Moving right along in our plethora of birthdays, Brooke turned five today. We went under the sea to join Mermaid in a birthday celebration. Brooke loves all princesses/famous people with red hair. Rightly so. Here favorites are, of course, Little Mermaid, Strawberry Shortcake, Fiona, and Pippi Longstocking. Brooke invited her friend to come and join us. We found princess jewels that Mermaid had hidden in the living room, pin the sticker on mermaid, and a felt craft that I'd found at Michael's for $1 each. The cake didn't turn out exactly as I had imagined, but it was good enough. Those are gold fish in the ocean, and a Mermaid candle, also from Michael's. She was very excited.
Brooke's Birth Story Part 1
I got pregnant with Brooke when Bethany was only four months old. So, the two of them are only thirteen months apart. My husband had just joined the national guard about six months earlier. He had gotten out of the Marine Corps the previous year, but when 9/11 happened, they tried to recall him. They were originally just taking volunteers, but if they didn't get enough people to volunteer, then they would inforce a total recall. David would have had to go back in because he still had a few months left of inactive status. When you enlist they sign you up for four years active duty and four years of inactive. The inactive is for that reason. They can recall you if necessary. So we weighed our options and decided that he should join the National Guard for one year, which would cancel his inactive time, he could drill one weekend a month for the year and be done. But then, this unit that hadn't been deployed since the Gulf War got called to go to Cuba. My husband was military police and they put a stop loss on military police, meaning "You can't get out until we let you out." David left that October to go to Cuba to guard the detainees. I was three months pregnant with Brooke, and the other kids were 7, 5, 2, and 7 months.
I didn't really have much morning sickness with Brooke, which was good. I was incredibly tired all the time. I had a terrible time with anemia, so much that the doctor had me taking iron twice a day. I've never had a problem with iron. I don't know if it was the back to back pregnancies or stress. I'm not sure how I survived other than by the grace of God. I had an awesome church and friends to help. J cooked me dinner twice a week. Several ladies came in more than once and cleaned house for me. Some men from church came and put up our backyard fence. They mowed the lawn and raked the leaves. They babysat. A dear lady from the bible college where David worked came and watched the kids for every one of my OB appointments. People were so supportive.
Things were fairly uneventful, except for my falling down the stairs, and thinking my water had broken, called 911 and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. But, I've tried to block that out of my memory. I fall all the time, clumsy. Hello, my name is Courtney, and I fall. I also twisted my foot and couldn't walk for two days. By the way, my water had not broken.
Anyhoo, everyone was granted a time of leave, so David was sceduled to fly home for two weeks around my due date. We were totally planning for God to work out the details. We didn't want to schedule an induction or anything. We weren't even sure what we'd do with the other kids when I went to the hospital. We just planned on God to allow Brooke to be born while David was home. He would fly home on a Friday and I was due the following Tuesday. I hadn't delivered early the past four times, hopefully I wouldn't start now.
To be continued...........
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