Dear Shepherd Hart Spears,
You have absolutely captivated my soul. As surely as the clouds couldn’t separate themselves from the sky, as surely as the rings of age couldn’t separate themselves from a tree, my heart beats with your every breath. You have rounded out our family beautifully and reminded me to slow down and breathe in moments so fleeting and precious.
Dear mystery baby in my belly,
Let me tell you some long overdue tidbits about your time in my womb. When I was pregnant with your brother, I wrote weekly updates. How was I able to accomplish this? Easy. Bennett didn’t exist. It was like my day was 50 hours long. Now it’s like my day is four hours long, and three and a half of them are spent corralling this energetic child. So mostly this pregnancy has seemed harder, but it’s hard to tell if it’s truly more difficult or just all in my head. We’re considering the fact that 1) I’m older, 2) I’m running a business, 3) I’m not in as fit of shape, and 4) I’m already a mom.
Dear Second,
You might wonder why I’ve waited so long to write. Looking back on my pregnancy with your brother, I began journalling, writing letters, announcing, processing, over-thinking… all so soon, all so “right away.”
And here we are, halfway through my pregnancy with you, and I’m just now sitting down to type out some thoughts.
Want to know the difference?
Early Wednesday morning, I received an email notifying me that a bill, HB 1342, was going before the House Thursday morning in Richmond that would remove parental consent and mandate vaccinations for all children in strict accordance with the CDC’s (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommended schedule. It also restricted medical exemptions and potentially limited physician’s say in the matter as well. If this bill passed, it could have become law in as little as 6 weeks.
Now, I’m not opposed to the concept of immunizations, but I have concerns about 1) many vaccine doses being given on the same day (hexavalent and pentavalent vaccines deliver either five or six different vaccines in one injection), 2) when vaccines use aborted fetal cell tissues in their making (four of which were on this bill) and 3) requiring vaccines to be given that haven’t been around long enough to study long-term health complications that might result from other additional ingredients (such as aluminum, a known toxin).
(But seriously, we can send a man to the moon but we can’t find a way to provide vaccine options for the community of people who would be uncomfortable with the use of aborted fetal cells???)
As I read the bill and considered what it was proposing, I understood that I would have no say in potentially spacing out my children’s vaccines in accordance with my motherly instincts or even declining them altogether. (With Bennett, it wasn’t uncommon for me to return a week after a pediatric check up, to receive the next vaccine to avoid multiples in one day. And when they wanted to give him a Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, I declined given that he wasn’t exactly at a high risk for that sexually transmitted disease at five minutes old.)
No choice allowed? Isn’t our society all about pro-choice? The government can’t tell me what to do with my body, but it can tell me what to do with my child’s body?
No, thank you.
Both Brian and I were pretty upset about potentially losing our rights to determine what was best for our children, no matter how much we had studied and researched our options (believe it or not, in BOOKS… not just the internet!). But then he told me that during this subcommittee meeting, public testimony of three minutes was allowed!
Well, that changes things.
In Brian’s words: “One of us has to go. And if it’s me, I’ll end up in jail.”
Which left me, Square Piece, who commutes to work by walking to her garage.
Early last month, my little family had the opportunity to join my father-in-law at the beach. In addition to the perfect weather and many opportunities to cook and escape into hours of reading, another highlight was the opportunity to write a second time for The Kingdom Life Now.
Hope you enjoy my little article and the Square Piece nature in which it was written!
Oh, and if you didn’t see, we’re working on our salon website… which also features some Glass Door Salon related blog posts like this one (surprising finds in the Lost and Found), this one (a gorgeous Before and After… and After), and this one (reflecting on the loss of my role model).
Happy reading!