Chani's birth healed us from the trauma of Marshall's birth.  It lifted our hearts and placed into our arms an angel of comfort.  Chamrie's birth also healed our spirits.  The biggest question that I carried in my heart concerning the emergency of Ben's birth was how could I not know that he was about to be an early baby?

Yes, I had the dreams that showed him to be premature but I thought they were simply warnings of what might happen if I did not stay down.  I did stay down and so thought the danger had passed.  True, the doctor and the other midwives did not know that I was less then full term.  True that the medical consensus was that Ben could not have lived any longer within me due to the stunted placenta.  True also that the Lord told me he had veiled the truth of the timing so that Ben would live and we could raise him.  Still my mind agonized over the question, "Did I ignore the whispering of the Spirit to the point of never even hearing it?"

Being pregnant with Chamrie brought a return of the joy of companionship into our marriage.  I was filled with laughter and a closeness to Neil that I had not felt for over a year.  It is as if that little baby lifted all the worry of preserving life from my heart.

My pregnancy with Chamrie was the most normal of all my babies.

I went to bed with her at thirty weeks pregnant.  However, that bed rest was entirely precautionary.  I could be up enough to care for my toddler and baby.  I knew without a doubt that this baby would be fine and full term.

This baby carried with her a powerful sense of security and confidence, of joy and intelligence.  These feelings from her spirit spilled over into my own.  They healed my troubled heart and I regained my trust in my ability to hear and heed the voice of the Spirit.

During my pregnancy with Chamrie, I did not have any warnings, no whisperings of preparation, and no tender promises of comfort amid grief.  There was total sweet and loving silence that rung with a knowledge that all was perfect again.

The most fantastic storm I have ever experienced happened that winter.  It was an ice storm and it happened in the dark of night.  We heard explosions going off all over Kansas City. We stood at our window and watched as giant blue flashes along with thundering booms played out before our eyes.

By morning about 75% of the city was without electricity.  The booms and blue flashes had been the transformers going out.  The outside reminded me of hurricane films or movies showing bomb destruction.  Tons of branches littered the ground.  Kansas City is famous for its many trees and it being winter, most of them were barren which added to the dead look.

The storm had uprooted entire trees.  The area is water-rich and so the roots are not deep the way they are in arid San Diego.  The trees grew huge and lush without struggling deep into the earth to find moisture.  The size of the trees combined with the surface root system caused these magnificent trees to simply fall right over.  They collapsed onto houses, cars, and streets.
Ice encased the surviving trees.  The weight of the ice is what caused all the damage.  The ice glistened in the morning.  It was an absolutely incredible sight.  Beautiful destruction is the only way to describe it.

Imagine this city was without electricity in the middle of winter.  Kansas City was very cold.  Being a high humid state, the air was always much colder than the temperature reading.

Our electricity was out for eight days.  We found out how well we were prepared for such an event.  We were the only ones around with candles to spare. At first we didn't think we would have a heating problem because we had a gas furnace in the basement.  However, both the thermostat and the blowers were electric. Refrigeration was no problem.  We just left food out on the table and frozen foods outside on the porch.  We bought a kerosene heater the very first day and it was the last on the shelf.  We bought a lantern the day before the electricity went back on.  We put up sheets to block the hall and the kitchen leaving us able to warm the living room; otherwise, the little warmth from the heater would never have been enough.

The first couple of days the hospital routes were closed from where we lived.  I was at the point of delivering Chamrie any day.  If I went into labor our midwife could never have gotten through the streets to assist in the birth.  My baby could arrive in the cold dark unattended by anybody except Neil and me.  My midwife assured me that my body would wait until things were back to normal.   During that week there was no television, no music, no lights, no heat, and thank goodness, no newborn.

Chani was two-and-a-half and Ben was 18 months old.  We would put them in thermals with T-shirts over and double or triple layers of sleepers on top because neither would sleep under blankets.  We kept them in bed with us but they still didn't want covers.  We had a waterbed so we had to layer lots of blankets and comforters on top of the bed and under us because of the cold water.  We would move the heater out of the living room and into an area that would heat the bedroom.

That magnificent storm brought quite an adventure.  We tie it in with our memories of Chamrie's arrival that happened a few weeks later.

I had delivered Marshall on a Thursday, Chani on a Wednesday, Ben on a Tuesday and for some persistent reason I was certain that we would deliver Chamrie on a Monday.  On the way to church one Sunday, we were driving past a parked truck.  The knowledge flashed through my mind that our side mirror was about to hit the truck's side mirror.  In the same moment, the Spirit impressed me and I was certain that I would not go to bed before the baby would arrive.  Well, so much for my thoughts of the birth happening on a Monday.  However, I was far too excited to quibble over that idea.

All day I kept wondering when?  Yet all was still.  Late that night I sat around feeling the same sensations I had felt for months.  Heaving a sigh I decided that I must have been wrong about having that baby before bedtime.  Neil went to bed and I decided a shower would be the thing to do before bed.  I never, ever shower before bed, as I hate having my hair damp as I sleep.  Still, the hot water on that night felt wonderful.

I climbed into bed.  I turned off the light and lay back, bundled under the covers.  It was 12:35 a.m.  It was now Monday and I had not yet fallen asleep.  The first contraction came.  A few minutes later the second contraction arrived along with a renewing of the excitement I had felt all day.  I awoke Neil and told him it was happening!

Neil called the midwives and friends who were to be present for the birth.  They began to arrive.  I sat in our wooden rocking chair with Neil in front of me and labored.  Actually, while I knew I was in labor nobody else was really sure.  I could feel the contractions but they were neither painful nor hard work.

After a couple of hours the midwife came and told me that she was going home.  She wanted us to call her if anything intense started to happen.  However, she wanted to check me before she left so she knew what to expect later.  I agreed and she did.  I almost laughed at the sound in her voice as she said, "You are nine-and-a-half centimeters dilated!"

Still in shock and not knowing what to make of my near pain-free labor, she leaned close and whispered to me.  “Since your water hasn’t broken yet, one of two things will happen when it does.  Either the baby would be born right then, or your dilation will decrease and have to be worked back up.”

What an option!  I got up and went to sit on the toilet.  It was a wonderful place to be as the opening left a perfect absence of pressure upon that area of my body.  There I sat, refusing to move for thirty minutes.  There was no way I wanted to decrease!  Finally, because of begging from those around me, I returned to the birthing bed.

A full ten centimeters and time to push found me squatting and being a bit halfhearted about it.  Then suddenly the water broke!  Now I wanted to put my all into the endeavor!  The midwife demanded that I not push at all as the baby's head was right there.  I laid back and Neil got into position to deliver our daughter.

The little head arrived and all was well.  Then as I began the final push, they again ordered me to stop.  The cord was wrapped around her head twice and her hand was up by her face.  Neil and the midwife calmly attended to the baby while I was demanding that they hurry.  I knew the next push was coming and if I didn't get the baby out I was afraid she might not breathe.  They kept calming me and clamping and cutting and unwrapping the cord.  Then a quick push and my Chamrie was born into my arms at 4:35 a.m.

She was so big, so beautiful, and so healthy.  Chani and Ben came out to see their new sister.  Chani was in awe and Ben was sleepy.  Then they returned to their beds and Neil and I were left alone to cuddle our new daughter.

    With Chamrie's birth I threw away the bottle I had used to feed Ben for the previous four months and returned him to nursing.  It wasn't long before they were nearly the same size.  Ben had started walking two weeks before Chamrie was born and Chamrie walked at eight months so it always seemed much like raising twins.
    As I had said, I had known that Chamrie was the miscarried twin  and I had felt that Ben had waited his development until her arrival.  Many years later Ben asked me, quite seriously, who was older, he or Chamrie.  I told him that he was born first and was older of course.  However I know that he was puzzling out the difference between his primordial and his mortal birth arrangement with his sister.
    We had to be always on our toes in raising Chamrie.  From the very beginning she seemed to have been born knowing everything.  When we moved to San Diego, she was only two-and-a-half years old.  As Neil put up the book case in the livingroom he took heavy duty L-brackets and attached it to the wall.  I wondered at the time if that was necessary.  Neil insisted, saying he didn't want it to fall should the children start to climb it.
    The next day I found little Chamrie nearly to the top of the 7-foot bookcase.  Ben and Chani were watching and for the first time in their lives they realized that such activity was even possible.
    A month later we gave Chani a bike for her birthday.  It had training wheels on it and she was enjoying learning to ride in our driveway.  Suddenly I found all of us in the kitchen except Chamrie.  We all rushed to the living room where through the window we could see that little toddler sitting on top of the bike with her baby doll in her arms.  She was quite comfortable and balanced until we all yelled and started to rush toward her.
    We put up waterbeds for the children.  The frame under the beds was not the right size.  So Neil made it look nice by bringing the frames out to the level of the bed but that left a long tunnel up the middle under the bed.  I saw that and was concerned right away.  I told him that a child could crawl right up and get stuck with no way to turn around.  He thought that wasn't going to happen so we went to bed planning to deal with the beds in the morning.
    We were awakened by Chani telling us that Chamrie had crawled up the tunnel and was stuck.  Thankfully that little girl listened carefully to her mommy and backed up the entire length until she was out.  Of course we eliminated the tunnels that very day.
    When I was teaching Ben to read Chamrie would stand right by his side and tell him what the words were.  Chamrie learned simply by overhearing me teach Ben.  Her reading took off like a bullet.
    Chamrie had a dear friend when they were only four years old who moved to Utah.  Chamrie would get sad from time to time wanting to be in contact with this friend. Unknown to me she had prayed and prayed that she would regain some contact again.  The Spirit had whispered to her that she would talk with her friend again but that the friend would not know her.
    When we moved to Clearfield, Utah, Chamrie thought to look in the phone book.  I cautioned her that I did not think Jessica's father lived and worked near where we did.  She went ahead and made her call.  There was only one listing of that common name that could have been her friend's dad and that was the number my daughter dialed.
    I overheard a most incredible conversation between two eleven-year-old girls.  Chamrie asking for Jessica, did she use to live in San Diego, did her mother die, was her father an instructor at a college, did she live in Grossmont Ward?  To these things the puzzled girl on the other end answered yes.  Jessica had been found.  Jessica did not remember Chamrie.
    When Chamrie hung up she came in and with tears in her eyes and a beaming face she told me that she knew the Lord heard and answered her prayers.  This was the first time she had realized that with such intensity.  I had feared Chamrie's reaction at her friend not remembering her but to Chamrie this was part of the testimony of the prayer and revelation that went on between her and the Lord.

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