Now, where was I?? Oh yes - we had our long awaited baby. By the way, I previously referred to her as "difficult" and up on further reflection I don't like that word in association to baby K. Let's call her a "challenging" baby, as in challenging everything I thought I knew about babies. As in how they eat, sleep and just generally approach the world. Someone forgot to give her the "rules" because she was making hers up as we went along!
One day in mid-2002, I looked up and realized I was no longer in a sleep-deprivation induced fog. Once I reacquainted myself with the world around me and shook off the cobwebs, Jon and I started discussing that third child we had agreed upon. When we found out we were expecting child #2, we called the adoption agency and asked them to keep our information and just put it all on hold until the baby was a little older. However, now that the baby was a bit older (and we had all survived intact, more or less), I was having second thoughts. If we had another biological child it would cost less than an adoption (which was running anywhere from $20,000 up) since we had health insurance to pick up most of the birth costs. It sounds so cold to bring money into the equation, but there it is. We really had no idea where we would get the money for an adoption, if that's what we chose to do. So, I made a plan. (Yes, again) We would "let nature take its course" for a year, and if nothing happened, we would adopt. We weren't using birth control anyway - why bother, considering what it took to get pregnant last time? So I pulled out the thermometer and the temperature charts and set out to make a baby.
It didn't take long this time. By September 2002 I was pregnant, and I was overjoyed! I thought this must be God's sign that we should give up on adopting. At least I was overjoyed until the day I started spotting, around 9 weeks. I went in to see my doctor and she told me that I was having a miscarriage. Because it seemed to be well underway, she sent me home to let it happen naturally. Believe me, it feels anything BUT natural! And it hurt a LOT, both physically and emotionally. I grieved, although with a toddler and a teenager to take care of I didn't have much time to wallow in my misery. And even then I was trying to be the tough guy. I remember that while I was having some of the worst cramping in history, I got myself up off the couch and took myself and the baby to the bookstore for a frozen coffee, in hopes that the caffeine would make me feel at least a little better. I made it there and back home to the couch, but trying to herd a toddler through a store while doubled over and sweating in pain is not a good plan at all. Luckily my girl was deeply in love with Elmo at the time so episodes of Sesame Street kept her occupied while I recovered from my second loss. I couldn't help but think it was unfair. And furthermore, was God trying to tell me something? I don't believe that God causes "bad" things to happen to us, but I do believe that He allows us to reap the consequences of the choices we make. But this situation didn't really fit into that, because God wouldn't harm an innocent baby, would He? And I wasn't engaged in anything really wrong, was I? I don't have the answers to these questions, even now. The best explanation I've heard for why bad things happen to "good" people is simply that we live in a sinful world. Sometimes bad things just happen. That's not a very satisfying explanation, if you ask me. My doctor gave me the go-ahead to proceed with the baby-making once I had my next regular cycle, and go ahead I did.
Around the end of 2002 I discovered that I was once again pregnant. I was cautiously ecstatic. *Surely* I couldn't lose a third one, right? But then again, there was all that superstition about bad things coming in threes. Yikes! Once I passed the nine-week mark I started feeling a little better since nine weeks was when I started bleeding with the last pregnancy. In fact, I even started feeling a little sickly, which was new for me as I'd never felt sick with my other four pregnancies. I thought maybe that meant this one was a boy. I pulled out all my pregnancy and baby names books, inventoried my maternity clothes and settled in to enjoy what I knew would be my last pregnancy.
At eleven weeks, I started spotting. I told myself all the benign reasons it could happen, but nothing could slow my racing heart. Off I went to the doctor's office, where they ushered me into the ultrasound room. When the tech left the room to get the doctor, the tears came in earnest. The tech doesn't usually go get the doctor unless something is wrong. The doctor came in and told me that the baby was still alive and its heart was beating, but it was beating very slowly (roughly 50 beats a minute as opposed to 100+ beats per minute in a normal pregnancy). He said that about half the time, this will correct itself and the pregnancy will continue normally. No one needed to tell me what happens the other half of the time. But for someone who came into that office expecting to hear that she was miscarrying, that news was incredibly hopeful.
I drove myself home and I have no idea how I got there safely, considering that I was crying and praying the whole way. (OK, yes, I do know how I got there safely. "Got His angels watching over me...") Let me say out loud that I don't do well with uncertainty. I have a need to plan (obviously) and being in a holding pattern is wildly frustrating for me. This was Friday and I was supposed to go back on Monday for a follow-up ultrasound. However, I had the feeling that God wanted me to trust Him to take care of things, and naturally I figured His way would be the same as mine, right? What else could He want but for me to go on to have this baby, this gift from God? I went home and shared the news with my family, who didn't share the soaring hopes that I had. I guess they were feeling a little more cautious than I was. I did something that day I had never done before: I put on some music ("I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" just happened to be the song I played) and I danced for joy before the Lord in my living room, like David (but with clothes). I was just so sure that He was going to make this problem go away, and that one day I could look back at this day (while holding the healthy baby that was now growing inside me) and mark it as the day that I put it all into His hands.
Part 6 ties it all together, I promise. And I won't take as long to write it as I did this one.
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