Ministry
Anja
Band
Since we were not sure, when exactly the baby would come, I asked to not be scheduled for the entire month. However, I noticed that the lady I was helping with the harmonies was on stage twice. It seems like she made enough progress to be scheduled. I am very happy for her.
Livestream
My team leader didn’t want me to stand or sit on an uncomfortable stool. Therefore, he only scheduled me for the sound so I could sit on a comfortable office chair and would not have to move. Ziva would usually stay with me during the set up, until we could bring her to childcare. She was doing very well, being busy on her phone, sitting either right beside me on a chair or on my lap.
One time, I was adjusting everybody’s volume, when all of a sudden, the sound was gone. Now this might require some additional information: The studio where I mix the sound is pretty soundproof, which means we only hear the music from outside very quietly. The sound is fed digitally into the studio and we can adjust it there for the livestream. So now that I had no sound but wasn’t done mixing, I went to get help. I talked to the sound guy in the sanctuary, I talked with my team mates who went to get the leader of the entire media ministry, but no one really knew what was going on. Luckily, just before the service, the sound was back. However, it meant that I had to adjust the sound during the first song, which was interesting, but we were all glad that we had sound for the livestream. Otherwise, no one would have been able to watch it online.
Fit2Serve
For those of you who were wondering, yes, I was working out until I gave birth but no, I did not do all the exercises the way they are meant to be done. I adjusted the exercises so they all were low-impact and doable without any pain or discomfort.
My original plan was to have my co-leader, who I had been training up for a couple of weeks, lead the workout as well as the spiritual part and a teenage girl lead the worship. Now things don’t always go as planned, do they?
The teenage girl let me know that she was not going to attend the workouts anymore because her mom is studying and is too tired to come or drive them to workout on Saturday morning. As for the workout, the first time I was not around, my co-leader cancelled because the room was not available. The second time, I cancelled the workout because of a conference and the third time, there was a volleyball tournament and we cancelled again. To cut the long story short, I didn’t miss a single workout.
Chris
Lights
I’m so proud of my team! This month, every one of them was stepping up to the plate and filling in for me. But let’s start from the beginning…
In the first part of October, I mentioned that the birth could happen any moment, and that they should be ready to fill in for me. Then, in addition to all the preparations there, most of our new moving heads failed and I had to make a plan of how to fix them. Fortunately, Pastor Mike immediately gave me the go to purchase replacements.
Then the birth happened and I was pretty confident that everything was organized for the upcoming conference only to find out that it was going to last two days and not just one. So I found myself organizing the lights team for the following morning from the hospital around 11pm. What a day! However, everything went well and the whole team stuck together and filled in the gaps, also after the birth, during my leave.
After coming back, I received some really good feedbacks from other leaders.
Family
Anja’s Birthday
I decided that I wanted to have a very relaxed birthday. Chris made breakfast and I went on a treasure hunt to find my presents. His clues were not the easiest to follow because we think so differently, but I was able to find all of my presents. For lunch, we ordered my favorite food, pizza (pizza Hawaii to be specific). While we were waiting for the pizza, Chris and Ziva went to the Fat Cat Pancake House to get one of their amazing cinnamon rolls for dessert. We watched a movie while eating pizza, had a nap and then went to church. It was my first time back since the birth and I was enjoying seeing everyone and everyone was excited to meet Yuna. It really was a nice and relaxed day that I enjoyed greatly.
Wedding of Anja’s Band Leader
On October 29th, Anja’s band leader got married to one of the ladies that is serving in Ziva’s childcare. It was the first time in a while since Anja last got all dolled up and she enjoyed it.
While last time, we had a babysitter for Ziva, we tried to take care of her ourselves and it worked out very well. There were also a lot of other kids who are older than Ziva and who know her from childcare on Tuesday evening and they would also play with her.
The ceremony was simple, but beautiful and bilingual since he is American and she is Mexican. The most touching moment for Anja was when Pastor Mike was sharing their stories. The band leader had moved down to Mexico to serve here after his first wife had died of cancer eight years ago. He had no intention of finding himself another wife. She, on the other hand, was praying for a godly man and one day, the band leader caught her eye. However, it took a while of them just talking to each other becoming friends until they decided to pray about taking it to the next level.
Ziva
Ziva was very clingy and cuddly the entire month. It seemed as if she wanted to make sure to enjoy the time that she would have alone with mommy. She would come up to Anja a lot and just give her a hug or kisses. That also meant that she did not want to leave her side. She did not want to be with Chris and now less than ever, she wanted to go to childcare, which made everything a lot more challenging. Apparently though, she was talking a lot during childcare, which was something completely new and exciting.
As usual, Ziva made a lot of progress. After some time where she was only able to move her toy screws back and forth, she finally got how she could unscrew them completely. The funny thing was that she was only able to unscrew them with her left hand. Whenever she would use her right hand, she would tighten them because she was using the outward movement. Ziva also added a few new words to her vocabulary: kitty, pizza (she says that whenever Anja is on the phone because that’s when she orders the pizza) and fries.
I in grass 
I with kitty 
I with daddy 
I eat chocolate 
I with sista 
I play
Ziva was very excited when we came home with Yuna. She went straight to the car seat and peaked in. Then she went and got her toys to share them with her baby sister. We had to explain to her that Yuna was not able to play with her toys yet. Of course, Ziva was a bit jealous, especially when she wanted to come to mommy or when she wanted something from mommy and mommy was busy nursing. However, she would always come close to the stroller when we would present Yuna to someone, being a proud big sister.
Pregnancy and Birth
The longer the pregnancy lasted, the more people kept asking about the due date, which was between the 6th and the 9th. The due date passed and people kept asking and kept being surprised to see Anja at church, serving and everything. Anja was really just tired, tired of being pregnant and of being restricted in her movements. We had an appointment with the OB/GYN on the 30th of September and again on the 8th of October to check on the progress. We scheduled another appointment for the 14th and the doctor said that we would have to induce if the baby had not been born until then. The 14th came and the doctor said that we could wait a little longer since the baby had not gotten as big as he thought she would. However, we were not keen on waiting any longer and while the doctor was still doing something in another room, we prayed about whether or not we should induce.
We decided to induce and so the doctor did a stripping, which means manually detaching the amniotic sac from the uterine lining. We were told to come back at 4pm to check on the progress. The doctor told Anja to drink hot chocolate as well as electrolytes because they contain everything the body needs for labor, and to lie down and take it easy. We also decided to call the babysitter, so she could come to our place and take care of Ziva until we would be back from the hospital. However, we really had to go shopping, so we went to Walmart. Anja could already feel contractions on the way home and by the time we ate lunch, they were already 1.5 min apart. When we contacted the doctor, he told us to come back at 2pm, so 2 hours earlier than initially mentioned.
At 1:30pm, the babysitter arrived at our place and we went to the doctor. Anja was not dilated enough yet, so he told us to go back home and go to the hospital between 4pm and 5pm. Until then, we went home to get some sleep. At 5pm, we were at the hospital. Anja was lead to a room where she was getting prepared for birth. Chris had to wait until she was done, which was weird for us. Apparently, men don’t do to well when they are putting in the drip… The OB/GYN showed up shortly after that. As soon as everything was ready, the water broke and the pain level went through the roof with no room to even breathe. The doctor wanted to order the epidural, which would have taken 15min to get to Anja, but a few minutes later, the baby was already here.
To Chris’ surprise, he was sent out of the room before the baby came. Then the baby was taken away from us and put in an incubator to keep her warm until the pediatrician could check on her and then get her dressed. Anja kept asking for her because she wanted to hold her. Chris could then get to hold her and was led into another room where we stayed for the night. Anja was taken to an operating room to get “cleaned up”. They put her under anesthesia for that. According to Chris, Anja was back after an hour. All of these surprises were quite stressful for us and we were glad when we were finally able to hold our baby, to feed her and to rest.
It was definitely a different birthing experience than in the States and if we decide to have another child, we will ask if we could change a few things, like Chris being able to stay during the entire time and Anja being able to have skin to skin with the baby after birth. However, we are glad that everything went well and fast.
Yuna’s First Weeks
Yuna has been latching and eating very well. Unfortunately, she has stomach pains often and is spitting up a lot, which is due to her digestive system not being mature enough yet. The spitting up has been causing an extra load of laundry a week. To avoid yellow milk stains, the clothes need to be pre-washed with cold water and dish soap, if the stain is really bad. The dish soap helps to dissolve the enzyme that causes the yellow stains. Funny enough, a lot of people gifted us bibs, so we have enough to exchange when necessary. When we got them, we were not too excited because we didn’t think we would need them, but now we can see how the Lord provided for our needs before we, ourselves, realized that we would have them.
Yuna is very alert and can look at you quite intently with her big eyes for a while. It always seems like she is thinking about something. Yuna sometimes sleeps for 5 hours at the time, unfortunately only during the day. At night, she usually wakes up three times, which is quite okay.
Our girls already show some clear differences: Yuna is a lot smaller than Ziva was. Ziva was quite chubby in comparison. Yuna has two birth marks, Ziva has none. Yuna is spitting up milk quite frequently while Ziva never spat up. We didn’t even burp her because it was simply not necessary. Yuna is sleeping a lot more than Ziva. Yuna’s eyelashes seem normal while Ziva’s have been black and long since birth. Yuna was lifting her head off Anja’s shoulder during burping only a couple days after birth. Ziva was early too, but she never lifter her head up when she was on our shoulder.
Prayer requests
- Health
- That Yuna’s digestive system is maturing fast so the spitting up and the stomach pain stops
- Easy birth registration in Switzerland
- Finances and favor for Mexican paperwork (permanent residency, passport Yuna)
Support the Schmid Family – Reach the world
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Mike Vincent
PMB W-304, PO Box 439016
San Ysidro, CA. 92143
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