Ava makes us the Brady Bunch…

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Well, as Kevin Page said, our family is now looking a lot like the Brady Bunch! Ava Maris Koestner, born on Feb 18th at 9:35am right here at home in Grenada (Southern Caribbean) evens the score with three girls and three boys…but “don’t forget about Alyssa, Mom” says Emily and Kyla…we never would. The girls love adding in that extra girl, our beautiful Alyssa Feldpausch, who is now having a little girl of her own, due in June. Little Ava will officially be an aunt at 4 months old and I’ll officially be a birthgrandma at 40. Whoa!!

We often can’t see God’s plan until hindsight. That is definitely true in this case. My intuition-and many Grenadians-kept saying to go to the USA to deliver the baby. However, my prayer life said to stay and “TRUST”. This was the same message when we decided to try for Ava. It seemed crazy to add a pregnancy to the mix of moving (now we’re up to 9 times since August 2019), fixing up a boat in a foreign country, and sailing the Caribbean on a mission called “NFP by Sea”. People may not believe that NFP (Natural Family Planning) works to space pregnancies if they see I’m pregnant again, and really it just seems nuts to add all the risk. Yet we felt God calling us to TRUST HIM.

Same thing with the delivery. One day early in the pregnancy, Kyle said why can’t we fly Laura Slater, the midwife who safely delivered our last baby, down for the delivery? Genius! She’s been in practice 40 years and hardly ever gets more than a weekend vacation which she usually takes locally. This could do her well. Win, win!! She hesitantly agreed, but the location of her “said vacation” kept changing as we realized our boat was nowhere near ready to sail. Even our location within Grenada kept changing as each location had limited availability. Finally we ended up in the same large, ocean-view apartment where I delivered our new friends’ baby, and our bedroom was the same room where their sweet baby girl was born. Wow, ok that seems a little wild and then it made more sense why I felt God calling me to deliver her baby, against all my medical sense and feelings of incompetence.

Ava was born here in our apartment in Westerhall, St. David, Grenada. Laura flew down for the birth when I was 38 weeks and little Ava decided that Laura needed a vacation before she could do any more deliveries (she delivered a baby 5 hours before her flight left out of Grand Rapids at 6am). At 39 weeks, we decided either we birth at a hospital locally or we induce labor. I had already prayed a lot about this and had brought with me (thanks to my midwife, Elizabeth Rykse at HCC) cytotec or misoprostol for induction. It had already worked three other times (Alyssa, Charlie and Peter) so we decided to give it a go. We started Monday evening after our Priest, Fr. Marcin, was here to bless our apartment and she was born Tuesday morning at 9:35am in the bathtub with Kyle by my side and Laura attending. Ava was looking up instead of down…she was anxious to see the world already!!

Laura tested Ava’s blood with an Eldon Home Kit. I have O negative blood type, but Ava is A+ (like her dad, already getting good grades). It was a fun homeschool lesson for the kids on blood types. Laura also showed the kids the placenta and explained all about it. They all loved it except Kyla who was thoroughly grossed out!

Our last two babies, Peter and Thomas, both needed phototherapy due to Hyperbilirubinemia of the Newborn (aka Jaundice). With Ava, we were worried of course that she would need the same treatment. Laura advised us on how to do indirect phototherapy at home, but I was skeptical this would work. However, again I felt called to trust God, through the advice of Laura, and it absolutely worked! I even found an article on UpToDate in support for all my skeptical doctor friends too.

Filtered sunlight — Indirect (filtered) sunlight phototherapy appears to be a reasonable clinical alternative to treat mild-to-moderate hyperbilirubinemia in low-resource settings when regulated and approved phototherapy devices are not available…Data from a resource-limited center has shown that filtered sunlight phototherapy using commercial window tinting films (which remove harmful UV and IR light rays) is a safe and efficacious method for reducing TB levels and can provide similar results to that of conventional phototherapy.

Unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia in the newborn: Interventions.

Now for the name…Ava Maris Koestner. I’ve always prayed about our baby names and usually get an answer…well this time I wasn’t getting that. I went to daily Mass by myself one day and I felt God was calling me to have Kyle name her…I remembered the story of Zechariah in the bible when they named their son John. I personally really wanted a Marian name to honor our Blessed Mother, Mary. I really liked Maria or Ava (saint and princess) and had a multitude of saints middle names picked out in a list for Kyle…Therese, Lucia, Stellamaris…and Maria Grace after our dear friends’ daughter who passed away after heart surgery and of whom I often ask to pray for us. I kept asking him about the name but he had no response until she was born and he said, “Her name is Ava Maris.” Ava, from Eve or life, the foreshadow of Mary. Maris which is latin for “of the sea”. It is derived from the phrase Stella Maris (“star of the sea”), an epithet for the Virgin Mary and our boats new name. What a perfect combo of honoring our Blessed Mother and for our adventure on the sea!

Yet another blessing happened with our car. For our 7-person family we’d been renting monthly a 7-passenger vehicle, a Chinese DFSK Glory. For the car people, Kyle complained it had an inferior CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) as it was terrible on the Grenadian hills, at times requiring passengers to disembark to ascend. Kyle received a call the day before the birth from the rental company saying they needed the car back for a previous reservation (I guess they know the meaning of the word in Grenada). Because the only replacement they had was a 5-passenger Rav4 they had to search the island for a vehicle to fit our family. They finally found a Toyota Noah with how many seats? Eight. Just enough for our newest addition and making it more comfortable when squeezing four in back with Nana and Bumpa visiting this week. It also had a better powertrain for the Grenadian volcanic hills. They brought it to us while I was in labor for Ava. The timing couldn’t have been better. See how God provides!!!

Thank you God!! You are due all the glory in this story that gives witness to your Amazing Grace! Also, thank you to all those who prayed for us during this time of waiting and trusting. Your prayers were felt and so much appreciated!!