I wanted to get some pictures of the kids with Josiah in utero…however, I’m not so confident in my stretch marked plagued belly to show it off…so, we got some cute pictures of them touching my “clothed” belly. Zoe was more than cooperative. Ace was a little hesitant. Liam, we had to ask where my belly was and take the picture before he pulled my shirt up.

We are all getting excited about Josiah coming. I’m anxious to get through vacation before he comes. I have enjoyed this pregnancy. However, this past month has found me more physically limited and frustrated than I remember being with the others. I’m hurting a great deal more due to vericose veins and of course, my contractions are getting stronger. The back pain is minimal (with that minor episode a few weeks ago) but the big bulge in my front keeps me from doing a lot of things. I have all of Josiah’s things ready and we’re ready to pack our bags (which I’ll do after vacation). I haven’t registered for the hospital yet but plan on getting the form to do that this week when I go see my doctor.

I would like to have a minimal intervention labor and delivery which means no induction…a first for me. The epidural was not very pleasant last time and scared me because I felt a weird pain on my right side from the epidural going in. I had very little pain block on the right side with both of Liam and Ace’s births and my left side was so numb with Liam that I couldn’t put weight on that leg for several hours after birth. So, with God’s help and my trusty mp3 player…oh, and my wonderful birth coach, Mark, I should be able to get through labor…provided I can start without pitocin. We are praying for a safe and healthy delivery no matter how he gets here!

I was waiting to post these pictures because we wanted to give the gifts to our mom’s for Mother’s day. Each year, I make a scrapbook page for them to frame for the year. I started this three years ago with Mark’s mom. I gave her the scrapbook page and the frame one year then another scrapbook page and the scrapbook to keep it in the next year. We started it last year for my mom and this year she got her scrapbook to keep the pages in. We had some really good pictures this year, so I had trouble just making one page…I had to do two this year. It’ll be interesting to see which pages they choose to frame and which to keep in the scrapbook. We took “non professional” pictures for the spring in anticipation of getting some good professional pictures of all six of us in the fall/Christmas time.

Well, Liam almost made his first trip to the ER. I know I keep typing that every time he hurts him self but he’s gradually getting worse and worse.

Yesterday, while at Mark’s parents home, he was banging on their storm door (which has glass on one part). Mark and I were packing up and had just headed out of the bedroom to find Liam (the other two were outside). As we headed out, we heard what we thought was Liam clanging around then shrill cries. Mark got to him before I did. He had busted out the glass on the storm door and busted up two of his fingers on his left hand. I was okay until we couldn’t get the one finger to stop bleeding.

We thank God that Mark’s brother is a vetrinarian and was able to help evaluate whether stitches were in need or not. We did the pressure thing and then bandaged it up. Right before we left, we looked again and it was doing good. It only started bleeding again after we took the gauze off of it.

Where he got the deep slice is where he bends his finger (on the pointer finger), so after getting home last night, we put a popcicle splint on the finger and used that all day today. It’s healing very nicely and isn’t bleeding anymore but he did give us quite a scare.

He has no qualms about using his hand all bandaged up! I said he was my daredevil!