Neil and I were asked to teach the youth of our ward how to dance the swing.  We love to dance and always enjoy helping others have fun.  Neil was showing a move to the youth when I felt compelled to go into the bathroom.  As I arrived there, I started to bleed.  Neil took me right home and as taught in the emergency midwife class I took a glass of cayenne pepper in cold water.  The bleeding stopped immediately.

I called my doctor and she came right out to my home.  I was placed on bed rest.  I continued to take the cayenne pepper but mainly concentrated on alternating drinks of an herb called False Unicorn and the herb Catnip.  The bleeding stayed at a trickle and I had no cramping.

After three weeks of threatening to lose my baby, I did miscarry.  Then the bleeding stopped instantly.  My doctor checked me again and told me that I was still pregnant.  It had been a twin pregnancy.

A mixture of feelings exploded within me.  I had lost a baby and I was still joyfully pregnant!  Years later I would have a miscarriage in which there was no comforting knowledge of another one still growing within me.  That sorrow was nearly overwhelming.  This time though, I was so grateful to have my one baby's life preserved.

One night I had an intense dream that settled the question of becoming a midwife.  I dreamed that I was at a ward dinner and all the members were sitting at the tables.  Jesus Christ was there, going from person to person.  As he visited, He would look at them and ask a question.  The question was different for each person.

He blessed the woman sitting next to me.  She was a single working mother whose heart desired to be at home with her children.

Then came my turn.  My Lord looked at me with love and full understanding of who I was.  He asked the question meant only for my heart.  "What is it that you really want to do?"

With a pure clarity, I knew.  With my whole heart filled and drawn out in prayer I answered him.  "Oh, I want to be with my children."

He asked Neil, "When you graduate what will you be?"

"A physician," Neil replied.  That is what others would have called him back in Christ's time.

Our Savior looked at him and said with words that pierced our hearts, "Follow me," meaning that He was the greatest physician ever.

Aside from seeing my Savior, the important thing about this dream was that it dealt with the two problems through which we were going.  The F test score depressed Neil and those emotions effected his interaction with Chani and me.  This dream brought out what was really important to Neil's success.  I was pulled between my mothering and the midwifery calling for which I was apprenticing.  Either I was to help others bring their babies into their arms or I was to bring my own.  Once the issues were clear through the Lord’s spirit, the direction was obvious and easy.

I had several dreams that prepared me for Ben's birth.  These dreams gave me tiny glimpses of information about the coming events.

I had a dream where Heavenly Father told me very clearly, almost audibly, that his name was to be Benjamin.

One dream showed me that I was in the church building looking outside through the door.  I saw Neil walking towards me.  Chani was walking with him and Neil had another little baby in a blanket in his arms.  Later this event happened on the day we gave Ben his name and blessing.

I had a dream a few months before Ben was born in which I saw an older, bigger baby who was Chani in the forefront and two smaller, new babies in the background.  I felt the two babies were a boy and a girl.  Chamrie would arrive only 18 months after Ben while he was still quite small.

Only a few hours before my baby was born I had another dream while taking my nap.  I saw vividly that Neil had to bless our boy baby if that baby was to stay with us.  The night before Ben was born, I awoke twice and told Neil that no matter what was happening all around us, if I had a son, Neil would have to bless him immediately.

I never really believed the dreams were real.  They were too frightening and I had worked so hard to get my baby to what the doctor and I believed was full term.  In the end, Neil did bless Ben immediately.

I was in bed several weeks putting off another premature birth.  As soon as everyone thought is was safe I was able to begin moving around again.  Not long after that I had a 33-hour false labor.  My friends were there waiting with me.  I remember thinking, "They are all waiting with me for the birth of my child.  However, the Savior could get no one to be awake and wait while He gave birth to our eternity in the Garden."

After 33 hours of false labor I sent everybody home.  Finally the day really came and my short labor began.  I had prayed about the people to be present thinking, "This is too many people." Yet Neil and I always got the same answer and we could not cut the list down.  So we had quite a crew.  One friend was there just to take care of Chani, and another friend was there to help and take pictures, both of them from our ward.  One couple was there from the college who were expecting their 1st child.  I had two midwives present.  Each had brought a baby.  Lastly, we expected the doctor but she didn't arrive until after Ben's birth.  In the end it was important to us to have each of these people.  The events surrounding Ben's birth were so unusual and traumatic it was a blessing to have others who knew exactly what happened and why.

When his labor really began it was easy in that there was a lot of rest between contractions but it was difficult in that I had a very typical, very emotional transition.  Neil’s reaction deeply hurt me.  He was so focused upon the other people in the room.  The doctor had not arrived.  So there were some real concerns there.  I would have a contraction and Neil's eyes and his mind would be out there in the room.  I would have to insist that he focus back on me.  I felt so abandoned and alone even with all the other people around me.

The labor progressed quickly.  We had two midwives present but the doctor still had not arrived.  Neil delivered Ben himself.  First there was the scream of delight over his being a son.  I had been so afraid that my next son would be premature that I had tried to talk myself into believing this baby was a girl.  However, from the first yell of, "A boy!" I knew that I had always known.

Ben's cord was extremely short.  They could not put him on my tummy until the cord was clamped and cut.  So Neil lifted him toward me as much as possible.  I would touch his little head and say, "Oh, my poor son, my poor son."  He was so tiny.  He weighed four pounds and three ounces.  I kept saying, "How could he be a low birth weight baby when my diet was so good?"  I had no comprehension whatsoever that he was premature.  Everybody involved in my prenatal care was certain of the due date and that he was full term.  We went into shock over his prematurity.

Neil blessed Ben immediately.  Ben had mild breathing problems right away, but because we were in shock we had trouble dealing with or even recognizing it.  The doctor arrived and said that if he were to have a chance to survive he would have to go to the hospital.  We called the paramedics, which was a mistake as they almost killed him.  By the time they arrived Ben was looking much better.  We had laid an oxygen mask near him but not on him and were rubbing and talking to him.

Four big firemen crammed into my living room followed by two big paramedics.  The paramedics took one look at my tiny son and said that they'd give him an apgar of 8/9.  In other words the official determination was that he was a healthy newborn.  Fools!  Then they ignored him!

They started getting my blood pressure etc. and I was perfectly fine!  I kept saying, “I am fine!  It is my baby that needs help.”  Finally they brought in a Mylar blanket, wrapped Ben up, and set him aside, alone on the floor.  Ben was doing fine as long as we were touching him and had the oxygen laying along side his face.  They did not let anybody hold him.  They did not continue to give him the oxygen.  After all, they had already given him an apgar of 8/9!

Because Neil and I knew the stress of a hospitalized baby and because we didn't want Ben left alone we had decided that Neil would go with the paramedics and Ben.  I would stay home, be examined and made sure that I was OK.  Then someone would drive me to the hospital.  I would have been separated from them by less than an hour.  The paramedics insisted that I go along.  They told me that if I did not go, they would not take our son.  I went.

When they got me into the ambulance, I was strapped down so I could not move.  They told me that the reason I needed to go was that my blood pressure was too high.  I asked what it was.  It was 110/70 which is my normal pressure, a nice comfortable level for anybody and absolutely excellent for having just given birth.  I informed them of such.  They didn't know what to say, as they had not expected me to be knowledgeable in these matters.

Instead of leaving they began to argue with their dispatch over the radio, "We were called in on a baby that wasn't breathing.  This baby is breathing just fine.  Are you sure we have the right baby?"

Of course Ben looked good when they arrived.  We had been giving oxygen and vitamin E and massage!  However, he was still grunting and weighed just over four pounds!  Finally, one of the men said, "Hey, he doesn't look too good now.  He looks kind of dark.  Do you think we should give him some oxygen?"

Finally we left for the hospital.  The man behind me said, "You're lucky, Mrs. Logan.  We just passed neonatology today."  They had a few months of newborn study.  I informed him that I had four years of the same study.

When we arrived at the hospital, Neil stayed with Ben as they took him up to the neonatologist.  Neil told our friend, Alice, to stay with me and not to leave me alone.  Security guards forcibly restrained Alice at the entrance of the hospital as they took me into a private room.

Earlier as we were getting ready to leave the ambulance, a nurse came and asked the paramedics if the mother was, "Open to being examined."

"No!  The mother is not open to being examined!"  I yelled from the gurney.  I had just had a safe, germ-free home birth.  I was not going to complicate that in the hospital!  So when I was in the private room, the nurse came in and asked again.  "No, I just want to go to my baby.  I will not be admitted to the hospital.  I am fine and there is no excessive bleeding whatsoever."

She said I'd have to see the doctor.  She left.  After a bit the doctor came in and said, "I understand Mrs. Logan that you don't want to be examined."

"That's right.  I want to go to my baby."

"That's bad medical practice."

"I am fine.  It is my baby who needs help."

"All right, you'll have to sign an A.M.A. (against medical advice) form."  Then he left me alone for twenty minutes.  I even yelled several times for Alice.  I did not know that they had physically confined her to keep us separated.  I was left entirely alone, strapped down, and unable to release myself and no friend allowed in my presence.

Finally, the nurse came in and unstrapped me.  She had me sign a form and took me up to see Ben.

Neil was in the room with the neonatologist.  The man who became Ben's doctor was a prince in the profession.  He was the kindest of men.  He always treated and responded to us as Ben's parents and not as parents of an emergency homebirth.

When the doctor told me that Ben was ten weeks premature as determined by development tests I couldn't believe it.  How could he be premature and nobody knew it beforehand?  I had him run the test again.  I was so distraught that he consented to say that Ben was eight to ten weeks premature.

Ben was never very sick.  He needed help breathing the first week and then he was gaining strength the next two weeks.  Then he came down with a hospital infection and was on antibiotics for a week.  Then he came home.  He was only there four weeks.  He came home nursing 100 percent and weighing four pounds and nine ounces.  Either Neil or I were with him by his bedside the entire time of his hospitalization.

As the medical professionals involved pieced together the events surrounding Ben's pregnancy and birth we gained an understanding of this initially confusing event.  Ben had been a twin pregnancy where I miscarried the twin and Ben was born five months later.  Ben's placenta was extremely small, probably stunted because of the trauma of the miscarriage and the three weeks of bleeding connected with that event.  The doctor told me that the placenta would not have sustained his life to full term.  He would have been a stillbirth if I had carried him much longer.

Knowing how I had kept Chani inside and later keep all other siblings inside until full term, I am positive that by staying down Ben could also have been carried longer.  Along with this knowledge, whispers the Spirit saying, "I blinded all to his timing so he would live."  Live he did and brought into our lives a constant reminder of the miracles of the Lord.

We always knew that Ben would live.  We also find that hindsight often adds clarity to events.  I had a vision some years after Ben's birth that let me know again that Heavenly Father planned Marshall's premature birth and death and Ben's birth and life.  In this vision I saw a woman holding a very small baby.  The baby was very sick.  She brought him before Christ.  Christ took the little baby and kept him.  Another woman came carrying another very tiny baby.  This baby was also sick just like the previous infant.  She brought the child to Christ and Jesus took him.  He then healed the child and gave him back to the woman.  I knew I was both women and that the two children were Marshall and Benjamin.

    Chani nursed extra for her brother so that he would have good mother's milk when he could nurse.  By the time Ben came home he weighed four pounds and nine ounces.  He was nursing one 100 percent.  I worried when his first couple of feedings in the hospital were of my milk given by bottles.  I asked the doctor if he would end up refusing me in preference to the bottle.  The sweet doctor said, "Mrs. Logan, if all you ever offer him is the breast then that is exactly what he will use."  He was so right and I rejoiced again in his being our doctor!
    Ben was born three days before Chani's second birthday.  He was in the hospital and our focus was nearly entirely upon his little life.  Chani played at the homes of some ward members all day while I was at the hospital.  Neil was at the hospital all night and I was with my daughter.   That first morning after his birth Neil had stayed the night at the hospital and I had slept at home with my Chani.  Come morning all I wanted to do was get to the hospital as quickly as possible.  Since we had only one car, I relied upon the service of the sisters in getting me to the hospital.  That first morning there were so many phone calls of concern that it took hours for me to finally get out of the door.
    We settled into the routine rather quickly.  However, Chani's birthday came and went.  The Chavez family invited us over Sunday and to our surprise had a cake and some gifts for our little girl.  It was a great blessing to our hearts.

    After Ben had been home for one week, we had a doctor's appointment and found that he weighed five pounds and two ounces.  He had gained over an ounce a day.  He was nursing well although it was a round-the-clock activity.
    After he had been home a week and a half, a day came when he was less interested in eating than usual.  By the afternoon he would not eat at all.  He just slept and seemed quite content.  Neil was going to school during the day and working at night so he was not around.  I started to feel uncomfortable about Ben not eating.  Neil came home for dinner and before he left he reassured me that all was OK.  It wasn't OK though.  Ben was still not nursing and I knew something was wrong.
    When Chani took her nap that afternoon, instead of laying the baby down, I took him into our bedroom and took off his clothes.  I took off my shirt and laid down on the bed.  I brought my sleeping infant up onto my chest and pulled the covers over us and slept with him like that.  I cried as the feelings of his birth and the missed experience of cuddling together that first night were healed through this simple action.  As events unfolded later that night, I became certain that action helped preserve his life during that afternoon sleep.
    There was a good sister visiting our home that evening.  Neil was helping her with some intense pain she was experiencing.  Her name was Roxy.  It was very late at night and she was waiting for Neil to come home from work.  Suddenly, she decided to stay the night which was something she didn't understand because she had never done anything like that before.  She had nine young children and the prompting to stay was confusing.  I was also babysitting Alice's three children for the night.
    By 10:30 that night I was crying.  Roxy and I tried everything we could to get Ben to nurse but we were unsuccessful.  Neil came in the door shortly after that.  He fixed a bed for Roxy.

    We had our companion prayer and took Ben's temperature.  It was normal so we bundled him up for sleep.  He always slept next to me in our bed.  I laid him in the bed while Neil knelt for his private prayers.
    I had gone into the bathroom to take off my contact lenses when this overpowering voice told me that when we went to sleep Ben would die.  I started sobbing uncontrollably.  I kept saying, "No, not again."  I went into our room and Ben was completely white.  I picked him up and held him close, rocking back and forth crying my heart out.  Neil stopped praying and took Ben from me.  He had just passed C.P.R. the day before.  He got the order of action a little mixed up at first but when he would jostle Ben, he would take a breath.
    Neil told me to call Ben's doctor.  I was totally panicked.  I was sobbing and ran into the living room, rustling through papers for the number.  Roxy kept asking me what I was looking for so she could help and all I could say was that, "I can't find it."  Neil had to come out of the room still stimulating Ben, got the number and called the doctor himself.
    He asked me if I could drive and I rushed to get dressed.  Then as I stepped outside I knew in my condition I couldn't so I awakened our neighbor and he drove us to the hospital.
    At first the doctor called it an aborted crib death.  If it had happened five minutes later, after we were in bed with the lights off, Ben would have died.  The doctor said he would have given the cause as Crib Death.  I lived at the hospital with Ben for the week he was there. From Friday night until Tuesday Ben was in intensive care.  He would stop breathing two or three times a minute.  I did not leave him.

    The first day as I sat by his incubator, he being the only patient in the room, a nurse came in.  She said, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now, Mrs. Logan."
    "Why?"  Her request totally puzzled me.
    "Because it's the rule here.  You may visit for 15 minutes every hour on the hour.  I've already let you stay five minutes extra."
    "I'm sorry, but I'm not leaving."  I had just spent four weeks with my son in NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).  I knew it was perfectly legal to stay by my son's side.  He was so sick that he would pause in his breathing every few minutes and would have to have his little body touched to remind him to take a breath.  The nurse was sitting across the room at her desk and I was by his isolette.
    "Really, Mrs. Logan, I have to ask you to leave."  By now she was standing by me and was very persistent.
    I finally got angry and firmly said, "If they can pay you to sit here all day to watch my son, then as his mother I certainly can do the same.  If I was interfering with the care of another patient, I would be willing to step out at vital times but the only patient here is my son."
    "Mrs. Logan, you have to leave now."  Taking up the challenge, she had just ordered me out.  I cannot emphasize how brave I was.  I was taking a stand against authority for the sake of staying near my infant.  I faced her down and said, "You would look rather silly calling a guard to drag me away."
    She left and a few minutes later the head nurse came in.  In a soothing and kind voice she said, "I'm sorry Mrs. Logan.  The nurse didn't understand but your doctor left orders that you were not to be disturbed."  Thus ended the only trouble I had with the hospital stay.

    The doctor would not discharge Ben until I had completed a course in C.P.R.  I took the course at our ward building along with another mother in our ward.  An interesting note is that a few weeks after we completed the course we were visiting that mother when her toddler came staggering into the room.  The little girl could not talk.  The mother jumped up and using the skills taught in the class, she dislodged the penny stuck in her daughter's throat.
    The last night of our stay a woman and her full term three-week-old baby stayed in our room.  Dr. Stein, Ben's doctor,  was also her doctor.  She told me that her baby was not nursing well.  She had brought her baby to the hospital twice that day and both times they could find nothing wrong with the baby and sent her home.  The third time she came back, Dr. Stein asked her to stay the night.
    In the middle of the night she was trying to nurse her baby when suddenly she screamed for help.  Her baby had spit up and then completely stopped breathing.  Her baby had exhibited the same symptoms as Ben.  That was how they knew it was a virus and not an attempted crib death.  I have since heard of other babies with the same thing that winter.  I wonder how many more crib deaths there were that fall because of a virus.

   That whole time I had an overwhelming feeling of fighting Satan.  It was as if he wanted more than anything to destroy Ben and our family.
    While Ben was in the hospital this second time, the seriousness of our disappointed feelings toward each other began to manifest.  Added to the frustration begun when Mary stayed with us was the reality of Ben's premature birth and now my panic over his aborted crib death.  I did panic.  There is no other way to describe my actions of that night.  Yes, I got the inspiration that something was wrong.  Then all I did was hold him and cry.  I was ineffectual in the emergency.
    We found ourselves pulled apart for the first time in our marriage and it wasn't until Conference Sunday a year later that the gap between us closed.  This made many events of that year even more serious then they were originally.  Even without our marriage difficulty, that year would have been serious enough to give any person agony.

    I lost my milk four months before Chamrie was due.  Ben would drink only enough from a cup to satisfy thirst but not enough for his body fluids.  He became dehydrated very quickly.  The thought came to me to give him a whey product as he was still allergic to regular dairy and to soy products.  I had to give him this in a baby bottle.
    Giving him a bottle was so painful for me.  I would hold him with one arm so he could turn and nurse.  With my opposite hand, I would hold the bottle.  He would turn one way for the breast, another for the bottle and back again.  I cried.  Every time we nursed I cried.  We did this until Chamrie was born and then I threw the bottle out.  Ben returned to unhindered nursing.  He continued to nurse for another entire year.
    Right after this time Neil and I healed our marriage.  There had been so much stress in our lives the previous year.  We learned that stress happens.  It always will happen.  It rests with us to keep our marriage separate from those things that we struggle through together.  Our solid devotion, love and unity with each other remains one of the greatest gifts we have given our children.

    Ben's large motor skills came to a standstill when he was five months old.  His small motor development progressed normally.  In every way Ben was developing normally except for his small size and his large muscle skills.  When he was fourteen months old, he was not sitting alone, crawling or pulling himself to a stand.  All he could do to get around was roll.  He would mark a path with his eyes and start the roll.  He would pause and adjust the roll to change direction.  He got very skilled at rolling all over the house.  We knew he was developing normally mentally but nothing was happening motor-wise.
     Neil was taking an acupuncture class and he told the instructor about Ben's difficulties.  Neil humbly asked if Dr. Amaro would treat Ben with his laser acupuncture machine without charging us.  Neil was still a student and we had no extra money.  Dr. Amaro graciously agreed.  We took Ben into Dr. Amaro's office at the end of November for his first treatment.  The very next day Ben sat alone, pulled himself up to a stand and began to crawl.  Within two months he was walking.  I know Heavenly Father provided that means to bless my son.  I also fully believe that if Neil hadn't humbled himself and followed a prompting that Ben would not have developed for a long time or perhaps not at all.  I am grateful beyond expression for the many blessings we have received.

    Ben walked only two weeks before Chamrie was born.  In a few weeks she weighed as much as he did.  It felt as if he had waited his development until her arrival.  We knew that she was the little twin spirit that I had miscarried when pregnant with Ben.  At one point in his preschool years Ben refused to pray with us.  His reaction was quite intense.  We prayed and pondered upon what the problem might be and what to do about it.
    One night as I knelt by Ben's bed watching my sleeping son, I had a vision open to my eyes.  I saw Ben in his premortal life sitting in a room much like one would see in the temple.  As he sat there Chamrie ran into the room.  She was so talkative, so animated compared to Ben's quiet nature.  She was thrilled because she got to stay longer!  Ben was not totally happy but was accepting of the change in plans.  I knew as I watched this scene that they were twins.  There was no doubt as to the message.
    I called Neil in and told him what I had seen.  He laid his hands upon our sleeping three-year-old and a beautiful blessing followed.  Most remarkable were the words that told Ben that his twin was not lost.  Nothing is lost to the Lord.  The twin Ben was mourning was Chamrie and she was safely here with him.
    The next morning we noticed an incredible change in our young son.  He was happy.  He prayed easily with his family.  His connection to his younger sister seemed to deepen intensely.  It was as if a great weight lifted off his spirit.

 Ben continued to struggle throughout his childhood.  He gradually overcame allergies.  He increased in stature very slowly.  He struggled with learning.  Even with these challenges his personality, spirit, emotions developed in a healthy and delightful manner.  One day when Ben was sixteen, he asked if he could stay at a friend's home.  He had to wait until I knew if I'd be home to watch the younger children of if I would need him.  Once he got the OK he hurried and got ready.  Just as he was at the door to leave he got a phone call.  The Elder's Quorum President needed him to go Home Teaching with him.  Ben gave a sad sigh but quickly went down and got into his church clothes.  Later he joined his friend, leaving behind a mother pleased and grateful for the young man he has become.  Now my son has become eighteen and closer to me then ever before.  He works with his dad and serves in the ward in any way that is needed.  He is the favorite of the young teens as he is old enough to look up to and yet very accepting and playful.

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