Wanna See My Uterus?

Well, mostly my uterus. But the important part is that little peanut in there. That's our baby! And the pink in the middle is the heartbeat. I had to show this one because the doppler image on the screen came out looking so much like an actual heart shape. Too cool, we thought. Dwayne got to see this one with me which was awesome since it's been 21 years since his son was born. Having a baby is a whole new ball game now, so it kind of feels like a first.




This week we had a little scare. Just a few days after I published our news, I had some spotting. Frightening indeed. I found that even though I just accepted this news, I certainly wasn't ready for this adventure to end that abruptly. I held my breath through another ultrasound until I saw that little heartbeat again, going as strong as ever. Thanks be to God.

I want my faith to be such that I can accept whatever is brought my way, be it blessing or loss. God's goodness certainly doesn't come and go with my circumstances. A hard place to be, however, when you anticipate a painful loss. I mean what do you say? Personally I've reached a point with God that I don't bother with platitudes. He already knows it all. So I get right to the point and tell Him what I want. Then I pray to be ready if what I want isn't what He has for me. "Thy will be done" is easy to say, not so easy to mean. For example, I came right out with "Please don't let this baby die. Please don't let me see an ultrasound with no heartbeat." I found it an interesting challenge of my faith over the last few days, to be in a place of knowing God may or may not take this child, and trying hard to keep myself honest, eventually having to admit that Him taking this baby was NOT ok with me. I guess we are all in that place always, whether we feel it or not. Loss comes often without warning, without giving us opportunity to pray for what we want to see happen. Believing that God is omnipotent places me at His mercy at all times. He can give or take away at any moment. I suppose He sometimes brings along moments like the ones I had this week to enable us to interact with Him. Little wake up calls, so to speak, or moments when He takes our faces in His hands and forces us to look at the condition of our belief in Him.

I'm grateful that my scary little blessing is alive and well in there, turning flips and growing into someone wonderful. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to walk with God, be it a smooth or rough road. What is abundantly clear to me right now is that He is way more capable of holding me than I am of holding onto Him.

Scary Blessings

Last Friday, I fell in love again. This time with a baby.


The one that happens to be inside me right now.



Big news, I know. I’ve spent the last 10 days in utter shock and intermittent panic. I’m only 6 weeks and a few days along, and I know that’s pretty early to be blabbing such news. However, I figure I have shared almost every challenge in my life over the last few years on this blog, and truthfully when I don’t write about what I’m dealing with, I always regret it. I’m a writer at heart and I’m going to have to accept that. So regardless of what happens I might as well catalog this adventure here.

Anyway, as I mentioned, since discovering my pregnancy, I’ve been in shock, panic, fear, and a little bit of sadness I must admit. Dwayne and I have both shed our share of tears. This wasn’t something we were planning for. As a matter of fact we were planning AGAINST this. Because of the embolisms I had in 2007, pregnancy is a scary thing for me. So after two home tests and one doctor visit confirmed my fear, I ended up at a Perinatologist’s office on Friday, braced for the bad news about what this pregnancy might entail for me. I was still kind of hoping she’d somehow say “I don’t know what test you took, or what doctor you saw…you aren’t pregnant.” But she didn’t say that. The doctor plopped me up on a table and started squirting ultrasound stuff on my belly. She started poking around and I had a moment of more panic. Part of me hoped she found nothing, and part of me desperately hoped she found everything ok. Then I saw it. My baby’s heart beating away on the ultrasound screen… and there I went. That was all it took.

After that, two daily injections of blood thinner throughout the pregnancy weren’t quite so scary anymore, and the idea of an induced controlled labor wasn’t so horrifying. The swirling questions like “What if I get another clot? Or What if I bleed to death? And How will we afford this?” gave way to “Will it be a boy or a girl? And Will she be healthy? And Am I really going to get to meet the person produced by me and Dwayne?”

Scary blessings. That’s something God is into with me. Dwayne and I were laughing with Jim on Sunday after we told him, about how I’d been blogging lately about how my life is settling down….

Settling, schmettling. It’s evidently not in the plan for me. So… deep breath… I’ve trusted God for big things before, and this will be no exception. Me, my love, my kids, and the little heartbeat inside me will all be trusting Him for this one.