From a communications standpoint, it probably looks like I'm doing nothing for the mission anymore, and truth be told, it gets very little of my time and attention anymore. When I had one baby, I thought, "Sure, I got this. I can be a working Mom." I was still attending meetings, republishing manuals, making decisions, advising, editing, and I don't remember what else. With a toddler and a baby, it became much harder, but I was still working on some of the requested primary school material, and excited that we had an intern eager to help. He and Anthony scheduled a trip to Tanzania to deliver the material to our partner schools there. The results of the trip were positive; the teachers especially loved the preliminary work I did on adapting our chronological Bible study for children.
Then in September I found out I was pregnant, and this one was totally unplanned. I confessed feeling quite overwhelmed--besides the stuff I still wanted to do for TEN3, we had just bought a house six months earlier and I was deep in projects to get it "up to snuff"--scraping and painting the exterior, sealing cracks and drafts, gathering sheet mulch material to make the soil viable for a garden, cleaning out the shed in hopes of making it more usable--how was I supposed to get all that done with a baby? Then in late December we had our ultrasound and found out it was TWO babies. At that point I just told the team, "I won't be doing much of ANYTHING for TEN3 anymore." No administrative work for sure, I can't reliably get it done. No curriculum design or conversion projects either. I couldn't even keep the newsletter up. I said the one thing I might be able to continue doing is writing the addendum chapters to our CTO Bible course to help teachers adapt it for children. That one I can do without a particular timeline, and without having to struggle to remember where I was in the development. "That's the one thing I want you to work on, then," Anthony said.
Now at 39 weeks, I'm in the struggle of waiting--I am so tired and swollen, and was a bit anxious last week since I was sent to the hospital for a night of monitoring, and even though both babies and I were doing fine, the doctors were still advising an immediate C-section. I declined and went home Saturday. I went to the birth center early Wednesday morning with contractions 4 minutes apart and lasting 2 minutes, but they slowed down when I got there, and about 1pm stopped completely. By 4pm, despite food, two naps, pumping, walking up and downhill in a nearby park, and I don't remember what else, they still had not resumed. The midwives asked if I wanted my water broken, and I said I was kind of okay either way. I then said we might as well get it over with, but upon feeling that if anything my cervix had regressed a bit and the lower baby was higher than a few hours prior, the senior midwife suggested that breaking my water might not be enough to get it going again, in which case I would have to go to the hospital, and they're not going to hear of doing anything but a C-section. So, with both babies still sounding fine on the monitor, I went home, and now three days later, we are still waiting. I guess the only real reason to be unhappy with the wait, though, is that Kenneth began his paternity leave Wednesday. I recommended that he go ahead and switch back to nights and start work again tonight to preserve as much time as possible to help me postpartum.
*Sigh* Thy will be done!
