Plenty To Be Thankful For

Thanksgiving is drawing to a close and Andy and I are closing out the holiday in style. The children are tucked into their beds and we are sitting on the couch eating leftovers and watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles. We watch this movie every Thanksgiving. It's a must see if you've never seen it.

To say I have a lot to be thankful for is such an understatement, especially this year. But as my family went around the table and each expressed what they were thankful for, I realized what a blessing I have in growing up in a Christian home. I'm so thankful that my parents, sisters, brother-in-laws and husband love the Lord and are walking with Him. We could talk openly and honestly about what God is doing in our lives. It's such a joy to pass that on to Lily and Henry.

I could go on for quite awhile about all the things I am thankful for but I'll keep it short and sweet. I am thankful for who I am in Christ. I am thankful that I do not have to walk through life just doing "whatever". God has a purpose and plan for each day of my life. I'm thankful for the hard stuff because it has changed me for the better. I'm thankful for my parents who never stop being parents. I'm thankful for my sisters who truly are my best friends. I'm thankful for my health and the health of my family.

I'm thankful for this guy and the joy he gives me each day
when he looks at me and smiles. I'm in love with those huge
eyes and little bald head. He's made our family complete.




This face says it all. This little girl is my joy. She's one of a kind and each day with her is an adventure. I feel so lucky to be her mom.











This handsome man is the guy I get to walk
through life with. I can't imagine taking this
journey with anyone else. Everyday he makes
laugh and he takes such good care of us.


Happy Thanksgiving!

Candy Doesn't Make Shots Better

Lily is somewhat of a drama queen. What girl isn’t, right? My sweet girl wears her heart on her sleeve and is very demonstrative in her affection. You know exactly how she feels by the various and often hilarious expressions on her face. So, it was no surprise that getting a shot was no different in its amount of drama than all the other events in Lily’s life.

This dramedy started a couple of weeks ago when we brought Henry in for his 4 month appointment. Lily was also getting a check-up. Her first question was, “Mom, am I getting a shot?”

I breathed a confident sigh of relief, “No, sweetie. Dr. Silver is just going to check how you are growing. Only Henry is getting shots.”

So, you can imagine my horror when Dr. Silver told me she was due for a couple of immunizations. You see, my daughter freaks out at the slightest stub of the toe. It’s quite over the top and we are working on her controlling her freak outs. But she’s three and a girl. It’s a process.

Since we had to come back next week for another shot Henry had to get (poor guy!) and we all had to get flu shots, I just figured we do it then. I had adamantly told her several times that there would be no shots today. I could and wouldn't go back on my word.

Fast forward to the following week. While parking the car in the lot I was feeling hopeful that she could get the flu mist thus avoiding a scene. The subject of shots came up again. “I don’t want to get a shot,” she declared from the back seat. “But when you get shots, you get candy!” was my quick comeback. “Candy doesn’t make shots better!” Andy and I glanced at one another. The jig was up! Candy…. My bribe of choice wouldn’t be an option. Beads of sweat started to form on my brow. I was praying the flu mist would be acceptable and we could avoid the dreaded needle. Silly, hopeful, foolish me.

Of course, because of Henry’s high susceptibility to catch various things (poor little man!) Lily had to get a shot. The flu mist was a no-go. “Lil, listen. Daddy and I are each going to get a flu shot and then you are, okay?”

“No can do!” Giggle, Giggle.

“Sweetie, you do have to get a shot today. But Daddy and I will go first and you’ll see that it doesn’t even hurt.”

“No can do!” Smile, Smile.

I’m no rookie, though. I then pulled out of the diaper bag my secret weapon…. Wait for it…. the candy necklace! That’s right. Her favorite candy that she hardly ever gets. I was hoping what she had said in the car earlier would all be forgotten when she saw it.

The smile quickly turned to panic. This girl wasn't budging. She shook her head and refused to come close to me. So I began to open the package and stretch out the necklace that wasn’t stretching out enough. This would never fit over her head!
That’s when the unthinkable happened. Now please, imagine this in slow motion because that’s how it seemed to me. With a soft snap of the string the tiny pieces of candy that were my only hope fell on the dirty hospital floor, save for the few pieces I desperately grasped in my hand.

Things did not go well after this. There was screaming and shrieking and me stuffing candy in her mouth. It wasn’t pretty; but I had expected as much. Henry than got his shot and cried (my sweet little trooper) for about 45 seconds. Lily was still whimpering 45 minutes later.

Well, we all know that a trip to the donut shop fixes just about any problem. So, for being so “brave” that’s where we went and it helped considerably. I know, I know, she wasn’t very brave. But see, I’m prepping her for next week when we have to go back to get those immunizations!!!

I’m thinking money next time. Any suggestions?

Life in the NICU: The Story of Henry Part 2

As I continue the story of Henry’s birth and our new life as NICU parents, I’m sitting at my dining room table looking out onto a delightfully rainy day. I like the dreary days sometimes. You need them. They are cozy.

Though I love summer days as well, we spent most of our hot Roseville summer days in an air-conditioned hospital. Life in a hospital is like pressing the pause button on regular life. Everything else just stops or it seems non-existent. Your normal daily habits disappear and new ones take their place. There is no taking out the garbage or emptying the dishwasher. There is no doing your hair or making sure you put mascara on before you leave the house. There is no Sunday morning church or going over the grandparent’s house for dinner. Everything just gets put on hold and you don’t know for how long. Even the warm days of summer couldn’t penetrate the walls of this new world we found ourselves in.

When I woke up after surgery, the first thing I remember was… I am in a lot of pain! I didn’t feel this pain with Lily after her c-section! Because of Henry’s rushed entrance into this world, they didn’t have time to give me a spinal. All I will say about this is the pain was almost unbearable. It took a while; but once they gave me the little device where I could push the magic button and administer my own meds I was very thankful. I would have done a happy dance if I could have.

We figured out later that before Andy had even left Santa Rosa, Henry had been born. So when I woke up from surgery Andy hadn’t arrived yet even though he had driven at break-neck speed ( 85 mph to be exact) to get there. I was so relieved to see him when he did come. Chris, Andy’s dad, had been following behind him. So when Andy went to the NICU to see Henry, Chris stayed with me. It was so nice to have my family around me.

It’s hard to explain what it felt like to see Henry for the first time. It was very surreal and honestly, at four months later, a little blurry around the edges. They wheeled me downstairs to the NICU and into one of the 8 NICU rooms. Each room had 4 -6 babies in them. Some of the babies were in isolets, or space pods as Andy and I called them, and some babies were in open cribs. I don’t clearly remember exactly what I thought at that moment. It just hadn’t quite sunk in that he was was in this little plastic cage and not in my arms. He had so many tubes and Iv’s and cords attached to him. I could barely see his face because of the tube giving him oxygen and the tube that was taped to his cheek giving him food through his nose. I felt like I was in a movie. It didn’t seem real. But there he was, my little boy. And I was just so relieved that he was there, small… so small; but doing well.

Henry in is Isolet

Every three hours was the babies’ “care time”. This consisted of temperature check, diaper change and feeding. Parents were encouraged to do this when they came to the NICU. Andy and I could do everything but the feeding at that point. When he eventually started taking a bottle, we could feed him. We were encouraged to do skin to skin with Henry, or Kangaroo Care. Andy would take off his shirt and just hold Henry to his chest. I would just stick Henry down the from of my shirt! During this time, Henry slept A LOT! He was barely ever awake. But I knew that he knew our voices and smell even if he never opened his eyes during a visit.

We lived our life in increments of 3 hours. Every three hours (except during the night), we tried to come to his room, be with him and I would pump. It was exhausting. And I was very emotional. I cried all the time and once I started I just couldn’t stop.

I won’t lie. I loved seeing Henry and being with him. Each day my love for him just swelled up within me more and more. But this was not always a happy time. It seemed like there was no end in sight to this tiring routine. I was waking up during the night to pump and still recovering from surgery. And to top it all off, I got an infection and came down with a fever of 103 degrees the day after I had Henry. They had to put me on antibiotics until the fever went away. I was in the hospital for a whole week after Henry was born because of the fever.

There were many many moments when I thought I could not endure or that I physically and mentally did not have the strength to deal. God gave me many things to weather this time. First, I know there were many prayers being offered up for our family. Next, there was Lily. She was mine and Andy’s comic relief during this time. Her cheerful disposition and hilarious humor kept us smiling between the tears. She became quite a pro at choosing the right buttons on the elevators. We also had visitors (which I’ll touch on in the next post) from home. This was such an amazing encouragement. Last of all, but not the least by any means, God gave me my rock, Andy. He was and is my calm. He’s solid and steady and so strong. I don’t know what I would have done without him by side. He’s my perfect partner.

We are just a week from Thanksgiving and Lily and I have been talking about things that we can be thankful to God for. I can truly say that I am thankful for this experience. It taught me so much about leaning on God, about seeing how God gives us strength just for the day, sometimes just for the moment. Seeing just a little more clearly who my God is, though the lessons were hard, was and is a great gift.

Skin to Skin

Care Time

Never Really Alone: The Story of Henry Part 1

Our Little Miracle

C.S. Lewis said, “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

And a miracle is what entered our lives on June 29^th at 1:20 a.m. Coming in at a whopping 3 pounds and 10 ounces and stretching out to 15 ¾ inches, Henry Christopher Bauer entered this world. Though at the time he was just Baby Boy Bauer or Pickles Bean as his big sister called him.

I’m writing this 4 months later and already I’m on the verge of tears. Thinking about how this amazing tiny person has now grown into a healthy 10 pound baby astounds me. When I think back on the events of that night and the many weeks to follow I’m overwhelmed by the faithfulness of my God and so grateful that He brought our family safely through this storm. I’m also overwhelmed in remembering the fear, the fatigue and uncertainty of that time.

I’ve been wanting to blog about several other things over the past months. But I knew I needed to write about this first. Or else it would be like an unfinished story. Writing about this seemed like such a large task to me that I finally needed to take the plunge and just do it or I would just never blog again!

Though I’ll spare you every nitty gritty detail here goes……

Andy had been by my side for weeks. But, he finally had to go home for fresh clothes. He was also going to pick up Lily and bring her back with him. If you read my earlier posts, you know how hard it had been for us to be away from her. He was going to be gone for one night, coming back the very next day. While Andy was home he got called in for an interview for a new job as a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office. Now, Andy was a deputy at this point; but circumstances (which is subject for a whole other post at some other time) made it necessary that he take this new job. So instead of coming back that evening we decided he should just stay the night, go to his interview and then drive up with Lily afterwards.

My biggest fear was that Baby Boy would come when Andy was not there. I feared I would be alone. But I had started to feel a little confident at this point. I hadn’t bled in several days and I seemed stable. The next five weeks just stretched out in front of me. I saw a lot of sitting, reading and cross stitching.

This was not to be. At about one o’clock the next morning, I woke up out of a deep sleep. I could feel it…. I was bleeding. It wasn’t like the other times. This was bad. I pushed my red nurses’ button; but stumbled right away to the bathroom. There I pulled on the emergency chord. I’ll spare my few readers all the gory details, but when several nurses and the doctors rush in and I was promptly hoisted onto a gurney. I knew the time had come. My biggest fear had come true. I was going to have a baby at 30 weeks and Andy wasn’t there.

Thankfully I only had about 15 minutes to worry; but in those 15 minutes my mind was racing and my heart was pounding. I was crying frantically but I managed to call Andy on my cell phone to tell him what was happening so he could drive up there as soon as he could. I remember thinking a few things: First of all, “This can’t be happening. I cannot have a baby this early.” Then honestly, and I don’t like to dwell on this thought ever but, I thought, “What if I didn’t make it? What if the baby didn’t make it? What if I didn’t see Andy or Lily ever again? Please Lord, let us be okay! I want to hold my son and see Andy and Lily again.” I felt very alone and scared. But in all the chaos, the voices of the nurses, the blurry mass of faces, the tugging and pulling, the frustration of not being able to speak with the oxygen mask over me, there was this little quiet voice that assured me, “Jen, you are not really alone.”

The last thing I remember hearing is someone saying, “You are going to feel a little pressure on your chest.” The next thing I knew I was waking up in the recovery room with two nurses next to me. “How is he?” I asked. He was fine. Everything was okay. God had chosen to answer my desperate prayer.

The story isn’t over yet; but I think this is a good place to stop. As this is November, the month we all seem to focus on being thankful. I’m thankful for my little Miracle. He is evidence of God’s perfect creation and the sanctity of Life. I am so thankful for my family and each day I get to spend with them. The hard days, the happy days, and even the mundane. I am most thankful for a God that never leaves us. He is unconditionally faithful. He holds our hand and wraps his loving arms around us. With Him we are never truly alone.