MSI Press Blog

  Precerpt (excerpt from book prior to publication):  Raising God's Rainbow Makers  (Mahlou) Doah was a surprise (well, so were the other three) who quite fortuitously was predicted to be born in Pittsburgh, PA around Christmas Day 1977 -- semester break from my studies at near-by Renboro University. However, it was my grandson, Nathaniel, who ended up being born on Christmas day. Doah was born quite early, messing up both my teaching schedule and studies (and creating quite a lot of subsequent havoc due to all his medical issues -- 30 years later, he is still creating havoc, mostly due to his overly inquisitive and highly extroverted nature, coupled with some serious mental challenges). I don't remember all my labors, but I do remember Doah's. I went into labor while teaching a foreign language class! I managed to make it through the class (my stubborn nature, which does not always serve me well) and asked one of the students in the "college over 60" program to s...

  Coming soon! Raising God's Rainbow Makers by Dr. Elizabeth Mahlou. Book Description: A Family Memoir of Grace, Grit, and Growing Up Different What happens when a military family welcomes four children—each with wildly different needs—into a world not always built to support them? In  Raising God’s Rainbow Makers , one mother shares the remarkable journey of raising two children with complex disabilities—one with spina bifida, one with CHARGE Syndrome—and two intellectually gifted children, all born in different states during years of military life. Through medical crises, educational challenges, and societal roadblocks (both intentional and unintentional), this honest and inspiring memoir tells the story of how one family built a life of strength, compassion, and resilience. With warmth and unflinching honesty, the author reflects on emergency surgeries, IEP battles, unexpected victories, and the fierce sibling bonds that formed in the face of it all. The children—now grown...

Precerpt (excerpt from book prior to publication):  Raising God's Rainbow Makers  (Mahlou)   No birth is ever quite the same as another, but Noelle’s was truly distinct. Labor began slowly—and stayed that way—for 72 hours. She arrived breech, her tiny body twisted, and most shockingly, with a gaping hole in her back. The sac that had formed around her incomplete spine had torn open during labor. Diagnosis: meningeomyelocele at L3-4—spina bifida with hydrocephalus, more familiarly known as “water on the brain.” Before I could even hold her, a helicopter landed to airlift her from San Angelo, Texas—where I was stationed with the Army—to Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio. That’s how Noelle came under the care of Dr. Wayne Paullus, a remarkable neurosurgeon at a top USAF hospital. Dr. Paullus wasn’t your typical pediatric surgeon. He was a combat neurosurgeon during the Vietnam War, more accustomed to piecing back together airmen whose bodies had been torn apart in b...

Precerpt (excerpt from book prior to publication):  Raising God's Rainbow Makers  (Mahlou) Lizzie's Birth, part 2 Labor Day? Going into labor on Labor Day? Of course, babies are born on Labor Day every year, but somehow it felt too on the nose. That day, my husband Donnie—who was working for the U.S. Forest Service at the time and knew every pristine corner of the Bitterroot and St. Joe National Forests—had taken me on a wonderfully relaxing all-day picnic. Just the two of us, stopping wherever the wilderness invited us to linger. We drove more than a hundred miles, heading north along the Montana side of the Bitterroot Mountains, then west across Lolo Pass and into the lush valley and crystal lake of the Coeur d’Alene area (I could suddenly understand the beauty that inspired that name). From there, we traveled south along the sparkling Salmon River, its occasional small rapids and graceful twists lined with pine trees. We watched as rainbow trout, with nowhere to hide in the...