Getting Ready and Contractions

Sunday night Bronwyn came into our room and said, "Okay, mom I'm going to pack your hospital suitcase for you now." She's been after us for a few weeks to get it ready and something always got in the way. Sunday night she took matters into her own hands.About 6 hours later Benay was waking me up (at 2:45). She had been having contractions since midnight. We timed them until almost 5. Benay then called Claudia. Knowing this is our 6th child and knowing how fast Benay delivered Anderson, Claudia had been telling us that at the first sign of contractions she would send us to the hospital. She told us to go right to the hospital.

We then woke up the two oldest girls and told them where we were going (you can imagine how thrilled they all, especially Benay, were when I stop and take pictures at 5 in the morning and with some painful contractions). Carys then woke up right before we left and gave her mom a goodbye hug.And we were off. Bronwyn went with us and Ansley stayed home and took care of the younger guys.

Claudia was waiting for us when we got there and she immediately took Benay up as Bronwyn and I did the paperwork to get Benay admitted. After examining Benay, Claudia told us that she didn't think this was the real deal but she wanted us to stay at the hospital until lunch time just to be sure.

Benay was able to take a little nap while waiting as well as watching a little television.After two more exams, and almost 6 hours later, she was released.

She slept great last night and has, so far, had a really good day today.

She thinks it could be in the next couple of days.

More info later.

P.S. You'll be happy to know that Benay and I talked about the baby's name while in the hospital and decided nothing.

Name Dilemma

As you can see from our post last week, we are getting closer to the arrival of our newest addition to the family. I'm sure that you all are wondering why we haven't chosen a name yet. I thought I'd give a little explanation as to why this is so difficult for us.

First of all, we have a big family already. Getting 7 people to agree on a name hasn't happened - yet. Maybe it won't and the parents will have to make an executive decision. But, the parents aren't even in 100% agreement on anything yet either!!

Secondly, we are are Americans, but we live in Brazil. So whenever I hear a name, I think of how it sounds to us English speakers, but also how everyone that we interact with is going to say it. We haven't really cared about that with the other kids' names. The first four, Bronwyn, Ansley, Garrett, and Carys, were named in the US without any idea that we would ever live anywhere else. Brazilians can't say their names correctly, but we don't care, because we love their names and their names go with them. Anderson was born in Brazil. But Anderson is a relatively common name here. Anderson is a family name that we had been hanging on to for a long time and were happy to be able to use it.

Just to give you non-Portuguese speakers an idea of how Brazilians would pronounce things - here are a few examples:

- Anything with an "r" is a problem. Brazilians don't roll their "r's" but they flick them. So an "r" in the middle of a name kind of sounds like a quick "d" sound. An "r" at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an "h".

- "D's" are pronounced like "g's", and "t's" pronounced like "ch".

- No Portuguese words end in "n", so they don't really know how to pronounce an "n" at the end of a word.

- "an" in a word is pronounced like "un".

- "W" and the sound it makes don't really exist in Portuguese.

- "er" is pronounced like "ehr" or how we would say "ere".

- silent "e's" at the end of the word don't exist. They will pronounce the "e" like "ee".

So, here are some examples:

Brady - becomes "bday-gee"

Ryder - becomes "hy-gehr"

Landon - becomes "lun-daun"

Anderson - becomes "un-dehr-saun"

Cole - becomes "cau-lee"

Garrett- becomes "gar-ech"

These translations kind of put a different spin on your "favorite American name", don't they?

Lastly, we want a name that has a special meaning. Having a 6th child wasn't an easy decision to make and wasn't so easy to pull off. I (Benay) am 44 years old. We decided to try to have another one because we felt that this was God's plan for our family. We totally feel like this baby is God's gift to us and we want a name that reflects that.

So, there you go. We want a name that sounds good in English and Portuguese, has special meaning and that we all agree on. Not too hard, is it??

Our avenue for avoiding these problems has been to look at Italian names. We like a few Italian names, and English and Portuguese speakers say them basically alike. So, don't be surprised if our baby's name ends up being something you've seen on a pizzeria sign once before!!

Getting Closer

Hard to believe but we only have 3-4 more weeks of this pregnancy.

We had our 5th baby ultrasound today and got to see the little guy (we might just name him "Little Guy") one last time before he arrives. Everything, praise God, looks good. He already weighs 6.6 lbs. and is 19 inches long. Here he is:
Is it just me or does his head look like the alien guys on the last Indiana Jones movie?

Getting Close

Only (more or less) 5 more weeks until we get to hold our new son/little brother.

Isn't she cute?

Our Little Secret

Over the last few months we've had something we've wanted to share but we've waited until Mother's Day to do it. Since Mother's Day is passed we can now share it here. We've already shared it with you in "subtle" ways on this blog. See if you can guess what the theme in all of the following pictures is:Stay with us.........Got any ideas?

What are we talking about? Take a guess of what we could be hiding. Focus on Benay if you like. Did you notice that in every picture there was somebody or something in front of Benay? What were we hiding?

This:

Yes, that is my beautifully pregnant (prego, baby bump or choose your goofy new name for pregnant here) wife! God has blessed us with one more child!

I may be biased but I believe this girl is the most beautiful pregnant woman I've ever seen.

Don't believe me? Take another look......yeah, she's with me.

Okay so we weren't really hiding it but it's just that we waited to tell our parents until Mother's Day and so we had to be creative in posting photos of Benay without letting the cat out of the bag. Come to think of it, I guess we were hiding it.

Just so you know, it's a boy. As our teammate Matt said we are now officially the Brady Bunch. 3 boys and 3 girls. Benay has had numerous doctor's visits since we found out we were pregnant and every ultrasound so far has shown us a healthy little boy. His due date is scheduled for September 13.

The kids are so excited about the new little baby boy that will be with us soon and we've been thankful that they've been such strong prayer warriors for our family in regards to us having one more baby. God has blessed us with kids who love the Lord and love the thought of our family growing.

Here is the most recent photo of our new son. The bottom photo says: "Hello everybody, I love you all!! Signed, The boy."We don't have a name for him yet. We just KNEW it was a girl until we had the second ultrasound. We had the name picked out (Cássia) and everything. Maybe we can have a "name that baby" contest for this little guy (feel free to put your names in the comments section) because we don't have a clue as to what his name is going to be. Since the beginning of this pregnancy we had someone encourage us to read and re-read the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah and to ask God to impress upon us a name for this child. We really felt the Spirit was leading in the girl's name and we know He will do it with the naming of this little boy.

We ask for your prayers for a healthy mom and little boy.