Seventh Child of the Seventh Child

Rachel Irene North was born to our family on Saturday, June 22, 2002 (the day after Lindsey's 6th birthday!)

I love this funny picture! Rachel is doing this thing that all my babies did, but she is the only one I caught a good picture of. She's making a kind of "sh-shing" sound through her little wrinkled-up nose.

On that Saturday in June, I'd been having some pretty good, strong (although not terribly painful) labor--contractions about 5 minutes apart--for an hour or so that morning, so around 11:00 I told Bruce that we should probably go to the hospital soon. But first I had to make sure we had food in the house for the other kids, so I ran to the grocery store. It was a "try this" day, and everyone there had something for me to sample, and I would say, "Sorry--in labor--gotta hurry." I know, you are wondering why I didn't send Bruce to the store. I don't know. I probably told him to fix the swamp cooler or something. Anyway, one sample lady finally caught on and hurried me to the cash register; the sample lady, the cashier and the lady in line ahead of me were all amazed that I was shopping while I was in labor.

Bruce and I drove up to the hospital and, as always with me, the half hour drive made the labor stop. But I was not about to let them send me home. I told them this (true) story: "All my babies come fast--in a couple hours; and this is my seventh." And they checked me and I was dilated to 5 so they were not about to send me home either. But since the labor had stopped and they had to call my doctor, they sent me for a walk. Bruce and I walked around for about an hour before they gave me my own room. Then they put me on pitocin to get the labor going again and left us alone. And then I got really scared. Labor and delivery are really terrifying to me; yes, even though I'd done it six times before, I was scared to the point of tears. [above: 4 years old]

2 months old

But it all went just fine. The pitocin did it's job; the epidural did not. Delivering Rachel was like delivering a basketball. But she was such a cute little girl!

When we were choosing names I had considered giving her the middle name of Irene, for my dad's mother, but Rachel Irene sounded so old-fashioned and we decided to call her Rachel Marie. But Marie just didn't sit right with me, and within a few weeks I just had to change it from Marie to Irene after all. It was kind of a hassle, but we are happy with her name. And it turns out that Irene is the name of Bruce's great-grandma too!

Rachel has been an artist ever since she could hold a crayon. And she has practiced writing her name ever since she learned to spell it: on my closet door; on a table cloth; on Bruce's dresser . . .

Rachel's most recent piece of artwork; she gave this to me last Saturday.

Rachel is a very smart girl; she was the top of her class in reading, writing and math both in Kindergarten and in first grade, and started second grade reading 120 words per minute. She is kind of a tease, and can be very silly. She loves cats, and she loves playing with her brothers and sisters.

We are very happy to have Rachel in our family!