Free B00AEDDPVE EBOK by Marie Osmond, Marcia Wilkie

and my father picked up the phone. I had barely spoken before he told me, “Your mother left for the airport three hours ago. She’s on her way there to be with you.” Somehow, my mother’s maternal intuition told her I would be needing her by the end of that day. Was she ever right.
    Once I got to the hospital, they began to monitor the babyand realized the heart rate was elevated quite a bit with every contraction. Around the time my mother arrived, they decided to do a sonogram to see exactly what was going on. I was naturally anxious to have the doctor look at the image and tell me that everything was in perfect order. My mother had absolute faith that this baby would be a
perfect
blessing from God, no matter what the sonogram revealed. She believed that every single child is perfect, no matter how science would weigh in on the matter, and having my mom there to remind me of that was a great blessing to me.
    My mother poised herself on the edge of her chair, notebook and pen in hand, as the technician described how the high-pitched sound waves in a sonogram bounce back an image onto the screen of what is going on in the mother’s womb. I had to smile as my mother took voracious shorthand notes of every detail of the process. At one point, the technician laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Osmond. You’re not going to be tested on this information.” As the daughter of a schoolteacher, my mother never passed on the chance to learn something new. It didn’t seem to matter if it pertained directly to her life or not. She loved to have new information and enjoyed passing it along to others; I know she passed her endless curiosity and limitless love of learning on to me.
    We were both speechless when we saw the image of the next Osmond grandchild on the screen. The doctor pointed out that I had an excess of amniotic fluid and that my little daughter was literally swimming laps in my belly. They felt it was important to take the baby out because she was already almost ninepounds and there was more danger to deliver her naturally as the umbilical cord had wrapped around her leg, stressing her heart with every contraction. All in all, she was healthy and strong. There were no words, even in shorthand, to fully describe the miracle before our eyes. She almost seemed to be smiling at us as if to say, “I was just passing time until Grandma got here.”
    As the top of her head crowned, they put wire electrodes on her scalp to monitor her heart as she came through the birthing canal, which stunned my mom. When the doctor saw it was becoming too much for the baby to handle, he used a suctioning device to pull her out quickly. It was like a giant plunger that left her flexible skull a little bit pointed for a short while. My mom, who could find humor in any situation, lightened any stress in the room by saying, “She looks like a conehead child.” The attending doctor and nurses all burst into laughter, never expecting a comment like that from an adoring grandmother.
    Years later, when I went for my sonogram during my final pregnancy, my oldest son, Stephen, who was then sixteen, went with me. About six months before I became pregnant, I had mentioned to the older children that I had a deep inner feeling that our family was supposed to have one more boy. Stephen, who already had five younger siblings to deal with, two of them under age three, probably felt that, when it came to my feelings on having more children, I should maybe tell my inner voice to zip it. When, against the odds, I ended up pregnant at age thirty-nine, Stephen just shook his head in amazement.
    I was amazed that he wanted to go with me to my twenty-week ultrasound, but I thought it was really sweet of him: the oldest who couldn’t wait to welcome the youngest. I didn’t realize his true motivation.
    During the appointment, we were both in silent awe as we watched the image appear on the screen. Stephen sat silently as the medical assistant moved the