She's Alive





E1

E2

We are officially on grand baby watch. My wife is in Oklahoma City, helping out with grandsons Ephraim and Ezra while waiting on E3 to be born. She will be our first granddaughter. Since Ezra (E2) was three weeks early, our daughter was hoping E3 would be too. Her official due date is May 18, so obviously she won't be three weeks early. We'll see. It was about 10 days ago that the baby dropped.


So here is E3 (who might be named Elise—not sure if the final decision has been made yet), calmly gestating in her amniotic fluid. Well, our daughter will say it's been anything but calm. This tomboy has been kicking and squirming from very early in the pregnancy. She's anxious to get out. We're anxious that she be to term and I know our daughter, despite of the tiredness of being very pregnant, wants her to be to term as well.

I'm heading to OKC this weekend, for E1's 5th birthday celebration. Possibly it could be for the birth as well. I'm kind of hoping it is. I'm kind of hoping I get the call today.



E3 (with Mommy) at 37 weeks

I'm thinking of what I said a couple of paragraphs ago. E3 is kicking and squirming. She's alive! She's a child who is even now doing all the functions a child is supposed to do except breathing and eating by mouth. She's probably sucking her thumb. She could see if all that fluid weren't in her eyes. I'm fairly sure she can hear what's going on outside her comfy berth. She's probably having times of sleep and dreaming, and her learning has already begun. Someday soon she'll add those three functions and take the world by storm. I'm sure she'll charm her two brothers into becoming gentlemen. I'm sure she'll have her two granddads wrapped around her little finger in no time.

She's in the world—not independently so, but she's here. And I love her already. I loved her the moment our daughter announced she was alive. I don't know that I could love her any more once she becomes a breathing girl, or later a talking, walking, running, jumping, rope-skipping, laughing, crying, reading, thinking girl.

Some of my Facebook friends, family and non-family, make posts about political and social causes. Two of these are abortion and abuse of animals, mainly dogs. The latter is a horrible scourge on our society. The uninformed breed dogs like crazy, they can't find homes, and are abused or abandoned. I'd like that to stop.

But the same people (sometimes the same, sometimes others), have no problem with killing a baby within the womb. I don't get it. I just don't get it. How can your heart ache for an abused dog but not for an aborted child? A million or more babies a year killed, most for convenience of the parents.

Yes, I suppose an expecting mother has a right of privacy and that translates into her being allowed to do what she wants with her body. But that helpless baby growing inside her, it seems he or she has rights too. When rights clash, should not a humane society say the rights of the weaker party supersede those of the stronger party? It seems we have it just the opposite.

Those of us who believe abortion is a moral evil do not have a war on women. We just believe in protecting the life of the weakest among us.