Two weeks ago, we went to a sonogram to find out the gender of our baby. As the sonographer started looking at the picture on the screen, her face turned white and she started fumbling her words. I took a deep breath and said nervously, "So what do you see? How does the baby look?" She said, "Well...I see several concerning things. I'm going to have to bring the doctor in here." Almost exactly a year ago, I was laying on the same exam table, with the same exact sonographer, and I got a very similar reaction. Only a year ago, she was able to tell me that there was no heartbeat and that I would soon miscarry. But I wasn't quite prepared to hear what the doctor was going to say this day.
"Hi I am Dr. So-N-So and I want to explain what is going on with your baby. This baby has several anomalies that make it incompatible with life. I am giving her a 0 % chance of living outside of you..." Then she started to sound like the mom on Peanuts and quite like a zombie I dialed Doug's phone number. The rest is a blur. Bethany was throwing a fit in the corner, nurses took her somewhere, I remember a bag of grapes and a youtube video about a cat. Oh, and the baby is probably a girl. Somewhere on our walk home, Doug pulled up with the van and scooped us both into the minivan. We drove home a broken family.
We came home, we cried, we made phone calls, we started grieving the loss of our healthy pregnancy. There's really no way to describe what it feels like to be told your beautiful little baby is in fact, quite deformed and destined to die quickly. It's been an awful two weeks.
Somewhere in that time, my friend and mentor Debi said something that has echoed in my mind ever since. She said, "Don't grieve what you haven't yet lost." The baby is not dead yet. She is alive and moving inside of me. Shortly after this, I was laying on my parents' couch, feeling pretty sorry for myself and upset with God that He wouldn't just heal my baby. I began to weep. I held my belly and cried out to God. What I said, I really don't remember. But I felt the baby move in me. It's like she decided to stretch out sideways and push really hard on both sides of my stomach to give herself more room. Almost like she was saying, "Hey Mom, I'm still alive in here! Can you quit squeezing your stomach and talking about me like I'm dead?" If I hadn't been a weeping mess, it might have been almost comical. I told her I was so, so sorry and we went to sleep.
I went to bed that night in a new frame of mind. This baby is not dead yet. I am going to do my best to enjoy her, talk to her, live life normally, and keep my crying spells short.
As I write this, a song in the background says, "My God is awesome, He can move mountains...keep me in the valley, hide me from the rain." I'm going to function in the reality that God can absolutely heal my little girl. And if He does not, she will die, go to be with Him, and she will be completely whole and healed in God's presence, with no deformities or pain. How could I not be relieved by that? We have hope either way.
And so, as Doug and I were walking to our friends' house to watch the debate last week, he looked at me and said, "I've been thinking about a name for her...what about Hope?" I loved it immediately. Because we have hope that she will be healed, but ultimately our hope is that God will take care of her...hope either way.
Thank you Lord for another day with Hope.
