Birth control.
Back when we used to help out in youth ministry, years before I was an actual youth minister, and around the years that our kids were born, Kristi and I would host DNow's, after church fellowships, and were basically involved as much as we could be. We opened our home to these kids, a lot of whom we kept in touch with many years later, and many of them that I saw again at her funeral. Most of them are now married with kids and building their own families.
During those years, Kristi felt the desire to help those young girls to want to stay pure, to be able to wear a white dress on their wedding day, and to be able to tell their future husbands that they saved themselves for their honeymoons. So she devised a plan that didn't involve a "just say no" campaign.
During the time Abby was born, we had a video camera - not a phone, kids... an actual device that was only used to record motion pictures with sound that was stored on a mini video cassette! These mini cassettes were smaller than a VHS cassette (we weren't cavemen!), but in order to watch them in our VCR, we had to put the little cassette into a VHS adapter cassette and then we could watch it on any VCR in the house, which was only one, in the den, on the largest TV of the 2 we had. We used that camera to record both of our children's births. I was the camera operator, sitting next to Kristi's head, holding her hand, encouraging and cheering her on, trying not to pass out while witnessing the 21 hours of labor she was going thru with Abby. Tapes that worked in our camera were only 30 minutes long, so we had lots of cuts. A few minutes of pushing here, a few more minutes there, on and on. Until the doctor said, "nope, this one ain't coming out! We need to take her out."
Huh? What did he just say? C-section... surgery... cutting Kristi across her bikini line in order to remove our new baby was the next and only option left, and it was happening right now! I don't remember reading about this possible scenario in the "What to expect when you're expecting" book - a scenario of her going thru labor for 21 hours, pushing, sweating, crying, pushing again, sweating more... and that was both of us... and then being told they are cutting her out. This was a shock to the system. And I'm trying to record it!
We get moved to an ice cold surgical room and she is prepped for the emergency C-section. They put me at her head, behind the curtain that is hanging about 18" above her chest, only allowing me to see the doctors and nurses from about their shoulders up. So I see them working, and chatting about what to do next, Kristi is wide awake for all of this and I can only see her head so I start rubbing her forehead with 2 fingers in the same spot back and forth, telling her it's going to be okay, and how proud I am of her, and that I love her so much, and that we are about to meet Abby. I looked down at her because I could feel she was looking at me and she said, "Scott! Stop rubbing my forehead! You're going to give me a blister!" I can take a hint... I stopped. A few minutes later, I see the doctor lift Abby over the curtain. I'm still recording this, and the joy that filled that room was incredible. Kristi even started singing and a couple of the nurses joined in. I wish I could remember the song. I think it was "oh happy day" but I'm not positive. It was an incredible time, but one we hoped would never happen that way again. Luke was a planned C-section 2 years later. His 10.1 pound butt was coming out on the day of our choosing with no fuss, no pushing, and plenty of drugs.
Back to the topic... birth control. We had all of this captured on video. Kristi's plan for the youth girls was to watch this video of Abby's birth and then eventually Luke's birth too seeing this huge baby being held only by his head around his neck, coming over the curtain, and hearing the doctor say, "oh, he's a big one!" I believe her plan worked because those teenage girls were watching this with their eyes and mouths opened wide the whole time. Then she would turn the video off and say, "Don't have sex, kids!" Genius!
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