judah.

I feel blessed to be spending today, my boy’s fifth birthday, in the town where he was born.  It brings back lots of memories.  I’ve never done a blog post birth story for my kids, so my blog is incomplete.

Well, there’s no time like the present!

We moved here to Lititz in July, 2007, when I was seven months pregnant.  We’d both just quit our jobs, David had traveled with the youth group all summer, and we were tired.  My parents moved us and our possessions up here in a U-Haul all in one weekend.  At the end of which, the seventh Harry Potter book came straight to my mailbox from the Books-A-Million pre-order list, and I vowed I would not leave our condo until I finished it (and I didn’t).  A perfect end to a crazy weekend.

Our condo was small, bright, and cozy, owned by David’s family, offered to us while he went to seminary.  Steve and Alex even painted all the rooms for us before we came.  Lititz is an hour and a half away from Philadelphia, where David’s seminary was located, but with our determination to subsist on one part-time job and a baby on the way, we couldn’t turn down the offer of a place to live in a much less expensive area.

So we settled into our home and met our neighbors, all of whom were senior citizens, except for David’s parents, who lived down the street.  You may wonder how both of our families ended up in this situation, so I’ll tell you: Steve and Linda moved into the neighborhood the year before to take care of David’s grandfather.  He passed away in January, 2007, and we moved into his condo.

It is wonderful and stressful to live in a community with lots of elderly folks.  The upside is that they are friendly and have great stories; the downside is that you’re always a little stressed you are committing some sort of lawn or recycling infraction, and have the distinct suspicion you are being watched from behind mini-blinds.

David immediately set about looking for a job.  He had two options: Starbucks and UPS, since they were the only two companies who offered health benefits to part-time workers.  By God’s provision, he was immediately hired as a barista at Starbucks, and was within a few weeks promoted to shift manager.

I will digress here to say how much I love my husband.  He worked for the better part of a year at Starbucks, a job he disliked.  His hours were bad.  He’d work thirty hours a week and carry an 18-hour seminary course load with an hour-and-a-half commute.  And with a new baby.

But, in all of this stress, I cannot explain to you how much David’s fellow Starbucks employees adored him, from his manager on down.  Post-college, college, and high school students, religious, non-religious, conservative, liberal, they all loved him.  They kept Judah’s birth announcement on the back room bulletin board for two years, way after David left.  And now it’s been five years, and when I walk in the door, anyone’s who is still left from “the old days” remembers who I am and their face lights up: How is David doing!?

This is one of the things I love best about my husband.  He has time for people.  He is fun and funny, but also makes people feel special, no matter what they’re like.  No one is beneath his notice.  He listens.  He asks awesome questions.  People who could not be more different from him feel safe with him.  He shares about what Christ has done in his life in a way that simultaneously makes them feel uncomfortable and hopeful.  I want to be like him.

So, there we were, passing the summer in picture-perfect Lititz (if you’ve never been here, you must come.  It seriously is the cutest town ever.), getting ready for seminary and our baby.  I remember washing all the tiny baby boy clothes and burp cloths and flannel blankets, setting up the nursery just-so.  I remember Steve and Linda coming to fetch me in the evenings while David was away at work to go for a walk together (a very slow walk because I was huge).  I remember Steve buying me raspberry leaf tea, because he’d read on the internet it could help induce labor.

Oh, I was so miserable.  At nine months pregnant, I was still throwing up every day (even with my daily dose of Zofran).  My belly was very, very huge.  Everything ached.  And it was hot outside.  People, I love my kids, but pregnancy is not my thing.  There was almost not one thing I enjoyed about it.  And the second one was even worse.

On Friday September 7^th, David drove to Philly for his first day of classes, and I went for an OB appointment.  It was nine days before my due date, so you can imagine my surprise when my doctor announced that I was three centimeters dilated.  After the exam she said, “I’m predicting you will have this baby before the weekend is over!”

I cried a little in the car, because I was all by myself and happy and scared.  I am a sentimental person so I was overcome by feelings of, Our life is changing forever.  Then I called David urgently, and he came home to me.  But not until after the day’s classes were finished of course.  Yes, that is my husband.

We were so excited!  My labor started in earnest that afternoon, and we were up all night.  I remember the two of us going for a walk through town at 2:00 a.m., which is about the time my parents pulled in the driveway from Columbia, SC.

The next morning the contractions were about three minutes apart and pretty uncomfortable (still not awful pain), so my doctor told us to come to the hospital at 10:00 a.m.  I showered, hugged my parents good-bye, and we were off!

Oh, Heart of Lancaster Hospital, I love you so much.  I loved everything about my experience there: my doctor, the nurses, the amazing birthing suite, in which I got to stay through the entire process, the generous, fold-out bed for my husband.

We checked in, and ended up being the only family to deliver that weekend.  So we had everyone’s undivided attention and the floor was quiet and peaceful.  At that point I was five centimeters dilated.  A couple hours later I was seven centimeters, I got an epidural and the doctor broke my water.

At 5:15 pm it was time to push, and after three pushes, our baby boy was in the world!  We called him Judah Stephen, a name David had loved before we even started dating.  Judah, from the Old Testament, and Stephen, after his father.  A good, strong name for a good, strong boy.  He was 8 lbs. 3 oz. and 22 inches long.  He had bright, curious dark eyes from the start.  He was perfect.

And both sets of his grandparents were in the waiting room when he was born.  They were able to hold him that evening.  Alex and Becky drove from Philly the next day.  Our other visitors were Pastor Scott, Shari’s mom, Barb, and my friend Lauren.

I like to think that after a long, trying pregnancy, God gave me that sweet, easy birth experience as a gift.  We were wholly delighted with our new boy.

The sad part was that David could only spend one night in the hospital with us because he had to be in Philly for classes.  My mom spent that second night with Judah and me, but oh how I sobbed because I missed David so much, and I think genuinely scared my nurse.  I was a little hormonal.

I loved those sweet, exhausted first weeks as a mom, trying to figure out nursing and swaddling and keeping a tiny infant happy.  My mom stayed with us for two weeks and did everything–laundry, grocery shopping, even got up in the night to help me.  David spent every second he wasn’t in class or at work with Judah.  He would set Judah’s little moses basket up next to his stacks of books while he studied.  And his parents walked over often for visits or to let David and I escape for a date.

Judah was a sweet, good-natured baby from the very beginning.  Don’t hate, but he started sleeping 7-hour stretches at four weeks old, and slept 12 hours a night from three months on.  He never napped very well, but it’s hard to complain given his night-time routine.  He was curious, contented, and loved sitting in his swing or kicking around on the floor more than being held.  He thrived on a routine, but didn’t do so well if we veered from it (Hmmm.  Sounds like his mom.).

I remember when he was just a couple months old, his pediatrician said, “You have a very laid back baby here.  That is a great thing, but it also means he might hit his milestones (sitting up, crawling, walking) a little later.  That is alright, just remember it comes with the personality.”  Those words have proved true to this day.

We lived the first year-and-a-half of Judah’s life here in Lititz, and then, when I was pregnant with Amelie, moved back down to Columbia.  But that’s a story for another time.

There were hard things about that year, but so many sweet memories.  We got to be first-time parents.  We lived a happy, small-town life in which we could walk everywhere.  I now have the unique gift of being able to count my in-laws among my very best friends.  We were apart of a church plant in Lancaster which made us feel called to long-term city life and ministry.  We traveled to Ethiopia for two weeks.  We found out we were pregnant with Ams.  And we made lifelong friends.  What a year!

Happy birthday, Judah bee!  You are our very best memory from Lititz!