A Bushel and a Peck

Dear Anxiety, I know we've been together a long time. As far back as I can remember, really. However, our relationship has been on the rocks the past few years, and unfortunately, I feel that it's best for both of us if we just go our separate ways. Well, at least best for me.  I used to believe that you were actually helping me out: that, somehow, your ability to convince me to fear everything from aliens to being alone in the dark to possibly dying of a freak accident while doing something completely normal was saving me from something. Perhaps I was grateful to you for opening my eyes to the dangers all around me.  Then there were the times in high school when you promised me that, unless I agonized over every little thing I may have done wrong and went back and tried to make them all right (sometimes more than once), I wasn't really a good person. In some ways, I was grateful to be so aware of my mistakes because at least then I could do something about them.  ...

So, this Friday is Stephen's and my fifth anniversary. I find it interesting that I am both surprised by how much time has passed and almost certain that it's been far longer than five years.  These have been the most challenging, frustrating, magnificent, life-changing years of my life. We have both learned more about ourselves in these past five years than we'd ever been willing to face before. And I am so grateful for this wonderful, beautiful person that I get to be with forever. He truly is the best thing that has ever happened to me. With that, I thought I'd share the story of how we got engaged. I've never shared it publicly before since it was kind of a surprise, even to us, and so we didn't have any kind of elaborate set-up. Nothing was planned out beforehand. We didn't have a ring or even get a picture of us together that day. But it was still a beautiful day. September 5, 2008:  We had made a date to go to the Provo temple to do baptism...

*Warning* - A couple of slightly graphic details are included in this post. Words like "blood" and "cervix" appear once or twice. This is part 2 of 2. Click here for  Part 1 . To answer your question, yes, I did experience pain during labor. And the night after Sweet Boy was born, I did lay awake, feeling a little betrayed and overwhelmed, since I'd been telling myself that I wouldn't feel pain. But the experience of labor was an empowering experience, despite the pain. If I could go back and get the epidural, I wouldn't do it.  The sensation I experienced that I would label "pain" was very much like the discomfort one feels when getting an intense massage. The pressure is necessary, but it hurts. Sometimes it really hurts. The thing about a massage is that you get pressure in one or two small spots at a time. Not to mention, you can tell the therapist, "Okay, back off for a second." When you're in labor, your own body is pu...

This is part 1 of 2. Click here for Part 2 . As some of you know, I chose to do Hypnobirthing with my first baby. If you're like I was, you're probably thinking, "Hypnobirthing? That sounds...really weird." It's not as weird as it sounds, I promise. The basic idea is that, when a woman in labor is able to relax, let go of her fears, and trust her body, her pain and discomfort is decreased (sometimes nonexistent), and the labor goes more smoothly and quickly. One of the ways this is achieved is through self-hypnosis, where one goes into a deep state of relaxation and/or creates detailed scenes in one's mind that help guide the body through the different stages of labor. For example, one of the things that helped me during labor was the "rose script," in which Stephen talked me through imagining a rose slowly opening over and over. This exercise is intended to encourage the cervix to open. I feel that it definitely helped me. Anyway, I'm getting ...