I have had conversations with several of my friends who freely admit to me that they have no idea what I am going through because they themselves have never really been through any major season of pain in their lives. They have never lost a close friend or relative, they have never experienced deep disappointment, financial struggle, abuse, etc.... Their lives have pretty much always gone the way they expected they would. They live on a completely different planet than I do. Just as I look at the starving people in under developed parts of the world. I can imagine on some shallow, surface level what it must be like to starve and to watch your children starve but because I myself have never starved I really have no idea what it is like to be in their shoes. I can't. It's impossible. To truly understand one's pain you must have walked in their shoes, maybe not the exact specific shoes I have been walking in, but the shoes of grief, disappointment, fear and confusion. Whether you are walking in those shoes because you have had several miscarriages or because your father just died and you are only 25 or because your wayward child has drifted so far from you and made yet another choice in their life with devastating consequences, whatever brings you to your walk in those shoes, once you walk in them, you get it, on a level the other people living on that other happy planet don't. Sure, we all live with the conscious awareness that we are blessed by the good things in our lives and we shouldn't take them for granted, but it is those who have lost those good things that truly get it. It is those that can say "I thought I knew back then, but now I really know". And you really know when you come home from the hospital after delivering your deceased baby and collapse on your stairs in tears and the only thought in your head is, "It's too much. It's too much. This pain is too much." You know you have officially left "Planet Happy" and moved to "Planet Something Awful has Happened and I Will Never Be the Same Again".
How do we navigate this new planet with terrain and environmental hazards we have never seen before and have no training in how to manage? I have learned, at least for me, there is only one way. Trust. You may know the story of Peter, the disciple of Jesus, who, by faith and trust, walked on water. Peter, along with the other disciples, is caught on a boat in a storm. The story unfolds like this, "Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water." “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” Matthew 14: 25-33.
Once you know this kind of pain, it haunts you, it disables your ability to trust. But if you can find it in your heart to step out in faith and trust, even when storm is all around you and the past shouts at you that you should never trust again, if you can chose to trust anyway, the sweetest reward awaits you. I chose to get pregnant, to try once again to have another child. Faith. I chose to buy a gift I saw in a store for my new baby when I was just 7 weeks pregnant. Trust. I chose to go shopping for maternity clothes when my pants got a little snug. Faith. I chose to let my mind wander to possible names for a boy or a girl. A step out of the boat. I chose to tell Riley about her new baby sibling. One step further out on the rocky waves. I chose to announce my pregnancy at just 11 weeks. One big step in faith and trust out even further onto the water. These are all minor activities for most people, but for me they go against the voice inside me saying, "Just wait. What if you lose this one too?" These choices take me so far from the boat I can't even see it anymore. My only choice then is to trust. And the reward for that trust is this. It is in few other places than the rocky waves where we must trust that we encounter Jesus on such a deep and personal level. The great thing about being out on the water, away from your boat, is it's where Jesus is. It's where you walk on water by His power. Out here on the water, my new home, there is a lot of thunder and lightning and wind. A past that haunts me and fears I can't seem to shake. I start to sink many times a day, but He is always there to catch me, to save me from drowning and pull me back to the surface. Even when I doubt and the fear takes hold, He is always there.
One day I will go back to the boat, that is both good and bad. But when I am back on the boat, I have a new perspective. My perspective is this. I know how precious life is and that it can be lost in a moment. I know how precious our health is and that one day you can get the call that you have cancer. I know what a gift my children are and I love them fiercely because of it. I know deep pain and anguish and because of it I can appreciate joy on a level many can't. I don't mean to disrespect my friends living on Planet Happy. Praise God that they are living there! But I pray that if and when they move to my planet, they will have hearts open to trusting God even when it hurts, that they will be brave enough to step out of the boat onto the water where Jesus is, that they will let Him carry them through the storm and that they will look at life with new perspective, perspective that can only be gained once you have lived on my planet, a perspective that knows how bad it can get and therefore feels the joy and appreciates the gifts that much more.
I love you always and forever and no matter what.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Baby Life
I start my day by dropping Riley off at school. Then I head to Town Center, the sight of many previous girl's shopping days, but today I am there without her to shop for her, my mother-in-law, looking for clothes she can wear over the brace that now adorns her newly fractured arm. The fracture is a result of bones so infected with cancer. Next I go to the hospital to sit with her. We talk, we cry, we just sit. Next, I find myself laying in an exam room in my doctor's office. I just lay there and cry while I wait for him to come in, overwhelmed by emotion and fearing the stress of the past week has caused the worst....in a few minutes I will know for sure. And I think back....
I think back to a cold February night when I similarly laid crying in the quiet of my home, again overwhelmed by conflicting emotions....hope and fear, excitement and dread, faith and doubt. We just took the biggest leap of faith of our lives and it will prove to be either a divine miracle or the biggest mistake we ever made. The days leading up to that moment shaped our decision in an instant. Two days prior I had spoken with the doctor from Las Vegas who originally diagnosed us with immune related pregnancy loss. He tells me in order to have a successful pregnancy we must do IVF. I am so confused by this since we can get pregnant without any problem. It is just keeping the pregnancy that is the problem. I question him and he tells me, "I strongly recommend you do IVF and start immune suppression therapy BEFORE conception. If you don't do this your chances of having a baby are very slim. Please trust me. But if you want to try to conceive on your own, then just have your ob call me when you get a positive pregnancy test and I will tell her what medicine you need, but by then it will probably be too late. Good luck" That effectively ended our relationship with him and I went in search of a new doctor who specialized in reproductive immunology. My search led me to Dr. Braverman. His office is in New York and he can only do brief phone consults due to New York laws about out of state patients. After a brief conversation with him he tells me that the info we got from our doctor in Las Vegas is outdated and pretty much contradicts everything he said. He says, I do not have to do IVF and we can work with my natural cycle. The only thing the two doctors agree upon is that I do have an immune issue causing me to lose my babies and in order for treatment to be successful, it must be started at least two weeks BEFORE conception. I make an appointment to go to New York to see him and discuss it further. I hang up and I just feel angry. Why can't we find two doctors who can agree? What is really wrong with me? I have been searching for answers for four years and we still seem so far from finding them. I finally decide these doctors are smart and they know a lot, but they don't know everything and there is someone bigger than all this in charge who has the final say. I say to myself, "To hell with it. We have been preventing pregnancy for almost a year now while we try to figure this out. I want a baby and every month it breaks my heart to not try. No one seems to really know what is wrong with me so I'm done. I'm just going to live my life and if I get pregnant, great." I don't even care about the medicine I need to take before conception. All I know is I have a gut feeling inside that God is in control of this and He will make happen what He wants to. This is all pointless since I know if I tell Jason I just want to stop preventing pregnancy and not follow doctor's advice he will tell me I'm crazy and never agree to it. I myself think I am crazy and just so desperate for a baby I'm not thinking clearly. But I can't shake this feeling that we should just see what happens. I have long since stopped charting my temperature or tracking ovulation. I have no idea if it is baby making time or not. But that night after Riley goes to bed, I tell Jason my crazy feelings, fully anticipating him to tell me just how crazy I am. To my surprise, he doesn't even hesitate when he looks at me and says, "Yup, lets do it. If we ever needed a miracle it's now." "What?! Are you sure? I'm just talking crazy right now, don't listen to me." "Yup, I'm sure, lets just let what happens happen". And we do and then I lay crying with my hope and fear, excitement and dread, faith and doubt. And two weeks later, on the eve of one of the biggest blizzards in history, I find out I am pregnant.
And so starts a whirlwind pregnancy. After seeing a positive pregnancy test I decide I will call Dr. Braverman and see what he thinks we should do. He is so calm and reassuring and tells me all we can do is start the meds right away and see what happens. Getting all these meds started is a grueling process in the midst of a blizzard and I rely on God to sustain my baby for several days until I can get to the doctor and start the meds. And He did. I finally got started on all my medicine which includes Daily injections of Lovenox, a blood thinner that will help make sure blood gets through my placenta and umbilical cord to the baby. Metformin, an anti diabetic medication that is helpful because sometimes immune pregnancy complications can mess up insulin levels, and once a month hospital visits for IV infusion of intralipid drugs which reduce my natural killer cells and prevent them from attacking the baby. Also progesterone support through the first 10 weeks and extra folic acid. I get my first intralipid infusion and me HCG more than doubles as soon as I get it! I go for my first ultrasound at 5 1/2 weeks. Baby is too small to see but what we do see is a subchorionic hemorrhage in my uterus, basically my uterus is bleeding and we are not sure why. The last thing a pregnant woman with a history of miscarriages needs is to know her uterus is bleeding. I am beside myself worried and the doctor tells me no exercise, no heavy activity and lots of rest. I go back for another ultrasound at 6 weeks and there it is...a baby with a heart beat. I scarcely thought I would ever see this again. I go back every week and every week we see our baby growing bigger and bigger and heart just thumping away. The bleed is also getting bigger though and there is nothing we can do to stop it. But at 9 weeks we see the bleed is shrinking. Things appear to be going well and baby is already proving to be a little miracle considering it hung in there those early weeks before I could start all the medicine. I was supposed to start it two weeks before conception and I didn't start it until almost three weeks after. That being said, we did see major jumps in my HCG as soon as I started it. I remember Rodney, my friendly lab technician, told me he was going to pray for me and my baby. He told me I need to speak life. We have been calling the baby "Life".
And today, despite all the tears, stress, long days in a hospital and lack of sleep, when Dr. G, my specialist, came in, we saw baby Life once again, wiggling and moving, putting it's little hands up to it's mouth, heart rate strong and bleed in my uterus completely gone. I sob out of relief. My doctor hugs me. He tells me it is my official "graduation" day and I am released back to my regular obgyn for the rest of my pregnancy. He gives me a graduation gift, a bag full of pregnancy related items and most special of all, a tiny onesie with the words "Special Ordered by Dr. Gehlbach" written on it. It seems unreal to me after all we have been through that I will have a baby to fill that onesie soon. I swore if I got pregnant again, we would not tell anyone until I was past 16 weeks. But the more I see my mother in law struggle and know she needs to share the joy of this pregnancy, the more I cling to God and pray to Him for Baby Life, the more I think about how we took a huge leap of faith and I got pregnant that night, the more I hear Jason's words echo in my mind, "If we ever needed a miracle it's now", the more real this baby becomes and the more I love it, and the bigger my stomach gets (when you have been pregnant as much as me, it doesn't take long to pop right out) the more it just feels right to share our exciting news. I am 10 weeks pregnant. My due date is November 5th. 30 more weeks to go. Ready or not, whatever the next 30 weeks have in store for us, here we go. All of our hopes, dreams and prayers are with this little baby. My mother in law cried when we told her saying, "Now I can see both of my grandchildren before I go". This baby means so much to all of us. It is a light in the midst of a lot of darkness right now. There are many reasons to fear the worst and many days I do, but I hold firm to the belief that this baby will be here safe and sound this fall. I believe it, even when I don't.
I love you always and forever and no matter what.
* I wrote this post one week ago but I was not brave enough to post it until today. I had an ultra sound and saw my obgyn today. Baby Life again looks perfect, growth right on track and heart rate strong. Baby had the hiccups and was wiggling all over and even gave mommy a little "salute", which made me cry, but they were happy tears. 11 1/2 weeks today :) Here is a peek at Baby Life...
6 weeks
7 weeks
8 weeks
9 weeks
10 weeks
11 weeks
You can see an arm and hand up on baby's head, "saluting" mommy.
I think back to a cold February night when I similarly laid crying in the quiet of my home, again overwhelmed by conflicting emotions....hope and fear, excitement and dread, faith and doubt. We just took the biggest leap of faith of our lives and it will prove to be either a divine miracle or the biggest mistake we ever made. The days leading up to that moment shaped our decision in an instant. Two days prior I had spoken with the doctor from Las Vegas who originally diagnosed us with immune related pregnancy loss. He tells me in order to have a successful pregnancy we must do IVF. I am so confused by this since we can get pregnant without any problem. It is just keeping the pregnancy that is the problem. I question him and he tells me, "I strongly recommend you do IVF and start immune suppression therapy BEFORE conception. If you don't do this your chances of having a baby are very slim. Please trust me. But if you want to try to conceive on your own, then just have your ob call me when you get a positive pregnancy test and I will tell her what medicine you need, but by then it will probably be too late. Good luck" That effectively ended our relationship with him and I went in search of a new doctor who specialized in reproductive immunology. My search led me to Dr. Braverman. His office is in New York and he can only do brief phone consults due to New York laws about out of state patients. After a brief conversation with him he tells me that the info we got from our doctor in Las Vegas is outdated and pretty much contradicts everything he said. He says, I do not have to do IVF and we can work with my natural cycle. The only thing the two doctors agree upon is that I do have an immune issue causing me to lose my babies and in order for treatment to be successful, it must be started at least two weeks BEFORE conception. I make an appointment to go to New York to see him and discuss it further. I hang up and I just feel angry. Why can't we find two doctors who can agree? What is really wrong with me? I have been searching for answers for four years and we still seem so far from finding them. I finally decide these doctors are smart and they know a lot, but they don't know everything and there is someone bigger than all this in charge who has the final say. I say to myself, "To hell with it. We have been preventing pregnancy for almost a year now while we try to figure this out. I want a baby and every month it breaks my heart to not try. No one seems to really know what is wrong with me so I'm done. I'm just going to live my life and if I get pregnant, great." I don't even care about the medicine I need to take before conception. All I know is I have a gut feeling inside that God is in control of this and He will make happen what He wants to. This is all pointless since I know if I tell Jason I just want to stop preventing pregnancy and not follow doctor's advice he will tell me I'm crazy and never agree to it. I myself think I am crazy and just so desperate for a baby I'm not thinking clearly. But I can't shake this feeling that we should just see what happens. I have long since stopped charting my temperature or tracking ovulation. I have no idea if it is baby making time or not. But that night after Riley goes to bed, I tell Jason my crazy feelings, fully anticipating him to tell me just how crazy I am. To my surprise, he doesn't even hesitate when he looks at me and says, "Yup, lets do it. If we ever needed a miracle it's now." "What?! Are you sure? I'm just talking crazy right now, don't listen to me." "Yup, I'm sure, lets just let what happens happen". And we do and then I lay crying with my hope and fear, excitement and dread, faith and doubt. And two weeks later, on the eve of one of the biggest blizzards in history, I find out I am pregnant.
And so starts a whirlwind pregnancy. After seeing a positive pregnancy test I decide I will call Dr. Braverman and see what he thinks we should do. He is so calm and reassuring and tells me all we can do is start the meds right away and see what happens. Getting all these meds started is a grueling process in the midst of a blizzard and I rely on God to sustain my baby for several days until I can get to the doctor and start the meds. And He did. I finally got started on all my medicine which includes Daily injections of Lovenox, a blood thinner that will help make sure blood gets through my placenta and umbilical cord to the baby. Metformin, an anti diabetic medication that is helpful because sometimes immune pregnancy complications can mess up insulin levels, and once a month hospital visits for IV infusion of intralipid drugs which reduce my natural killer cells and prevent them from attacking the baby. Also progesterone support through the first 10 weeks and extra folic acid. I get my first intralipid infusion and me HCG more than doubles as soon as I get it! I go for my first ultrasound at 5 1/2 weeks. Baby is too small to see but what we do see is a subchorionic hemorrhage in my uterus, basically my uterus is bleeding and we are not sure why. The last thing a pregnant woman with a history of miscarriages needs is to know her uterus is bleeding. I am beside myself worried and the doctor tells me no exercise, no heavy activity and lots of rest. I go back for another ultrasound at 6 weeks and there it is...a baby with a heart beat. I scarcely thought I would ever see this again. I go back every week and every week we see our baby growing bigger and bigger and heart just thumping away. The bleed is also getting bigger though and there is nothing we can do to stop it. But at 9 weeks we see the bleed is shrinking. Things appear to be going well and baby is already proving to be a little miracle considering it hung in there those early weeks before I could start all the medicine. I was supposed to start it two weeks before conception and I didn't start it until almost three weeks after. That being said, we did see major jumps in my HCG as soon as I started it. I remember Rodney, my friendly lab technician, told me he was going to pray for me and my baby. He told me I need to speak life. We have been calling the baby "Life".
And today, despite all the tears, stress, long days in a hospital and lack of sleep, when Dr. G, my specialist, came in, we saw baby Life once again, wiggling and moving, putting it's little hands up to it's mouth, heart rate strong and bleed in my uterus completely gone. I sob out of relief. My doctor hugs me. He tells me it is my official "graduation" day and I am released back to my regular obgyn for the rest of my pregnancy. He gives me a graduation gift, a bag full of pregnancy related items and most special of all, a tiny onesie with the words "Special Ordered by Dr. Gehlbach" written on it. It seems unreal to me after all we have been through that I will have a baby to fill that onesie soon. I swore if I got pregnant again, we would not tell anyone until I was past 16 weeks. But the more I see my mother in law struggle and know she needs to share the joy of this pregnancy, the more I cling to God and pray to Him for Baby Life, the more I think about how we took a huge leap of faith and I got pregnant that night, the more I hear Jason's words echo in my mind, "If we ever needed a miracle it's now", the more real this baby becomes and the more I love it, and the bigger my stomach gets (when you have been pregnant as much as me, it doesn't take long to pop right out) the more it just feels right to share our exciting news. I am 10 weeks pregnant. My due date is November 5th. 30 more weeks to go. Ready or not, whatever the next 30 weeks have in store for us, here we go. All of our hopes, dreams and prayers are with this little baby. My mother in law cried when we told her saying, "Now I can see both of my grandchildren before I go". This baby means so much to all of us. It is a light in the midst of a lot of darkness right now. There are many reasons to fear the worst and many days I do, but I hold firm to the belief that this baby will be here safe and sound this fall. I believe it, even when I don't.
I love you always and forever and no matter what.
* I wrote this post one week ago but I was not brave enough to post it until today. I had an ultra sound and saw my obgyn today. Baby Life again looks perfect, growth right on track and heart rate strong. Baby had the hiccups and was wiggling all over and even gave mommy a little "salute", which made me cry, but they were happy tears. 11 1/2 weeks today :) Here is a peek at Baby Life...
6 weeks
11 weeks
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Clinging to Life
Once again I feel the need to apologize for the depressing nature of this blog. I promise to one day fill these pages with happiness and sunshine. I have faith that God will redeem this and I will be able to do just that. For anyone who is resting in a peaceful season of life, I am sure this is so hard to read. But for those of you struggling your way through a dark season of life, perhaps this will resonate with you. And when your reality is that many of your children have died and another family member very close to you is very sick with cancer, your mind just goes to these places, whether even I like it or not.
Death. It has been said that death is a "natural part of life". I disagree. Death is the most unnatural thing there is. Death was never part of the plan. Pain and sickness and disease was never part of the plan. The reason death hurts us humans so deeply is because we were not made to accept death as a natural part of life. We were made to crave life, to cling to it, to fight for it. We were made to despise death just as our God does. We may take comfort in the fact that a person lives to be 100 years old. We say they lived a good, long life and the sting of death isn't quite so painful in those circumstances, but the truth is, whether we die in our mother's womb or as an old person asleep in our bed, it is always too soon. My family has felt the sting of death far too much the past few years and with the threat of another sting on the horizon, I lay awake at night unable to fall asleep as silent tears stream down my cheeks and my heart aches for one I love, one who gave life to the man I love. How can I ever thank her enough for the gift of my husband? For loving him and raising him to be the amazing man that he is. How can I ever accept that she is sick and hurting? How can I ever accept that my children are gone and I will never know them this side of heaven? I can't and I won't. As far as life on this earth goes, we have to accept death but I do not have to accept that it has the final say. As we celebrated Easter this past weekend, I was reminded that Jesus has the final say and He settled that one on the cross when he hung is head and said, "It is finsihed." And it was finished and it still is. Death will never hold power over us who believe again. The lyrics of Matt Maher's "Christ Is Risen" echo in my mind, "Oh death, where is your sting? Oh hell, where is your victory?. Of church, come stand in the light. Our God is not dead. He's alive! He's alive!"
The tomb was empty. Our God lives. My babies live and no matter what happens to my mother in law, she will live. Right now, more than ever, I cling to life. I am holding on to God and His power to sustain life with all that I have. I know death hurts us so badly because it hurts God so badly. It hurts Him so much He gave His only Son to overcome it. We all live with the awareness of our own mortality and I would be lying if I said that thought didn't terrify me. But I live not by what I feel or what I see. I live by faith. So I chose to believe in life, in Jesus, in miracles and redemption. I chose to believe in Life, not death.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. - John 11: 25 - 26
I love you always and forever and no matter what.
Matt Maher - Christ Is Risen
Death. It has been said that death is a "natural part of life". I disagree. Death is the most unnatural thing there is. Death was never part of the plan. Pain and sickness and disease was never part of the plan. The reason death hurts us humans so deeply is because we were not made to accept death as a natural part of life. We were made to crave life, to cling to it, to fight for it. We were made to despise death just as our God does. We may take comfort in the fact that a person lives to be 100 years old. We say they lived a good, long life and the sting of death isn't quite so painful in those circumstances, but the truth is, whether we die in our mother's womb or as an old person asleep in our bed, it is always too soon. My family has felt the sting of death far too much the past few years and with the threat of another sting on the horizon, I lay awake at night unable to fall asleep as silent tears stream down my cheeks and my heart aches for one I love, one who gave life to the man I love. How can I ever thank her enough for the gift of my husband? For loving him and raising him to be the amazing man that he is. How can I ever accept that she is sick and hurting? How can I ever accept that my children are gone and I will never know them this side of heaven? I can't and I won't. As far as life on this earth goes, we have to accept death but I do not have to accept that it has the final say. As we celebrated Easter this past weekend, I was reminded that Jesus has the final say and He settled that one on the cross when he hung is head and said, "It is finsihed." And it was finished and it still is. Death will never hold power over us who believe again. The lyrics of Matt Maher's "Christ Is Risen" echo in my mind, "Oh death, where is your sting? Oh hell, where is your victory?. Of church, come stand in the light. Our God is not dead. He's alive! He's alive!"
The tomb was empty. Our God lives. My babies live and no matter what happens to my mother in law, she will live. Right now, more than ever, I cling to life. I am holding on to God and His power to sustain life with all that I have. I know death hurts us so badly because it hurts God so badly. It hurts Him so much He gave His only Son to overcome it. We all live with the awareness of our own mortality and I would be lying if I said that thought didn't terrify me. But I live not by what I feel or what I see. I live by faith. So I chose to believe in life, in Jesus, in miracles and redemption. I chose to believe in Life, not death.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. - John 11: 25 - 26
I love you always and forever and no matter what.
Matt Maher - Christ Is Risen
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