On Monday he weighed 4.25kg, so just over a kilo heavier than when he was 4 days old.  I was shocked to be honest; I thought he weighed less, as the guidelines my midwife gave me said that he should gain about 150g per week.  I really thought he was still less than 4 kilo’s.  I guess one doesn’t notice how much they grow if you see them all day every day.

He is getting cuter by the day, by the way.  He started laughing last Friday, I thought I was mistaken, but he laughed so many times yesterday that there is definitely no doubt anymore!  He’s only laughed when I’m around, so no one else has seen it yet, but DH just missed it last night.  Baby G laughed 3 times just after DH got into the bath, but he could hear him at least.  I really want to try and capture it on video for DH and the rest of the family when he does it again.

Other things that he does that are so cute are:  He loves to stretch when he wakes up and he pulls the funniest faces, he chats up a storm and I just love listening to that and he absolutely loves to fall asleep on mommy and daddy’s chests and the look of content is just wonderful to see, and I also love the way he likes to sometimes lick my nipple when the milk is dripping out!

He loves to cuddle and would do it all day, and then my favourite thing with him is when I’m breastfeeding him, what a special time of bonding between the two of us!

I realized that I haven’t posted any pictures of baby G’s room yet, so I took some for you and I also want to include a picture of the cradle that we are borrowing from DH’s cousin.  I never realized how nice the cradle would be until baby G was born.  He sleeps in there during the nights and it is so convenient because now he can sleep in our bedroom for as long as he fits in there.  If you can get hold of one, I would highly recommend it! One of the recliner/rockers we bought is also in our bedroom at the moment and I feed baby G from there at night.

During the day he sleeps in my arms mostly, or next to me on the bed.  We have a Moses basket in our living room, but baby G rarely sleeps in that, and if he does it’s not for long, although he is sleeping there at the moment!

The cradle

The cot and toy box

Wall cubes

Moses Basket

What I do with An.drew Wom.mack’s teachings is I download them and save them on my computer and then I listen to it on my phone with the headphones on anytime I think I have some time, even if it is in 15-20 minutes increments at a time, which is usually when I’m feeding baby G nowadays.  That way I can listen to one or two teachings a day, most days.

Recently I listened to How to become a water walker: lessons in faith again and one of the best parts of that teaching is his description of how we can have faith and unbelief at the same time and how the unbelief can counter balance your faith.  He describes it with the following example:  Say you have one huge weight and you hook up a horse to that weight to pull it.  If you then hook up another horse of equal strength to the opposite side of that weight and get that horse to pull in the opposite direction, the weight will not move.  It is the same with having faith and unbelief at the same time.  I can highly recommend this teaching for those that feel that their faith is not where it’s supposed to be or to those who know they have faith, but they also struggle with unbelief.

One teaching that meant a lot to me recently was Hardness Of Heart, something I did not believe I had a problem with, but he spoke of it in the teaching, ”how to become a water walker” and that convinced me to listen to it.  Boy, did I need to hear that!  I never realized that my pregnancy and becoming a mommy had hardened my heart towards God.  Here he explains that sometimes life just gets in the way with your relationship with God and once something becomes more important than your relationship with God, your heart hardens towards him.

The teaching I’m currently busy listening to is How To Receive God’s Best, and that one is amazing!  It teaches about God’s blessings, how a blessing is better than a miracle and it is a good general teaching on healing and prosperity and how God has blessed us abundantly and that we must learn to receive it.

The hard parts are that I haven’t had more than 4 hours sleep in almost 4 weeks at one stretch and that there are times when you just can’t go to the loo, no matter how urgently you need to, or you can’t eat until your baby allows you, and it’s happened that I’ve only had breakfast by 11h00 in the morning and by then I felt like fainting already. I’m keeping protein bars in the bedroom for when I need something to eat immediately. And I won’t even mention how difficult it is to set time aside to get a shower, and wash and dry my hair!

I also never realized that sometimes your baby does not allow you to sleep during the day. I always thought newborns slept a lot more than baby G does, and there are times when he sleeps maybe a half an hour here or there during the day, and I always assumed that I would get opportunities to nap during the day when he naps. Well, that has happened maybe every second day so far.

The other hard thing is that I’m exclusively breastfeeding, so I have to do every single feed, and that means I have to wake up every time he wants to feed. There is no break for me. But I try to console myself with the fact that it does get better with time and I must say from this week he has been sleeping a lot better. I think the breakthrough was that DH and I identified the problem, and that was that cramps have been bothering baby G a lot and keeping him awake. We weren’t very keen on giving him any medication but eventually we tried to give him some Tela.ment drops and since then he’s been sleeping a bit better, which makes a huge difference to mommy!

That was all the negative stuff, now for the good stuff: Baby G is just adorable, and quite an easy happy baby. We think he is the most gorgeous baby in the world, but I guess every parent thinks that. He loves to smile at us and when he does, we are putty in his hands. He almost never cries, only when he has really bad cramps and that is fortunately not often, or when I’m too slow to offer him a boobie.

He loves to chat and sometimes it sounds like real words. Like the first night after he was born it sounded like he said pa-pa (Afrikaans for daddy.) We joked that he is a little genius and that he said his first word already! He is also a strong baby, grabbing and holding on to all kinds of things, and it’s really difficult to get him to release his hold. He is also a strong kicker, and loves to kick one’s hands away when we change his nappies.

I knew I loved him a lot already when I was pregnant, but I must say nothing prepared me for the love I would feel after he was born. I was also surprised how protective I am of him. The second night in hospital the one nurse took him out of our room to try to get a wind out, and at the same time give me some rest, and I didn’t like that at all! DH was on the loo and when he came out I asked him to go check up on baby G at the nurse’s station. DH said that I asked very calmly and politely but my face said, “Go fetch my baby now!” Already I cannot imagine our lives without him.

Breastfeeding is going well now, but boy, o boy, I now know why so many people give up. It not easy! The first day I almost gave up, as I was totally overwhelmed and baby G did not latch easily. But fortunately there are many midwives working at Ge.nesis Clinic and they helped me a lot, and by the second day something had clicked and things were better. Every now and then Baby G still latches wrong to my right nipple and then it’s sore for a day or so, but generally he latches very well and he empties my boobies regularly.

We are actually surprised how well it is going and how much milk I am producing. Even with the operation I’ve had on my left breast, where about a third of the tissue in my breast was removed, (I admit I believed for a creative miracle here since before I got pregnant, so that I can breastfeed, and I know I received that), I’m producing more than enough milk, and that left breast is producing just as much milk as the right breast.

Baby G generally only drinks from one breast at a time, and he empties it in about 15 minutes, but in the late afternoons and early evening he is usually very hungry and he will drink so much that he will empty both breasts twice before he goes to sleep at about 20h00. After this he usually sleeps for about 4 hours and I usually also fall into bed as soon as he is asleep in the hope that I also get 4 hours uninterrupted sleep. But after that one long stretch he usually sleeps for 2 hours and then after that only for 1 hour until morning. It also usually takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours to get him to go to sleep again, depending on whether we manage a dream feed or if he wakes up completely and if he has cramps.

Baby G also doesn’t like to be swaddled. Every now and again I try again, but that usually ends up in screaming and then I remove it again. He was happy to be swaddled for only about the first week, and then we noticed that he would fight with his arms until they are free, so we swaddled him with his arms bent and his hands close to his face. That worked for another week or so and because it’s been really hot here, we didn’t swaddle him during the day and he got used to that, and now it’s almost impossible.

I know you must all be wondering what baby G looks like by now so I’ll post a few pictures for you. They were all taken by me with my phone. Hopefully we will get our professional newborn pictures in about a week’s time, then you will see some nice pictures, but until then these have to be good enough.

By lunchtime on 26 Dec I was convinced I will have to wait some more before our baby will come.  Even though I had lots of Braxton Hicks contractions it felt like nothing was going to happen that day and I even told my sister so over the phone.  After lunch I took a nap, since we had a very busy weekend due to Christmas and I was extremely tired.

During the nap I felt some contractions, but that was not unusual, since I’ve felt like that many times before.  When I got up after the nap though I felt some vaginal discharge come out and I went to check on it.  It was mustard yellow and watery and was about the amount of a couple of tablespoons, but it turned into a pinkish red, so I thought it must be my mucous plug.  I’ve read that you can lose your mucous plug days or even weeks before labour, so I didn’t take much notice.  I did put on a pad so that I could check later to see if there is more discharge.

By about 15h40 I noticed that the contractions were getting a little painful and that they were regular, so I started to time them on an app I had on my Ga.laxy ta.b.  The contractions were just under 5 minutes apart, and that confused me a lot, because it didn’t feel like I would imagine contractions to feel.  I was told by my midwife that if there is doubt it is probably not real contractions, and that I would know when it’s the real thing.

A little while later (17h00) I told DH about it because the contractions were getting even closer together and the discharge was now a light brown colour and DH made me SMS the midwife.  She said that she would phone me at about 20h00.  She changed her mind about half an hour later and phoned me to chat with me and hear how I was doing.  I had decided in the mean time that I think that the discharge might have been my waters breaking, and that the colour could be due to meconium, so I mentioned to the midwife that I thought my waters might have broken, but that the volume wasn’t much.  She told me to use a glycerine suppository to get my bowels moving and to time my contractions (I had stopped doing that, since I thought I was doing it wrong).

We watched an episode of Ca.stle while timing the contractions this time on DH’s I.phone and we realised they were just over 2 minutes apart so at 19h00 I phone the midwife and told her so.  She advised us to come in immediately to Gen.esis clinic.

We arrived at the clinic just before 20h00 and the midwife was already waiting for us.  My contractions and baby Gian’s heartbeat was monitored and my contractions were less than 2 minutes apart and genuine contractions, much to my surprise, as they were still not very sore.  I was able to breathe through them quite comfortably.  Up to this stage DH and I still thought that it might be a false alarm, but we were told I was definitely in labour.

The midwife then proceeded to check my cervix and found that although my cervix was very thin it didn’t dilate at all.  She could not even insert the tip of her finger.  She decided to try something she usually uses for mom’s who want a VBAC, by inserting a catheter into my uterus with a balloon and inflate the balloon with 50 ml of saline to try to stretch my cervix open, but she warned that if it doesn’t work that I will have to have a c-section.  When the catheter was inserted she confirmed that my waters had indeed broken and that there was meconium in the amniotic fluid.

After this was done the contractions suddenly became incredibly sore and it actually felt like I had one long contraction that only differed from incredibly sore to almost unbearable, and after about 10 minutes I begged for some kind of pain relief.  I was given laughing gas but it felt like it didn’t help at all.  The midwife put me back on the monitor to check on baby Gian’s heartbeat and it was extremely high and that indicated that baby was in distress, so she immediately took out the catheter again.  She said that she would check on my cervix again in 45 minutes and if it didn’t dilate enough that she will call the doctors to come in for a c-section.  (They were already notified of my case and on standby)

At 22h00 the midwife said that my cervix was still the same as earlier and she started to prep me for surgery.  By the time she was done with this all the doctors were waiting for us already outside my room.

The midwife was so nice, all the time explaining to me what the next step would be.  That helped me a lot because I was incredibly scared of a c-section.  Eventually all the prep work was done, I had the spinal and DH could sit next to me.  He barely sat down when he said that they’ve already cut me open.  After a little while the midwife explained that I would hear suctioning and that shortly after that our baby would be born.  So when I heard the sound of suctioning I asked DH to try to flatten the blue covers on my chest so that I could see, but I didn’t know that it was sterile and we weren’t allowed to touch it.

The gynae heard me though and he stopped and asked the anaesthetist to lift up my head (what a wonderful  doctor!) and I was able to see how he lifted our baby out head first, facing me, and we even made eye contact before they whisked him away to suction him, because of the meconium in the amniotic fluid.  I lay there with tears rolling down my face, so incredibly grateful that we were eventually parents.

DH left my side to make a video of our baby’s first moments and after what felt like an eternity I could finally hear him cry.  It took a while before he started to breathe, but he was fine.  His apgars were 8 and 10.  The paediatrician and the midwife said that he had a nice colour, beautiful skin and a strong grasp as he was clutching at everything he could lay his hands on.  He also pee’d all over them.  After about 20 minutes he was brought to me and put on my chest and less than 5 minutes later he was drinking from my breast.  I could only stare at our beautiful baby, and DH was actually a bit worried because I didn’t say a word for such a long time.  I just kissed DH’s hand and was totally amazed to see our baby.  DH told me that he was so proud of me and thanked me for our beautiful baby.  He was a proud daddy and totally in love from the first moment.

Baby Gian was allowed to lie skin to skin on me and drink from my breasts for about 2 hours, before he was dressed and allowed to sleep in bed with DH.  I didn’t sleep a wink that night, just so incredibly happy to be a mommy at last!  DH also didn’t sleep much, he kept on staring at our baby, also totally in awe, and a little scared that he might hurt our baby.

He weighed 3,43 kg and measured 53 cm.  His names mean gift from God/God is gracious and bringer of light.

We are totally in love and awe!  Praise the Lord!

Why is this a wonderful, glorious day?  To quote the angel who brought the message of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds:  Luke 2:10-14  (KJV):  “¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  ¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Today we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself, gave up His Godliness so that we can participate in all the benefits of the atonement.  What are those benefits?

1.   Financial prosperity:  2 Corinthians 8:9 (KJV) says that, “⁹For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”
2.   Healing:  1 Peter 2:24 (KJV), it says, “²⁴Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” And Matthew 8:16 -17 (KJV) it says, “¹⁶When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: ¹⁷That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.”
3.   Deliverance from demonic oppression, depression and evil:  Galatians 1:4 (KJV) that says that Jesus “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world,”
4.  And last but not least, salvation and the forgiveness of our sins:  Romans 5:8-10 (KJV) “⁸But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  ⁹Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.  ¹⁰For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

Please know that all of this was freely given by Jesus, we can accept it or reject it.  It is available already – the full price was paid a long time ago.  God loves us so much that He gave His only Son, so why don’t you accept what He has sacrificed Himself for?

All of this was done, because God loves us so much:  Romans 8:31-39 (KJV):  “³¹What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?  ³²He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?  ³³Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.  ³⁴Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.  ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  ³⁶As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.  ³⁷Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  ³⁸For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, ³⁹Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Merry Christmas to all, I wish all the blessings of God upon you over this Christmas time and for the new year of 2012!

With love from, Marion, DH, little baby, Shumi, KT and Nandi!

I saw the midwife yesterday, and before the appointment I wanted to ask her to do a stretch and sweep, but I totally forgot to ask that!  DH’s sister went with, since she is visiting here at the moment, and we were talking about so many other things, some of it questions she had, that I completely forgot to ask!  I’m not too upset about it though, since the feeling of urgency for our baby to be born has passed.

I thought about it and I think I wanted him to be born about a week early so that all of the family members who are going on holiday could still see him, and I hoped that DH could spend as much time with him as possible, but DH is only going back to work on the 9^th of January, so there is still plenty of time.  Almost all of the family that are going on holiday have left already, it’s only my cousin J who still needs to go on Saturday morning, so it’s too late now.  Our baby can just as well come now whenever he wants to…

Our baby was very relaxed again yesterday with the appointment, and we could see it in his heartbeat, it varied between 127-137 bpm.  He did give the midwife one little kick though.  She could feel that there is still plenty of amniotic fluid surrounding him and she said that my placenta should still be healthy as long as I regularly feel our baby move around, which I do.  The intensity of the movements is just not as strong most of the time, because things are getting cramped in there.

Our baby’s head is nicely engaged, but my bump measurement is bigger again, and combined with my weight gain of 700g (9.5 kg gain over my pregnancy) in the past week, indicates that baby had a growth spurt in the past week.  But I think some of the weight gain is also due to water retention because my feet have been swollen a lot more since this past Sunday.  Apparently that is caused by the fact that our baby’s head is putting pressure on the veins coming up from my legs.  The midwife recommended that I take tissue salts 9 & 11 for the swelling.

I also had a good Braxton Hicks contraction and the midwife was extremely happy with that, so it seems the raspberry leaf tea and the tablets are doing their job.  My uterus is getting plenty of exercise before I go into labour.  I must say I got one very sore and a few more slightly sore contractions later during the day and the evening.  I also had AF like back pain for most of the afternoon and the evening, but I went to bed and this morning I feel nothing except the painless BH contractions again.  But I’m seeing it all as a good sign that things are slowly but surely moving along.

My urine sample was once again perfect yesterday, no glucose at all, so I really think my breakfast was the problem when I ate the muesli and yogurt, and I had the honey in my tea.  She even complemented me on the fact that she could see I was drinking plenty of water.  My blood pressure was also perfect so the midwife said that I am extremely healthy and that I definitely have a very low risk pregnancy – not bad for an “old chick”!  And I know a lot of doctors love to use age as an excuse for a pregnancy being high risk…

It’s incredibly hot here again, so that is the worst for me, combined with the fact that my feet are so uncomfortable due to the swelling and the fact that I can’t sit comfortably anymore due to all the pressure in my pelvic area.  Otherwise I feel fine and totally happy to still be pregnant.  I’m savouring the last few days.  I know that I still have some freedom with my time and what I want to do, when I want to do things so I will take full advantage of that while I still can.

But I must say we have tried everything we know to try to hurry things along a bit since last week, but none of the “tricks” we tried seemed to work.  We have tried to BD quite often, I have been walking quite a lot, but since the fall, DH doesn’t want me to walk at the gym or in the streets anymore, as I fell outside the gym right after walking for 30 minutes at quite a  fast pace.  So I’m doing my walking in shopping malls now, but not as often as I would like to.

I refuse to try the castor oil, that sounds like a horrible experience, and the midwife warned against taking or eating things that might give me diarrhoea as she thinks it would make me too weak for the labour experience, but also it’s not a good thing when you want to give birth in water, since the water will have to be changed and the bath cleaned should one have an “accident” in the bath.

I’m taking raspberry leaf tablets now too and I’m still taking the evening primrose oil capsules, some evenings I use two vaginally, since I’ve noticed that I’m leaking oil when I go to the loo on my many trips during the night.  The midwife said it’s ok to do that.

Sorry TMI following:  Speaking of going to the loo many times, sometimes it feels like our baby is using my bladder as a trampoline.  What a weird feeling!  I might feel ok one moment then suddenly I have the urge to go to the loo, and then a split second later that feeling is gone again.  If he moves around a lot it feels like, “I need to pee… O, no not anymore… O, now I need to pee again… No not anymore…”  On and on like that.  I have also had times when I was sitting on the loo, squeezing out a few drops and suddenly baby moves and it squirts out, and when he moves away again, it’s back to drops again.

I don’t mind any of this really; I am still in such awe that we are so close to having our own baby.  I promise you that there are days when I think back to the beginning of the year or last year and I cannot help bursting out in tears of joy and being so grateful for our baby, and then I just cannot help praising God.  I really am still so amazed at His goodness and how almighty He is.

Yesterday we were married 15 years and 3 months.  We started TTC around our 3^rd anniversary.  So we have been waiting for our baby for 12 years and 3 months.  12 years and 3 months! No amount of trying on our own ever even closely resulted in a pregnancy, and so many FS’s tried to get us pregnant with 8 IUI’s and 3 fresh IVF’s and 1 FET.  Ok, the last clinic I went to did manage to get me pregnant, but then I miscarried.  The odds of me having a live baby from IVF at the age of 40 was 5%, and then God gave us this incredible miracle!  I got pregnant on my own, naturally after taking only Folic acid and evening primrose oil capsules for months.  No other medication – no treatment from any doctor.  I used ovulation prediction sticks and I made sure we BD’d around ovulation time.  That is all, and off course I believed that God would heal both DH and I and that he would make me pregnant and this blog is proof of that.

Wow!  Absolutely amazing to me…  Praise the Lord!  He is good and NOTHING is impossible for Him! Thank you Jesus!

Last year we went away, basically I felt I had to flee town, because the due date of our lost babies was approaching fast and I just knew I couldn’t cope being at home, celebrating Christmas and pretending all is fine, when I felt like I was dying inside.  The problem was one can’t flee from your thoughts and emotions and it was still hard, because I didn’t think about it before, but there were lots of preggie bellies on the beach and also lots of moms with tiny little babies.  Right opposite our campsite was one family with a little baby and also at the campsite next to us.  There were still a couple of times when I just felt like crying my heart out, but I couldn’t because there was just no privacy anywhere.

The year before that was also very tough over Christmas time, because we found out in the beginning of the month that our 2^nd IVF had failed, and about a week later my mom announced that she might have uterine cancer.  Another tense week or so later and the cancer was confirmed and my mom was booked for an emergency hysterectomy.  She was still in hospital on Christmas day and we had to visit her there in hospital before getting ready to host the Christmas party at our house for my in-laws and my dad.

This year I was certain it was going to be a good Christmas, when I found out I was pregnant and our due date was just 3 days before Christmas.  Little did I know that my mom would not make it to Christmas.  Now, even though we are so excited about our baby coming, I just cannot forget about my mom and I am filled with sadness and grief that she will not be here to share this joyous time with us.

And it’s not just that.  My heart aches for my dad, because a couple of days after Christmas, on the 28^th it would have been my parent’s 43^rd anniversary and on the 16^th of January it would have been my mom’s 64^th birthday.  So there are a lot of important dates coming up, and with each one of those we are reminded of the fact that my mom is not here anymore.

The big issue here is that I don’t know if I can be there for my dad, like I would want to be, when our baby is born.  I had hoped that my sister would take him away with her on holiday, so that she could be there for him, but her MIL had a stroke about a month ago and they actually need to be there for her now.  So they are holidaying close to her MIL’s place to hopefully spent as much time with her as possible, but also to sort some of her stuff out, because the doctors said that she cannot live on her own anymore…  I know my poor sister is also taking a lot of strain, dealing with her grief over my mom as well as the issues with her MIL, who isn’t the easiest person to get along with since she had the stroke.  She just won’t co-operate with them at all, she is incredibly stubborn and doesn’t want to listen to reason…

My cousin J, who has really been such a huge rock, especially concerning my dad, by being there for him too, is also going away to visit her family, so I guess, I’ll just have to juggle it somehow.  Fortunately my MIL has really been such a star, by also including my dad in a lot of the family activities, and I am really grateful for that!  But I keep wondering what will happen should I go in labour on Christmas day or a day or 2 before and I can’t spend time with him, because we might still be in hospital…  I don’t want my dad to spend Christmas on his own…

I know I shouldn’t worry about things like that – it will all sort itself out.  We don’t know when our baby will come, and it may not even be a problem at all.  I think I felt a bit overwhelmed last night.  I realized that we are almost left alone here, and the only people to support us with the baby will be my MIL, DH’s sister and his granny, and all the responsibility for my dad rests on my shoulders.

And during all of these thoughts I just kept thinking that I really, really wish my mom was here to celebrate this wonderful time with us instead of us mourning the fact that she is not here.  I’ve dreamed of the day when we will hold our own baby in our arms for so very long, and now it will be marred by sadness.

A little while ago I actually realised that I was angry with my mom – angry that she had to die, and would not meet her first grandson, angry that she couldn’t believe for healing or that she couldn’t fight the disease.  Fortunately I realized that was totally unreasonable of me, and then my cousin J told me something that had us both in tears.

She said that while we were in hospital with my mom, during one of the last few days, I felt our baby kick and I told everyone so.  Cousin J, was rubbing my belly and talking so excitedly about our baby and then she looked over to my mom and she saw such incredible sadness in my mom’s eyes.  She thinks that my mom just knew she was dying and that she was going to miss out on so much, and that made her sad.  I didn’t see this, I don’t even remember the moment, but then I realised that it is so unfair that I was angry at my mom, off course she would have wanted things to be different too!

I want to post a picture of my mom.  It was taken by my MIL at my MIL’s 60^th birthday party in June 2007.  Long before my mom got sick – so she still looks healthy here and that is the way we all want to remember her.  It was this photo that was on the pamphlet we had at her funeral.

I miss you so much mom…    I so wish things were different, and that you were still here with us…

By Monday morning I was searching the internet early signs of labour and even reading up on as many birth stories I could in the hope that I would recognize some signs that would indicate that labour was near, but unfortunately that was not the case.  Those signs that I do have, like the Braxton Hicks contractions for instance, don’t mean that labour is imminent.  So it seems it can still take a while, and that was why I decided to try to relax about it, because I realized that I was driving myself crazy…

It reminded me a lot of being in the 2ww and trying to find any symptoms that could indicate that I was pregnant, but just like the 2ww there is nothing definite and there is not much one can do, except wait it out.

This week was actually a good week for my body – I really felt quite good.  I think the overcast and rainy weather earlier this week helped a lot.  I wasn’t so hot and uncomfortable, but I’m still really tired in the afternoons.  It’s just difficult to take a nap, almost every day there is something that disturbs me and wakes me after about 30 minutes to maybe 45 minutes.  I sleep quite well at night though, so I can’t complain that I don’t get enough sleep.

I’ve been having more Braxton Hicks contractions again; some were a bit painful, but not too much.  I’ve been getting some slight pains in my lower back, almost AF like, but as soon as I get excited and think maybe this is it, it goes away again.  I’ve also had some cramps in my intestines, but no diarrhoea (since that is a good sign that labour is approaching), and then I’ve had some stabbing pains in my lower abdomen again and in my vagina.  Also I can feel our baby’s head in my pelvis and it is getting really difficult to bend that area, and getting in and out of bed has been difficult.

I must say I’ve been blessed throughout this pregnancy.  I didn’t gain much weight, even though I ate pretty much what I wanted to when I wanted to, I have no stretch marks at all, only a little swelling, no varicose veins, no haemorrhoids even though I’ve been constipated most of the time, or any of the other nasty pregnancy symptoms that women normally get.  The few issues that did came up, were easily resolved, like for instance my low lying placenta and the gestational diabetes scare.  All I can say is that I know it’s due to God’s blessings, for I knew from the book Super.natural Child.birth that it was not necessary to have that, and I in fact confessed and believed that I would be spared from all the common pregnancy problems.  So Praise God!  All the glory must go to Him!

I had my check up again today – all is once again well.  My weight is up 8.7 kg’s from the start of my pregnancy, I once again had no glucose in my urine, but I did have some ketones, but that was probably due to the fact that I was a bit starved before I had lunch, and I had lunch not long before I saw the midwife.  My blood pressure was again a little low, but still normal for a pregnant woman.  Baby’s heartbeat was between 131-137bpm, and I think he was sleeping, because for a change I did not feel him during the consultation. Our baby also has the hiccups quite frequently now – a couple of times a day I would say on average at least 3 times a day.  The midwife said that he can come any time now or be late, and I so wished she could be more specific, but off course she cannot.

Our baby boy has been very active for the last day or so.  So much so that it was difficult to get to sleep last night.  But that is totally fine with me, at least I don’t have to worry about him…  Speaking of worry, I fell on Tuesday.  That was quite a bit of a scare.  Fortunately I fell on my hands and knees and not on my tummy, and fortunately I could feel baby move afterwards, so I wasn’t too worried.  But it’s still not something you want to experience during pregnancy.  The worst thing is I have a skinned knee.  I feel a bit silly with a knee like that – I mean little children’s knees look like that not adults!  But the midwife says that baby is well protected so usually they are more worried about the moms than the babies.

Here is a picture of the injured knee:

“See God has already given, but we look at our experience – well, so and so died, it couldn’t be God’s will to heal everybody.  See here is the problem – most people interpret God’s word by their experience.  They say, “Here is what God’s word says, but here is what happened!”  What is the answer?  Well, they come up with all kinds of things.  “Maybe it wasn’t God’s will.  Maybe God says no.”

God will never say no to something He’s already said yes to.  2 Corinthians 1, I believe its verse 26 says, “All the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him amen unto the Glory of God.” That means they are all positive, they are already yes, anything God promised you when He says that it’s His will that you be in health and prosper even as your soul prospers then God has already said yes to that.  You don’t have to wonder whether God is going to say no.  It’s not God saying no, God said yes!

But here we’ve got a conflict – every one of us can probably see examples in our life where God’s word promised us something to the best of our knowledge, we did what God said, and we didn’t see it come to pass.  How do you harmonize the 2?    Well you start with the scripture that I used this morning, Romans 3:4 says, “Yea, let God be true and every man a liar.”  You can also put in there, let God be true and your circumstances be a liar.  Don’t interpret God’s word by your circumstances; interpret your circumstances by God’s word.

If you’ve got a circumstance that says, “well, I asked God, I believed with all of my heart, and yet it didn’t work…”  The natural conclusion is therefore, “it doesn’t work for everyone.  Not everybody gets healed.  It isn’t God will for everyone to be set free.”  That’s the natural conclusions.  You need to change that, you need to go to God’s word and say, “Can I find a scripture that says that God doesn’t heal every time?  That it’s not God’s will to heal?”  If you can’t find it, then you tell your circumstances that they are wrong…  Amen!

Here is an explanation of this:  There are 2 worlds, there is a spiritual world and there is a physical world, and most people aren’t really aware of the spiritual world and what’s going on in the spiritual world, but it does exist.  As a matter of fact the spiritual world created this physical world that we see.  It says in Hebrews 11, “We understand that the worlds were created by things that are not seen.”  It didn’t say things that don’t exist, they do exist but they aren’t physical.  Everything physical was created by something spiritual.  There is a spiritual reality for everything physical we see.

There is a whole spiritual world out there – did you know that the Bible says that there are angels assigned to each one of us?  Everyone of you have angels that are with you constantly, for your own protection, and I personally believe that in the Old Testament there was a 186 000 angels assigned to one person and if that is so, then what we’ve got makes that look like nothing in comparison!  According to 2 Corinthians 3, every one of us must have hundreds of thousands of angels to our disposal.

Now if you take hundreds of thousands and multiply it times the number of people in this room, then this room is crowded, Amen?  We’ve got all kinds of spiritual things in here but you don’t see it, and most of you, if you don’t see it you don’t think it, and you don’t believe it and you don’t know it exists and therefore you don’t draw on it.

Look at this in 2 Kings 6, this is an example of what we are talking about, this is Elisha, he was the successor to Elijah.  Elisha was a mighty prophet of God and the king of Syria was fighting against the Israelites and every time he would go down and set a trap for the king of Israel, Elisha would be told by God, and he would tell the king of Israel, the King of Israel would send spies out there and they would find that it was true and he would escape.  After a few times of this happening the king of Syria says, “one of us is a spy for the king of Israel.”   One of his servant girls, it was a captive that they’ve taken out of the land of Israel said, “it’s none of us, but there is a prophet in Israel that tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bed chamber.”  When this king heard that, he decided that he is going send his armies down and that he would capture Elisha.  So here is the story of it in verse 13, it says, “Go and spy where he is so that I may send and fetch him, and he was told, in saying, behold he is in Dothan, therefore send he forth horses and chariots and great hosts, and they came by night and encompassed the city about and when the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold an host encompassed the city with horses and chariots and his servant said unto him, ‘alas my master, how shall we do?’”

That’s old English for saying, “Man, what are we going to do?”  And then he panicked – he saw these armies and he knew why they were there.  And look at Elisha’s answer.  He said, “fear not for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”

You know if you don’t understand that there is a spiritual world, and that it is real and it exists, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it don’t exist.  Now if you don’t understand that, people would think that Elisha lied.  See a lot of people when it comes to confessing the world of God and saying, “By His stripes I am healed,” and any idiot can look at you and tell that you aren’t healed, Amen?  I mean you look sick, you feel sick; you act sick, anybody can tell that you are sick!  You’re just lying!  It’s just positive lies!

I don’t know if any of you have ever been taken to task for confessing the word of God when it didn’t look so, well, see people who would believe that way would say, “Well, Elisha lied!” He said that there were more with him then there were with the enemy.  And yet you could look out there and count the enemy by the thousands, 1000, 2000, 3000 and here Elisha was saying, one, two…  Amen?  And there was more with him than there was with the enemy?  How do you explain that?  The answer was, that there wasn’t more physically but see in the spiritual realm there were more.

It says in verse 17, “Elisha prayed and said, ‘Lord, I pray that you open his eyes that he may see.’  And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around about Elisha.”  Praise God!  He was speaking the truth.  A person that says that it is a lie to say that you are healed, when you don’t feel healed, what that means is, you’re only looking at the natural realm.  The only thing that you consider to be true is what you see, taste, hear, smell or feel – you’re 5 senses.  And if that is what you consider to be facts, then yes it’s a lie, because according to your physical senses there are times that you speak that you are healed and you don’t feel healed.

But see, one of the keys to walking with the Lord is recognising that you’ve got to walk in the spirit.  There is a spiritual world out there; there are spiritual realities you can’t prove in a test tube.  How do you know what spiritual realities are?

I mean if you want to see the physical truth, if you want to see if your hair is combed, you go look in a mirror.  I have no idea right now if my hair is combed.  I hope it’s combed, but you know I can’t tell by my 5 senses.  I have to look in a mirror and I’ve got to trust what I see in that mirror.  How do you know that mirror is telling you the truth?  You’ve never seen the top of your head, all you’ve ever seen is a representation of it, a reflection of it, you don’t know….  “Well, I’ve seen a reflection, well, I’ve seen a picture…”  You have to take by faith that what you are seeing is true.  Well, see the Bible says that John 6:63, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.”  God’s word says that this is spirit, this is true.

What you read in the Bible is what spiritual truth is, so if you want to see if your hair is combed you go look in a mirror, and if you want to see what your spirit is like or if you want to see what is happening in the spirit then you hold the Bible up and look at it and whatever it says you just believe it.

The Bible says that Elisha had angels and chariots round about him and the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3 that, “What they had, had no glory compared to what we got.”  It says in Peter that, “They were longing for the day that we live in because what we got is so much better than what they’ve got.”  If Elisha had angels and chariots round about him, praise God, I’ve got at least as many as he had and more round about me!  If he was able to take an entire nation captive with the power of God, then praise God I can do the same thing.  There is a whole spiritual world that exists out there.

You know our sister that got born again this morning, praise God for seeing her today, I was talking to her before the service, and I said, you’ve now got Jesus living in the inside of you and the same works that Jesus did you can do also (John 14:12).  You can do all of these things.  She was just looking at me kind of stunned!  That’s the truth – she’s now got God Almighty on the inside of her and as much as she can renew her little peanut brain – I’m not speaking specifically about you – all of us have a little peanut brain – and as much as we can renew our little peanut brain, we can receive this life of God in the inside of us.

But see one of the things that limit it, is we only think in the physical realm.  We say the Bible says, “Ask and you shall receive,” “I asked and I didn’t receive…,” well how do you know?  “Well I didn’t see it!”  Just because you didn’t see it, does that mean God’s word isn’t true and that God didn’t do it?

I want to propose to you – and a lot of you never thought of this, that God can answer your prayer and you don’t even know it.  Because see, God is a spirit, John 4:24 says, “God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship Him and in spirit and truth.”  Did you know that when God answers your prayer He doesn’t give it to you in a physical form?  He gives it to you in spiritual form…  If you ask for finances, finances are material; do you know what God will do?  He will release the spiritual power that it takes to produce those finances into your life, and He will always do it.  If you ask, you do receive.  God gave it.  If you seek, God will give it to you.  God is faithful; God always, always, always answers everything.  If you prayed for healing – God gave you healing, but He gives it to you in spiritual form.  And God’s operation independent of you ends in the spiritual realm.

God is not the one that is going to manifest it into the physical.  Do you know what does that?  Faith!  Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance,” substance is talking about physical tangible reality. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Faith brings into physical tangible reality things that already exist in the spirit.  Faith doesn’t make things happen in the spirit.  They already happened by God’s grace, but your faith brings what God has accomplished into physical reality.  Is everybody following that?  God answers your prayers, but God gives it to you in your spirit and then your faith brings it from the spirit into the physical realm.  So if you’re praying for healing, God releases healing into you, but that don’t mean that you are going to see healing, unless you believe, unless you know how to co-operate.  Faith brings spiritual things into physical form.

An example of this is like radio.  Do you know right now we are using radio for you to hear me?  This microphone is a wireless radio, that’s what it is.  It’s broadcasting the signal over there and it picks it up and is broadcast over the speakers, but did you know that there is more than just this radio signal in this room?  There are literally dozens of radio signals and television signals in this room.  If you say, well, I don’t believe it, why?  Because I can’t hear it?  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t here!  That just means that you aren’t very smart!

There are things that exist beyond your capability to comprehend them with your physical natural ability.  You can’t hear radio and television signals even though they are in here and they are loud.  Do you know why you can’t hear them?  Because they are broadcast at a very high frequency, a frequency that is outside the human hearing range.  But they are in here and those signals are just as loud as this signal that we are tuned into.  There are many signals in here but the difference is that you can’t hear them; they are out of your range.  But they are here and they do exist and it is a physical, tangible reality.  But what happens is you get a receiver that can hear those things and it picks out an individual signal.  It can choose which signal it wants, it picks that out and then it re-broadcasts it, it demodulates it down a number of octaves and re-broadcasts it in a range that your ear can hear and that is the reason you hear me instead of all of the radio and television signals, but did you know they are also in here?

It’s just like God. God answers prayer, God will give it to you, but many people they don’t even know that God’s answered their prayer.  They aren’t able to perceive it, they aren’t able to get it and they aren’t able to put it down into the realm where they can perceive it and operate in it in their physical realm.  So they say, well, God didn’t do it.  Well, see the radio station is faithful.  The radio station – the signal is here – but whether you tune into it, turn it on, get it to the right frequency, whether you know how to make that thing work or not, has nothing to do with whether the power has been generated and whether the signal is released.

Did you know God has answered our prayers?  Anytime any of you have ever prayed for anything based on God’s word and you prayed in faith, God gave you your answer, but He gives it to you in a spiritual form, and whether you get it into the physical and whether you see it, is not dependent on whether God answers your prayer, it’s dependent on whether you can receive from God.  Amen?  That is important.

When I saw this, what it did – you see I had experiences in my life, like this girl I was telling you about that Jamie and I saw die, that really affected me.   And I guarantee you I had problems with it.  And I had a decision.  Was I going to get bitter and say, “God why didn’t you do it?”  Or was I going to hold on to, “God, you are faithful, You didn’t miss it, we missed it.”  I had a choice to make.  I just chose to believe that, “God I believe you answered our prayers, I don’t know why it didn’t work and it took me about 3 years before I began to find out some of the reasons why.

Every one of you have had instances where you have prayed or are in the process of praying for something and you haven’t seen it manifest yet.  You’ve got a decision to make.  Are you going to say, “Well, God why haven’t you done anything yet?”  The Bible says, “You’ve got to believe before you receive when you pray,” not when you see it, but when you pray.”