Crazy Kicking Kid

We still got together with the Browns from time to time and they invited us over for dinner. Bill had started doing pork tenderloin on the grill which he wanted us to try. We were eating outside on their back deck when I suddenly felt something fly into my ear. I quickly put my finger into my outer ear to get it out but felt like it went all the way in. Later that day, I started feeling dizzy and the nightmare began.

At random times, I would just start feeling dizzy and my head would begin to spin and if I didn’t lie down perfectly still, I would throw up. I couldn’t figure out any particular thing that would set it off. I’m not sure if anything did actually get into my inner ear that day and I wonder if at least of part of the dizziness had to do with the darkness in my head that threatened to overwhelm me. But as time went on, I started to come to terms with the situation. I still didn’t know how I was going to support a family but I was slowly learning to just trust God that it would all work out.

Now that we knew we were going to have a baby, there was something else I really needed to know. Laura wanted a boy but, in general, I didn’t care much for boys. If we were having one, I needed to know so that I could prepare myself to love it. Laura was ambivalent about finding out. It turned out that our doctor didn’t do ultrasounds unless they were medically necessary anyway and we didn’t need one. So I was left with the unknown. 

If it was a boy, he was going to be named after me – Stephen Thomas Williams II but we’d call him Thomas to avoid confusion. For a girl’s name we toyed with Alexandria and I wanted to call her Alex. But Laura doesn’t like nicknames. She wanted a name that was harder to shorten. We settled on Alexis.

Some people do shorten the name Alexis to Lexy but we had bad vibes with that nickname from a girl we knew. We would strenuously reject that inclination if people tried it. So, not knowing what sex the baby would be, we called it Alexomas.

Then we heard that our local hospital’s birthing center was going to be having a baby fair on an upcoming weekend and it included free ultrasounds. It’s cool just to see the baby on an ultrasound, even if you don’t find out the sex. So Laura agreed to go.

The weekend came and we waited in line along with the other expecting parents. Our turn came and Laura got on the bed. As they were doing the scan, the nurse said something I didn’t hear then asked us if we wanted to know what sex the baby was. I deferred to Laura, sincerely hoping that she would say yes.

What I didn’t know was that the nurse had already let it slip which Laura had heard. Then the nurse realized that we might not want to know. So now she was asking if we had wanted to know. Since I hadn’t heard, I was still in suspense. Laura said yes and the nurse told us (again), 

“It’s a girl!”

I was ecstatic! I fist-pumped and exclaimed, 

“YES!”

So now we knew we were having Alexis. Some people in life are called movers and shakers. We didn’t know if Alexis was going to be one of those in real life but she sure was in the womb. So another name we gave her was “crazy kicking kid”.

The due date for Alexis was February 8. Laura started having labor pains the day before…and I had another dizzy attack. We were hoping she didn’t come that day because I would not have been able to even get out of bed. Fortunately, the labor pains stopped.

James 14 tells Christians that if they are sick, they should call the elders of the church to pray over them and they will get well. I tried it. I called one of the pastors on February 9th and he came over to pray for me and it worked! After that, I never had another attack.

We also had another amazing, timely provision. My boss and her husband decided they were going to go overseas to be missionaries and they were going to give me her position full-time with benefits! Things were falling into place. At least now I could support my family.

My boss was also the means of yet another timely provision. We were in a one-bedroom apartment, so once we had Alexis, we would need more room if we were to have some privacy. To most of the world, where multiple families often live in just one room, even a one-bedroom apartment would be a luxury. But we weren’t in most of the world. We were in a country with a typically different standard and we believed privacy would give us a better quality of life and would therefore be worth the extra cost.

My boss’s daughter had a 1240 square-foot, three-bedroom townhome about a mile from our apartment. She was moving and wanted to rent it out. A three-bedroom would not only afford us the privacy we wanted but would also give us room for future children. We arranged to make the move at the end of the month when we were sure Alexis would be born in enough time for Laura to be strong enough for the move.

As with any pregnant woman at the very end, Laura was very agitated with all the full-term irritations. People started predicting she would be born on Valentine’s Day but that too came and went. We were playing the waiting game.

Care Group Christmas Party