Princess Peanut turns 4

My little peanut turned 4 a few days ago. It seems that she was born yesterday and at the same time I cannot imagine the world without her. Three months before she was conceived I had had a miscarriage and was quite devasted by it. After the death of that child I felt like God whispered to my spirit that I would be pregnant again in three months. Prior to all of this we had seriously thought we were done having kids but God just wouldn't let us do anything permanent about it. Because of that unsettledness we knew that whatever happened next was in God's hands.

My birthday was about three months after that miscarriage and it just happened to be my birthday, I was a little late but didn't think much of it yet, I'd been a little late before. However, my husband, full of faith, bought me a pregnancy test for my birthday. It was positive! What a wonderful birthday surprise. Thus began my most difficult pregnancy. Food refused to stay in my body going in one end and out the other at a surprisingly rapid pace. The one time in your life where you want to gain weight and I wasn't! In the middle of all that we were closing a VERY long deal on our house and moving into a new one. Add on to that we were anticipating surgery on Sam's heart, which happened to coincide with the move-in date. I was just a wee bit stressed.

On Wednesday, I'd had a doctor's visit and he proclaimed all was well though the baby was a little small, I still had another 5 weeks to go. Sunday, I didn't feel too well and opted to stay home from church while Kelly and the kids went, he had to go since he was preaching that day. I'd had this 'feeling' before and told that baby that it could not come until after daddy was done preaching. He came home without any kids in tow having farmed them all out to friend's houses for the day. We had a lovely quiet lunch and had decided to go visit our friends who had just had their baby on Friday. It was somewhere in the midst of that lunch that contractions began.

They were continuing at a fairly even pace so we figured we'd continue with our plan, head to the hospital, check it out and if all was well, go visit OR have a baby, whichever came first. When we got there, sure enough I was in labour. It wasn't moving along that fast and at about 5:30 or so the contractions stopped so we figured we could go home, but we had to wait for the doctor to give me the okay. She took a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOng time coming, long enough for things to start again a little more intensely! We found out later that what took her so long was another baby from our church that she was delivering!
So off to labour and delivery we went. It was so strange to have labour go on for so long - 12 hours was a record! (the longest being 4.5 hours) Little did we know that our families were extremely worried since it had never taken this long before. Elizabeth was born at about 1 AM, with the neo-natal doctors standing at the ready since she was 5 weeks early. We got to hold her for about and hour before they whisked her away due to blood sugar issues, irregular heart beat and low body temp. We stayed in the hospital for about a week to make sure everything was good and then headed home. What a blessing this sweet little girl has been to our home.
Elizabeth loves to dance and sing and play. Her name means promise of God, and that's what she is. Happy birthday princess peanut, we love you so very much!