Monday, September 15, 2008

Why Judith Kay?

Judith is named for my mother (Judith) and Lance's mother (Sharon Kay) for several reasons:
  1. My mother, for all her faults, is the model of a Christian woman for me. I strive emulate her walk with Christ, and I desire that more than anything for my daughter.
  2. Lance's mother passed away when he was very young, and I wanted to honor her as well as my own mother.
  3. I am named after my grandmothers, and have always thought that was pretty cool.
  4. Judith means "woman of Judea" and Kay means "pure". I interpret them together as "a pure woman of God".
  5. I think Judith Kay Ford sounds beautiful.
Somehow I convinced Lance that these were reasons enough to name her. I think probably he just "gave in" for love of me. :-)

Judith's Story

For those of you who don't know the story of how Judith came into our family, I'm, writing it here. It is a story of grace, faith, and the power of prayer.

Children - specifically whether or not we should have them - has been the single major issue in our marriage. We did know, when we got married (in 1999) that this was an issue we disagreed on. I'm not sure, however, that either of us realized just how much we disagreed. Basically, I have passionately wanted children, while Lance has been vehemently opposed to the idea. Over the nine years of our marriage, we have had "serious discussions" and even some pregnancy scares, and our basic outlooks have remained the same. Many people have prayed for years for reconciliation for us on this issue.

About two years ago, on Mother's Day 2006, I was struck by the realization that God had worked in my heart to the point where I was "ok" if I never had children. And I shared that with Lance and with other people around me, and went on with life. Then, in the summer of 2007, several key people in my life became pregnant, and I had another pregnancy "scare." It undid me, and I found myself again absolutely longing for a child. When I proved to not be pregnant, I tearfully let Lance know that I wasn't "ok" any more - that I still passionately wanted a child. A few months later, still hurting, I shared with my women's Bible study just how devastated I was. I asked for their prayers that God would either work in my heart, or Lance's - and soon. The very next Sunday (November 4, 2007) when we got home from church, Lance said "maybe we could have a baby." He said that God had finally convinced him to step out in faith, to trust Him with this issue, and see what happened. I went back to my Bible Study and shared the news, asking for prayers for a quick conception - in God's timing of course :-). Less than a month later, with my cycle later than I expected, I took a pregnancy test - it was postive! God had wholeheartedly affirmed Lance's decision to trust. (On a side note, I am amazed at the power of His timing - Lance and I have always used the "rhythm" method of birth control, which has only a 75% success rating. I had come to the conclusion that it was unlikely that I'd even be able to conceive. And yet, Judith was conceived the first week that we decided to "try"!)

Sleeping

Well, here it is. The first of the promised blogs. I can hardly believe that I'm actually following through with this. I'll have to be careful not to wax so enthusiastic that I forget that the public can read this. At the same time, it's probably only going to be interesting to people who are as interested in my daughter as I am!

Today Judith and I had a pretty good day. Sadly, Daddy (Lance) is gone ALL day - he's back to work today, after a week off, and he went straight from work to the airport to pick up his aunt and uncle, and straight from the airport to River Rock's offices for a church leadership meeting. We won't be seeing him until around 9:00 p.m. or so. Quite a test of my ability to cope with Judith on my own!

Since we've been having (relative) trouble getting her to sleep lately, I decided to go back and reread the Sleep chapter in the Baby Whisperer. I discovered that she's old enough now to be sleeping a little less during the day, and possibly even getting to 8 hours at night. So I "let" her stay up (meaning I didn't try everything I could to get her to sleep) after her 8:00 feeding this morning. As a result she took a highly satisfactory 2 1/2 hour nap at 11. I tried the same thing after her 1:30 feeding - with a nap "scheduled" for 5:00-ish. This time it didn't work quite so well; although she did eventually go to sleep, it took awhile, and she'll end up with more like 1 1/2 hours this time around. But hey, we're new at this. I'm also planning to try to cluster feed her tonight (at 7:00 and at 9:00) to see if that'll help her sleep for 8 hours. She normally sleeps about five hours after her last nighttime feeding, so I really shouldn't complain too much about her sleep patterns; but those of you who know me know how affected I am by sleep deprivation. It'd give me a whole new lease on life if Judith slept for 8 hours tonight! Check tomorrow's post to see how it goes.