I thought nothing could top the birth story of our third! Listen or read about it here, it’s pretty amazing! Each child holds their own birth story and every woman has such a fun unique experience with birth. I just love hearing all the positive birth stories out there!

Life with children is so different for each one of us. We’re all on such a unique journey. What’s so great about our generation is that we share. We share so much about our own experiences as well as encouragement for others in theirs. Some may even say we’re over ‘sharers’ but that’s another blog post for another time!

I’ve loved posting on Instagram and Facebook and sharing our birth story and adventures with you. I thought it would be fun to do a little real life Q&A as well as share the birth story of our 4th sweet baby.

 

Q – What kind of car are you getting? 

A – Honda Odyssey

Q – Were you surprised when you found out you were pregnant?

A – Yes! We were not trying for another but it was a great surprise!

Q – How do you nurse or feed the baby with 3 other kids (screen free)?

A – The kids have loved getting to know their little brother, so most of the time when I sit down to nurse they want to be close to us. They will sit in front of the rocking chair and play or we will read a book.

Q – Will you find out the gender?

A – For our first two we found out their gender before and with our third we didn’t. Justin and I decided we would wait to find out again until our fourth was born!

Q – What does bedtime look like with all 4 kids?

It’s a two person job! Anyone with

Q – What are your kids ages?

A – Our oldest is 7, our two middles are 3 and 1.5 years old, and our youngest is 3.5 weeks!

Q – Where are your favorite maternity shops?

A – Big fan of Target (no surprise there) and also Amazon! Who doesn’t love free shipping and returns.. Makes life easier!

Q – Tell me about natural childbirth.

A – In the podcast I talked about the book Supernatural Childbirth. It helped me a lot and I highly recommend it! I think often times when we see childbirth in movies and on TV, it can be portrayed as a scary and painful thing. While at times it is for sure uncomfortable, I found that taking everything one step at a time, staying calm, and praying through my struggles it was not bad. We have to keep in mind that this is what God created our bodies to do!

Q – Do you have any names?

A – We did, we had two boy names and two girl names. The two girl names never felt quite right so when the doctor told us we had  a boy we knew Benjamin David was the perfect name for him!

Q – Any advice or words for those wanting kids and struggling?

A – I struggles with infertility with my first two boys and my best advice is to keep your faith! I know from personal experience that this is so hard to do at times, but everything happens in Gods timing. Also don’t be afraid to talk about how you are feeling, especially to your spouse, you’re going through this together and it’s important to lean on each other.

Q – How did you tell your other kids? 

A – We told the kids they would be having a new bother/sister after my first sonogram. We sat them down on the couch and showed them the pictures of the new baby in my tummy and they were so happy!

Q – How do you prepare for birth?

A – I prepared for birth in the usual ways, packing a hospital bag and making sure we had everything packed and childcare for the other kids when the time came. I also personally was praying and working on memorizing some of my favorite verses to repeat when I knew times were going to be tough.

Q – How do you prepare for dinner?

A – I am a huge casserole and crockpot person! Delicious meals don’t need hours of preparation. I stick to things that I know my kids love and that are easy, like pot roast and spaghetti. I’ll meal prep casseroles I find in magazines and spaghetti so that a way I can just pop it in the oven. Obviously you can’t make everything in the crockpot so on days that I don’t do something like that, I meal prep during nap time! My kids also love to help in the kitchen and I have found that if you help guide them they can be very helpful!

 

We’re for sure still figuring all this out. We don’t have it all together and if you think for one second my Instagram is too perfect (I created a free editing preset to help with that) or we have home cooked meals every night and my kids do their own laundry … well you may be right. But that does not equal perfect. I meal prepped and freeze meals ahead of time.  

I started training my kids to do laundry since they were 18 months and I have help.  I have sweet babysitters that come in and give me a minute. I have friends that bring us over food.  But we melt down (me too) and we fall apart.

I loved getting to share our birth story and answer some fun questions but I hope you’ll see me as a real mama who wins and loses some. Just like you I’m navigating this motherhood journey for the first time.

We sometimes make great decisions and sometimes make not so great ones, but we are a generation that has learned to give grace and support. I could never be where I am today with out you. My faithful listeners and email readers. I speak and write all I do with you in mind. I get to chat with you in our Facebook group and I feel connected to women across the world all because we’re breaking down walls of judgement and starting to cheer (genuinely) for one another!)

Your encouragement at this time in life has been such a blessing!

Mentions:

Gram with me! || The Unhurried Life Facebook Community || Supernatural Childbirth 

Listen to the Podcast:

Amazon Prime || Apple Podcast || Anchor || Google Play || Spotify