutes and were intense. I had real bad back labor. Levi was on one side holding my hands while mama was on the other pushing a wet rag into my back. They never offered an epidural, and I never asked. I really wanted to try it without any pain meds and felt that I could. I had no idea how to breathe but my mom told me to find a focal point and beat the contractions by breathing so that was my game plan. I had seen people breathing on t.v. so I copied them and did the exact same thing! If I so much as groaned, my mama was there to remind me to breathe and beat it and that is how that time went. At 2 someone came and checked me and told me I had only dilated 2 cm. I felt that the baby could come at any time, they said not likely. The contractions slowed down and I got a small break before the doctor came at 4, broke my water, and said I had only dilated 4 cm. Then it was back to really intense labor. At this point for some reason, I feel like I had a total "out of body" experience. The pain, the exhaustion, ect. led to me gagging after every contraction and throwing up all that I had in me. The doctor came in and out at that point and I began to hear conversations going on but not really understanding them. Someone was putting oxygen on me which I didn't want until my mom told me that it would help the baby. I took it and continued breathing (feeling like this was not "beating" the contractions anymore but not knowing what else to do). Then a little while later I heard talks of a c-section. I couldn't make any decisions. My mama pleaded for me because she knew how much I didn't want this. It didn't help. Levi didn't want to make such a decision and I finally said that if we were going to have to do one anyway, we better do it now than let me stay in intense labor a few more hours and do it anyway. My mama made doctor Grover promise to check me one more time before the surgery to make sure I wouldn't dilate any more. And she did.
This is the worst part. Levi and my mom couldn't go in with me at first for the c-section so as they are prepping me for surgery I am still in major labor with contractions every minute or so. The anesthesiologist is yelling at me to be still, the nurses won't touch me, there are no bed rails and I feel like I am going to die right there. They are taking their dear sweet time getting ready while I am begging them to hurry or to help me or something. Keep in mind that I never made a sound (besides breathing) during the whole labor thing until now. Then I became slightly dramatic hoping my performance would earn me some much needed help. It didn't and after about 4 or 5 contractions, they finally gave me shots in my spine. This is not an epidural. It requires for you to lay flat on your back and not move your head but from side to side for 24 hours. So, the next 24 hours while everyone got to enjoy our sweet Wyatt, I got to look at the side of his face while a nurse propped him up beside me.
Overall, I would say that I'm so thankful I went into labor on my own. I really loved that experience. And I'm so glad I did labor naturally. It was hard and painful and I'm sure my mama and Levi would never want to experience it again but the next day I can honestly say that I didn't remember the worst of labor. As far as the C-section goes, Wyatt was face down in the birth canal and could not fit. A cord was wrapped around his neck and his body and according to Dr. Grover he was not in the position to deliver properly. If we continued, it would have been very dangerous. So I am so glad we did the C-section. I am still dealing with the results of that decision, but I have a perfectly healthy baby who I would now do 50 c-sections for if it meant keeping him well. So, here is our little one a day old.