She Sees Angels

Lately Abi has started laughing in her sleep. It's one of my favorite things in the world right now. She's not really laughing during waking hours yet and even her smiles are pretty rare, so I'm always amazed by the laugh-out-loud giggles that she has during naps! I wonder what she's dreaming about that's so funny. Her life experiences are relatively few at this point, and it seems that nothing she's seen in this world has been worthy of a laugh, so my thoughts easily drift toward the things "not of this world". I wonder, is she sitting at the feet of the Jesus, while he regales her with tales that delight her little heart? Or is she sitting in the High Court of the Lord, watching the angelic court jester perform his worship? Is she dreaming of heavenly things that make the things of this world pale in comparison?

I'm reminded of one of our favorite songs by Danny Oertli:

She Sees Angels

I've seen this before
So I turned out the light
And walked across the room
The wind played its song through the trees in the yard
The shadows were chased by the moon
I stood in the doorway and I let out a sigh
And watched the small little girl
who was there in the moonlight
Tossing her head in a whirl

And she sees angels dancing in the sky
She sees angels in the night

Do they whisper sweet words,
Do they sing her a song.
Do they light up her eyes with the stars
Do they touch her soft skin as she sleeps late at night
Does she even know who they are
Floating in air they perform their ballet
Lifting their praise to above
For sweet little girls bathed in heavenly light
Learning the ways of God's love.

And she sees angels dancing in the sky
She sees angels in the night

Listen to a clip of She Sees Angels by Danny Oertli

* I know it's almost a sin to make a post on a baby blog without including a picture, but you'll have to forgive me this time! I promise we'll post more pictures soon!

• Abigail

The Girl without a Country

Thailand doesn't want her.
America doesn't know she exists.
So what is the first thing you do when your baby is born overseas? Get her a passport of course.

Unfortunately for us, that means at least three 6-hour round trips to Chiang Mai.
One trip to get the forms, and send her Thai birth certificate to Bangkok for translation.
One trip to pick up the translated birth certificate, take a passport picture and submit the applications (and the US$).
One trip to pick up the passport so she can travel to her home country this Christmas.

Two of those trips are now behind us, and were relatively easy. Actually the most difficult part was the passport photo.

According the the US requirements, the passport photo must be perfectly straight-on, showing both of the child's ears. Many parents accomplish this photograph by laying their tightly swaddled, sleeping baby on a white sheet and they just click away.

But we encountered three problems when we tried to take her passport picture:
Our first problem was that Abigail hates the swaddle. I mean she absolutely loathes it. Little Abi wants her arms to be free at all times, and preferably over her head.
Second, when Abi was brought into the studio, the lights and contrasts were so engaging that she spent the entire time flailing back and forth to make sure she did not miss anything.
Finally, it seems that Lori's milk is incredibly nutritious, because we found it to be almost impossible to see both of Abi's ears behind those round little cheeks.

We tried everything we could think of to capture the perfect shot, and the photographer was incredibly patient with her.
He took dozens of pictures.
We tried holding her head and moving all our hands away at the count of three.
We even tried stuffing tissue paper behind her ears to make them stick out (which actually worked but made us so sad to see our beautiful baby girl's Dumbo impression)

Finally the photographer captured this shot on the left. She's doing her best Elvis impression, but you can see a hint of each of her ears - and those beautiful blue eyes!

Tags:

• Abigail
• personal

Yay for Yeh mi!

Our little Abigail has been given the name Yeh mi by the Akha of Mae Salong, and has been widely accepted as the newest little Akha girl in the village.

On August 26th we were able to go up to Mae Salong to introduce Abigail to our village family and to ask the elders to give her a name. In the most traditional Akha villages, the children are named by a grandparent, great-grandparent, village elder or a spirit priest. We wanted to continue in this tradition, but the problem we faced was that there are so many elders in our village who have adopted us as their own and to choose one of them to give her a name would have been a very difficult and delicate process.

We were blessed, however, to have Aje and Nancy join us in the village for the day, and after talking with Aje about our dilemma, he suggested that we pose the question to the whole village in church on Sunday morning.

So, we did. Five or six names were suggested from some of the most important people in our lives, but one name was suggested by a man who is very dear to our hearts. If Lydia is our Akha mother, than this man and his wife are our Akha grandparents.

The name he suggested, Yehmi, literally means "daughter of God".

We loved the name right away, but - determined to let everyone have a part in the decision - we put all the names to a vote, with Yehmi ending up with the overwhelming majority.

Right after the church had named her, we took some pictures with our Akha Grandpa, and his wife brought a traditional Akha baby hat as a gift for little Yehmi. This was another very special moment, because the silver coin used on the hat was given to our Akha Grandma by her mother.

After some prayer and teaching, it was time for the whole village to get a closer look at their newest little girl - and Yehmi was right at home, sleeping peacefully as she was passed from person to person and gripped her gifts of sa da and ya u like a pro (the Akha give money and hardboiled eggs to newborn babies as a blessing to the family to purchase new items for their child and to ensure the mother has enough protein in her milk).

* We know that these posts are late in coming, sorry about the delays. Hopefully over the next week we will be able to catch you all up on our last month. Thanks for your patience!

Tags:

• Abigail
• Akha
• culture

Shhhh... i am sleeping.

We've had our bad nights, but all in all, Abi is a great little sleeper...

Tags:

• abigail
• pictures

The Birth Story

Today, Abi is 4 weeks old. They weren't kidding when they said "Time flies!". How is it that I still haven't written about the birth!? Well, read on for the whole story if you're interested! Warning: Slightly graphic birth details ahead!

Thursday Evening: 10pm Returned from our nightly "baby walk" to The Big D and the infamous bloody show. Although I was having no contractions, I had a feeling that I'd be in the hospital by the next day. I finished a final bit of packing and made it to bed at about 11:30

Friday Morning: 4 am After about four hours of sleep. I woke to another bout of diarrhea and some pretty good contractions. I headed back to bed hoping to get some more sleep, but no luck. By 4:30 contractions were getting intense, and I spent the next few hours in a hot bath.

6:00 am Paul started timing the contractions. They were already 3-4 minutes apart and 45 -90 seconds long. "I'm in active labor already? Start packing the car honey!"

7:00 am We drove to the hospital and almost missed the turn. (I guess that cliche about expectant fathers getting all befuddled is not so far from the truth after all!) Upon arriving in the maternity ward, we clumsily tried to communicate with the Thai nurses and get all the paper work filled out...all the while enduring really painful contractions!

8:15 am I was finally checked in and moaning through excruciating contractions in the labor room. One of the nurses checked my dilation: only 2 centimeters. "Are you kidding me?! I'm only 2 centimeters dilated?" The nurse informed me that it usually takes about one hour to progress one centimeter. Facing 8 more hours of pain like that, it was pretty easy to abandon my hopes of a natural birth and say "I want an epidural!"

9:00 am The anesthesiologist arrived and performed the epidural. By then, my OB, Dr. Pitsanu, had arrived. He checked my dilation and we were all surprised to find out that I was already at 7 centimeters! I had progressed 5 centimeters in just 45 minutes (so much for that "one centimeter an hour" thing!) While normally a huge advocate for natural birth, Dr. Pitsanu said that it was actually quite good that I had demanded an epidural because, at the fast-rate that labor was progressing, it could have been dangerous for the baby and the epidural slowed things down a bit.

9:45 am The epidural was supposed to last for an hour and a half, but after about 45 minutes of glorious, painless relaxation, the epidural started wearing off and the contractions were coming back in force. By 10:00 am it seemed like the epidural was completely gone; the contractions were coming hard and fast and were, of course, much more intense than they had been before! I started having an almost irresistible urge to push, so one of the nurses checked my dilation. Sure enough, I had reached 10 centimeters! Unfortunately, Dr. Pitsanu had stepped out, assuming it would be several hours before I was ready. So, the nurses gave me another dose of the epidural to tide me over until the doctor returned.

10:15 am Dr. Pitsanu returned and we began the push for the finish line. Paul was such an amazing support! Thanks a ton honey, I couldn't ask for anyone better!

10:36 am Abigail Hope Vernon was born! Just six and a half hours of labor; I couldn't have asked for a better experience! Thanks Dr. Pitsanu and all the nursing staff!

Tags:

• pregnancy
• Abigail
• medical