30 Days of Gratitude. Day 4

If you're worried and you can't sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep. And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings.

The above quote is from a song in one of my favorite movies, White Christmas. The song was going through my head last night as I was trying to fall asleep. I started counting my blessings, and what do you know, I fell asleep! Thinking about problems and troubles will keep you up all night, but counting blessings really puts you to sleep. Try it sometime.

As I was thinking of all of my blessings one came to me that I haven't thought about in a long time. When I was ready to have my first child it was a little scary. I had been in labor for a REALLY long time and he was not being born. In fact, he was not really "dropping" at all. Finally, the doctor said we would have to do a c-section to get him out. Although it wasn't the ideal situation, I wanted to do what was best for him, of course. When he was born they soon understood why he wasn't born naturally. My tiny little baby had the umbilical cord tightly wrapped around his neck 3-1/2 times. He was in a lot of distress! There was absolutely NO way he would have been born without the c-section. Countless women and their babies have died during childbirth, and unfortunately some still do. No doubt if I had been living before modern medical technology, not only would my baby have died, but I would've died too. I am so grateful for the miracles of modern medicine. It is amazing to me that so many advances have been made to diagnose and treat severe illnesses.... things that only a few years ago were terminal. As I was complaining to my mom a few days ago about all of the people that seem to be getting the swine flu in my neighborhood, she said a very interesting thing to me. "At least it's not Polio going around, Emily". I think about it, and really so many of those horrible diseases have become so rare. It is such a blessing!