Väntar, väntar, väntar

Gör mig, gör oss, så osynliga som möjligt…

Vill inte att någon ska fråga för mycket.

Rädd

Den här natten för fem år sedan somnade jag sent. Oron virvlade runt i min höggravida mage. Talmagin drev sitt spel med mig. En gång till – ett barn till, eller?

Jag vaknade vid två tiden och insåg att det var dags. En gång till – ett barn till!

Några minuter efter sex låg han där – den lille Segerväktaren, äntligen i mina armar, våra armar. Och jag visste två saker: jag behövde inga fler söner, jag var helt nöjd.

Trött

Flams-tramsandet sliter på mina trumhinnor, och än mer på min själ.

Jag ryter ifrån: ”Sluta! Var tyst! Lägg av!” Men ingen verkar höra mig, ingen verkar förstå att mamma menar allvar…

Eller gör jag det?

Vad är det egentligen jag vill att de ska sluta med?

Att leva? Att vara barn? Att vara glada?

Vad vill jag egentligen att de ska vara?

Lika trötta och irriterade som jag? Tysta och förskrämda?

Ibland är det nog ren nåd att barnen inte lyder!

Mamma Malgomaj bjuder på en hemlagad Charlotte Mason-meny

Välkommen till min nyaste blog, en på WordPress, bara för att vi tillsammans vill visa att hemma är bäst och att barn hör hemma hemma!

Uppdatering: Jag har lagt till innehållet från en tidigare blog från homeschoolblogger.com, eftersom den bloggmotorn upphört. Så nu finns här en hel del äldre poster från vårt liv hemma i Sverige, de flesta dock skrivna på engelska. Varsågoda!

Ten years ago this mamma was born

Ten years ago a nurse gave me the advice on the phone to take two Alvedon (Acetaminophen) and a hot bath and call back in the morning if I still thought I was in labor… or if I really wanted to come to the hospital sooner than that, make sure by checking with a watch that I had at least two contractions longer than 60 sec every five minutes for at least fifteen minutes…

My dear husband, who is great at mathematics, offered to help me keep count, as I was almost unconscious during each pain and in no way capable to look at a watch… after five minutes he got tired of helping me up on the couch every time I slipped off due to squirming through each contraction and decided that I had the sufficient amount of pain and called the nurse again declaring that he did not want to be responsible for my or our baby’s health any longer.

The nurse at last agreed to try to find a available place at any of the other hospitals in the county (her hospital was full) and finally found an empty place for us at Södertälje BB.

DH called a taxi – and as  that taxi-driver obviously didn’t want a baby in his car, we arrived less than 20 minutes after we left home (instead of the usually 35 minutes).

I have very  few memories of the next 90 minutes – I just know that I delivered a soccer-sized ball – and that the midwives at the same time found a wrinkled, but cute baby with a perfectly round head in one of the cupboards… Perception is really a funny thing during labor…

I’m so glad I did not take that nurse’s advice and stepped in to the tub. I would have had a home-water-birth and as he turned out to need some medical help just hours after he was born to keep on breathing – we might as well have lost him.

Now we call him Johannes, which means The Lord has been merciful, cause He’s been merciful to us for ten years!

During the week we had to stay at the hospital, one verse from Hebrews echoed in my head day and night – little did I know then how many times that verse was going to help me to endure, ‘cause my need of endurance has been overwhelming at many, many times, and left to myself I would never have sustained, but finally ten years later we start to see a little bit of the reward on a more daily basis. Perhaps we would have seen it earlier if we would have been more consistent at doing the Lord’s will at all times, but we’ve done our best, we have endured, and we’re in for it for an other ten years… The Lord is merciful!

Hebrews 10:36
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. (ESV)

Update!

Finally we’re back in the cyber-world again! We moved four weeks ago and the day before yesterday was the big "back-on-the-internet"-day. I spend more than two hours in the darkest of night (really dark – most of our lamps have to short electric cord to use in this new apartment…) catching up on my favorite-blogs and e-mail-lists.

Still there are much to much things to find a place for, and a lot of boxes to unload, but we can live here and even do school. We finally have a school-room, with a table for the computer and bookshelfs for all the childrens books that I’ve collected through the years and a working table for me and the kids. There’s even left a little spot on the floor for Mini-bror to play at.
I so much love to have more space around me. The kids still fuss, but not so much with each other anymore; they can find their own place when they want to be by them selves for a while.

The only problem is the outings. Lille-bror describs it like this: "Mom, can’t we move back to our old place where the other children wasn’t so angry and sad all the time?!"

I guess I’m the only mother (who’s not on drugs or alcohol) that let my children out alone, sometimes it makes me feel like a bad mother – but hey, how to raise brave kids when you’re afraid about everything all the time. But I will have to follow them much more here than I did were we lived before. On the other hand – Mini-bror will have to have outside time too, so I will have to go out with him anyway.

On the move

My parents in law have been here for four days to help us start the moving to our new apartment.

It has been three days of hard work with cleaning the new flat, packing most of our books into boxes and even moving about 25 boxes and some of the smaller furniture that we not really need to the new place.

I am so grateful that they offered to help us, but now when they on their way home again, I do enjoy the quietness of being just the five of us at home (and everybody less than 25 years tucked in to sleep… ).

The final move will be on saturday, 14 days from now, and hopefully my parents and my brothers 11-yo-twins, will be able to come and help us together with some of our friends to help us carry the piano and other heavy stuff.

The older of the twins is a big and really strong boy, while the younger one is much shorter and rather thin. My sister in law commented upon the fact that my boys look much more like each other though they are 17 month apart in age than her twin-boys that are just one minut apart. They don’t even look like siblings!

The next two weeks will be rather busy with packing and trying to get everything ready for the big move. Let’s hope for nice weather – then the boys can play outside while I’m packing boxes!

A new home!

The past three years we have lived in the middle of the most beautiful parts of Sweden. In the middle of nature and still just thirty minutes of walk to reach the stone-city of Stockholm. So much room outside in the forest and the fields – and so little space in our tiny flat. A four room apartment (three bedrooms) and just 73 sq meters.

But now: A six room apartment with five bedrooms in two floors and 150 sq meters waits for us in an other part of town. But no forest, no lake, no sea-shore. Well, one usually can’t have it all at the same time and for now we really need more space more than we need beautiful nature. There is nature within walking distance, just not so beautiful as we have now, so we can still do our nature-studies. We will have to learn different kinds of gras instead of trees.

We have spent the entire month of June with my parents-in-law and my own parents at their places. Both of our families live in houses, not apartments, and both have big gardens around their houses – the boys have been running around all days. Now when we are back in our own little flat I can so much feel our need for more space. And the Lord is good – we’re moving in three weeks.

I'm so pleased

A little more than a year ago we lost a tiny baby, not much bigger then a thumb. I only saw him on an ultrasound screen, but he was the most beautiful and perfect little baby you can imagine – only one thing – there was no twinkling heart beat to be seen.

 

We lost a baby, I lost 2,5 litre blood (more than 50% of my blood), my husband almost lost his wife and Storebror and Lillebror were close to become motherless, though we never told them that.

 

The months that followed was hard. I was on bedrest for six weeks, with no ability for the simpliest multi-tasking – I couldn’t even remember how to make breakfast for myself, much less for my children. Before my mother in law, and later my mother came to help me I started out by putting the plates on the table, got side-tracked and found the plates on the table half an hour later without knowing what to with them. It took two weeks with constant help until I was so much better that I actually could start to rest. The first weeks I was so tired and upset that I had to put the timer on 15 minutes and force myself to stay on the sofa and try to rest otherwise I would get up and start trying to do something again after just a couple of minutes. My mind was so tensed that I couldn’t even rest!

 

During the summer my body recoverd, but in my mind I had a lot of fear:

Fear of death, thinking about what might had happen if…

Fear of life, thinking about what might happen if…

Every night when the fear caught me, my husband had to hold me and pray until the fear lost its grip.

 

Finally I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t live in fear any more, or I would turn crazy. The Lord reminded me that I never had, nor will have, a promise of a long, healthy life on earth, only a promise of eternal life in heaven. I realised that my fear was lack of trust in Gods mercy and goodness. And at last I decided I had to let God be God and start living among the living again… A couple of weeks later we found out that we once again were expecting a child.

 

On the 30:th of April our fourth child was born. The delivery was easy, the child healthy and the only emotion in my heart was a strong feeling of satisfaction. I am so pleased, so pleased with the boy the Lord in His mercy has given me, so pleased! Please celebrate with me the goodness of His mercies, the splendor of his works, for everything He does is beautiful in its time. There was a time for mourning, now is a time for celebration!

 

"He turned my mourning into dancing again, he lifted my sorrow. I can’t stay silent, I must sing for His joy has come."

I'm a blessed woman!

Two days after our third son was born I met some of the other women at the playground outside our house. As women often do, we came to talk about pregnancy and childbirth. They asked about my last delivery and when I told them that I woke up at 2.00 a.m. and that he was born at 4.04 am, one of the women said: "You’re a really blessed women!" (Both her deliveries were more then 20 hours,,,)

 

And yes, I am a blessed woman!! Two hours of labour and then an other two hours of rest with my precious newborn son and my dear husband, a nice warm shower and then I felt in better shape than for the last two month of my pregnancy! I could even walk without crutches again.