We decided then that if the child I was carrying was a boy, we would name him after Fulton Sheen. Soon enough we settled on the name James Fulton, a way to honor Travis’s brother and Saint James the Greater, as well as our new friend, Bishop Sheen.
After that day we began asking for Sheen’s intercession. We still didn’t know whether the baby would be a boy or girl but suspected that he was a boy. Most mornings when I prayed, I would reach out to Bishop Sheen and ask him to pray for my pregnancy, for a short and easy labor and delivery, and for a healthy baby. I asked Sheen to follow my child through his life, constantly praying for him so that he would grow into a good man who loved God.
I knew that I could trust Sheen to take good care of my child. Midwesterners tend to be hardworking and kind, and Sheen was a local boy to boot! It felt good knowing that such a holy man was praying for my unborn baby.
Chapter 5
A Troubling Dream
At the beginning of my eighth month of pregnancy, I began to second-guess my decision to have another homebirth.
My first two homebirths had been wonderful experiences, even though the labors had been long. But as this pregnancy continued, I began to think that another homebirth was no longer the best decision. I was already exhausted from being pregnant while caring for two very little ones, and I worried that I would labor for another seventeen to twenty-one hours as I had with Lydia and Bennet. If that were the case, when the time came to push, I was afraid I wouldn’t have it in me. I didn’t want to jeopardize our baby’s health or mine, so I brought my concerns to Travis, my midwife Bernice, and my mom. Mom liked the idea of the hospital, and Bernice was ready to support whichever decision I made. But Travis was convinced I had the strength of body and spirit and thought I should stay at home. He encouraged me to pray about it, so I did.
A few nights later, I had a dream. Even though Travis and I usually choose not to learn the gender of our unborn children, at that time I had always known what we were having because of my dreams. With Lydia I dreamed that I was holding and cuddling a newborn baby girl. The dream was lifelike, and the next morning I confidently told Travis that I was pregnant with a girl. Travis laughed; but when I had a lifelike dream that I gave birth to a baby boy while pregnant with Bennet, he didn’t laugh again.
So by the time I was pregnant with James, Travis and I had started to take my baby-related dreams fairly seriously. But this dream was troubling, and I carried its heaviness with me throughout the next day, awaiting a chance to discuss it with my husband.
Finally, after eating dinner, cleaning the kitchen, and tucking in the kids, Travis and I crawled into our queen-sized bed. With his head on the white pillow and mine on his chest, we pulled the quilt up to our shoulders.
“Travis,” I said to him, “I need to tell you something.”
The look on his face showed that he knew I was serious, and even a little anxious. “Okay. What is it?”
“Last night I dreamt that here in our bedroom, in the middle of the floor, I gave birth to a baby boy. It was a completely normal dream — nothing weird or out of place. Actually, it was really lifelike.”
He interrupted me and proudly said, “I knew we were having a boy!”
“Travis, in the dream he was blue; he wasn’t alive. I dreamed I gave birth to a stillborn.”
Fear made his eyes widen slightly, and his mouth formed a silent, slow, “Oh.” Then he softly said to me, “That can’t happen.”
“I know. I know.”
We didn’t talk about the dream again, choosing to ignore it, but deep down I couldn’t shake it. Anxiety bundled and knotted in my shoulders and stomach, and it drove me to prayer time and time again, each time asking for God to make it obvious to me whether I should have my baby at home as I wanted, or plan on a hospital delivery.
In the end, I felt great peace about giving birth at home. It was the kind of peace that didn’t come from me: I was confident that home was where God wanted us. I told Travis and Bernice that I would stay home for the labor and delivery, though if at any point I asked for a transfer to the hospital, they should take me there immediately.
The knots untangled, and my whole body relaxed into the last month of pregnancy. The baby was healthy, and I was in God’s will. I was ready.
Chapter 6
The Cusp of Something Great
In mid-September, I woke up to my two-year-old daughter climbing into bed with me. Bleary-eyed, I noted that my husband had already left for work and my one-year-old son was still sleeping. I had had contractions through the night, but I was grateful that I had still been able to get in a good night’s sleep. I snuggled up to my daughter, soaking up my last moments of laziness and calm before the new baby came.
By the time we were all out of bed and beginning our day, I was certain that The Day had arrived; I called my mom and asked her to come over. To keep the contractions going, I did every trick in the book: went for a walk, found every excuse possible to go up and down the stairs, scrubbed the bathtub, danced around the kitchen. When my husband got home from work, we climbed into his old Dodge and went for a drive, hitting every bump in the road. Thank God for potholes — by the time we got home, I was in real labor. After I updated Facebook and my blog with a request for prayers, we called Bernice, my mother-in-law, and a few friends who were coming to help with the labor and child care.
An hour later, I was laboring in front of the TV when Kim, Bernice’s assistant, arrived. She firmly encouraged me to go on a walk to speed things up. I slipped on my flip-flops and went out the door, grabbing Travis’s hand as I toddled down the porch steps.
Much to the embarrassment of my husband, my contractions seemed to come under every streetlight. Holding on to him, lit up for anyone who happened to glance out their window to see, I swayed my hips through each contraction. The walk was working, and my contractions were becoming longer, stronger, and closer together. As we approached the main door of the Apostolic Christian Church, which was filled for its Wednesday night service, my most intense contraction of the day hit, causing my water to break. Because we were under yet another streetlight, we were able to see that the fluid was clear, a reassuring sign of a healthy baby in what was otherwise an awkward situation.
Back at the house, Bernice had arrived and unloaded her medical supplies. She came out to the sidewalk to greet us and ask about my progress. We decided to head upstairs so I could continue laboring in my bedroom, the place I wanted to be for delivery. On my way up, I said goodbye to my mom, who wanted to get a good night’s sleep before the baby came, and hello to our friend Katie and my mother-in-law, Deb, who had all arrived to help.
Bernice and Kim quickly prepared the bedroom. They turned off the overhead lights so that the only light breaking into the room came from the partially closed closet and hall doors. The dark and shadowy room was calm and relaxing for me. Unlike a hospital’s labor and delivery room, there would be no glare, no stainless steel, and no stiff sheets and gowns. Bernice and Kim would time my contractions, follow my progress, and make handwritten notations on my charts by the glow of a flashlight.
In my own clothes, among my own things, I labored. A large cup my grandmother had given me held ice water and was within reach at all times. On top of our cluttered dresser were pictures of friends and family, including a black-and-white image of Archbishop Sheen, and knickknacks reminding us of our trips to Poland, Germany, Italy, and Scotland. The bassinette, covered in white