We left for Utah on February 26th to help Melody with the delivery of her baby. Since Ben left her shortly after they found out she was pregnant, she's been raising her two daughters alone and pretty sick with the pregnancy. In December she told us that she had decided to place the baby for adoption. Since she has Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around, when she started having problems close to delivery we knew we needed to return to Ephraim for the delivery.
Melody is amazing!! We took her into the hospital for high blood pressure (160/110) and she had already dilated to a 2. So they kept her and started watching her. She had what is called "leg labor" where the labor pains go down into your legs and cause spasms. They gave her some medicine to lower the pain from the spasms and it also lowered her blood pressure. At one point it got down to 83/37. She was having contractions every two to three minutes, but they weren't doing anything. They finally decided to do a C-Section late in the afternoon the next day. She asked her sister to go in and take pictures of the baby in the nursery and asked Michelle to go into surgery with her. Tyler was born at 4:53pm weighing in at 6 lbs 14 oz and 19 inches long. A pretty good size for being three weeks early.
As Melody puts it, "Tyler went home happily with his adoptive parents" at the same time we brought Melody home. Melody's girls were so glad to see her after 5 days. Everyone involved commented on how spiritual this experience was. Melody was married in the Salt Lake Temple to Ben in May last year. A short time later, they prayed together and decided it was time to have a baby. They got pregnant. Then Ben decided it was more than he could handle so he left in late August, right after we got our mission call. It's not often that a covenant baby is placed for adoption, but this was the right decision for Melody. In November, Melody moved to the little town of Ephraim to dwell with her two girls, where she could be close to her sister, Cass.
Once again, we fell in love with Ephraim and the hills around it. It has a very slow, laid back pace and everyone seems to know everyone else. The Church is strong there and the members are so considerate of other's needs. We even found a "Miracle Relief Society". In all our years, we have never seen a Relief Society take care of someone with such care and concern, much like we would see the Savior do. Her Relief Society is ministering to her physically, emotionally and spiritually. They are truly on the Lord's errand and we are so grateful.
2 comments:
It was wonderful to have you here to help the last couple weeks. Thanks for everything! By the way - I haven't seen many "hills" in Ephraim, we tend to call them "mountains!"
OK, the Mountains of Ephraim. They sure are gorgeous.
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