In Awe of a Miracle

I have never witnessed anything cooler than seeing our baby at my 20-week ultrasound.  The baby actually looked like a baby and even I could follow along and decipher the various shots and angles of actual limbs and organs.  The first thing the sonographer looked for was the gender, and it didn’t take her long to find out that it was a boy!  She commented that “he’s not shy” and “I’m glad you wanted to know the gender because that would have been hard to conceal!” Alex and I were laughing for the next 5 minutes.  She also couldn’t believe how active this little guy was.  He kept moving around and making it difficult for her to get good views of the organs and bones that she needed to measure.  It took about an hour in all as she methodically went through from head to toe (literally) getting views of each body part.  She spent the most time examining the heart.  At the time, the entire heart was the size of a pea, yet she was able to see 16 valves and even with a certain view, she was able to track the blood flow in and out.  She illuminated the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood so we could also see the red and blue lines indicating a perfectly healthy heart.  She used the same view to track the blood flow in the brain.  From this ultrasound we could already see the perfectly formed fingers and toes, and mouth and nasal cavity.  She measured each of his arms and legs and estimated he already weighed about 14 ounces.

The large amount of movement worked to our favor.  She tried to give us a 3D view of the baby at the end of the ultrasound so we could catch a glimpse of what he looks like.  I was hoping we would be able to use this feature of the sonogram machine.  At first, she couldn’t get a good read.  The baby has to be still long enough for the machine to perform a “sweep” and get a picture of the baby.  I thought we wouldn’t be able to see him at all, but she then said that there was another option: 4D.  She switched the mode on the machine and we were suddenly able to see our baby in 3D and in motion!  In an instant I got a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.  There he was!  The cutest thing I had ever seen.  He was curled up right against the side of the uterine wall, rubbing his eyes.  We could see his facial features, his arms and legs and tiny hands.  He started moving again and this time, batting at the umbilical cord as if he were annoyed with it being in his way.  We didn’t get much time to watch him, but long enough to get some still shots from freeze framing the video feed, and long enough for me to be completely overcome by what I was witnessing.  I had just started to feel him moving around—I had just gotten to the point where my normal clothes were just impossibly snug.  I had only known I was pregnant for 3 1/2 months!  In such a short time, 2 cells had grown into an unmistakably human-looking baby.  It is truly miraculous.  It is truly the work of an Almighty Creator.  I am so saddened by the number of abortions in our country.  I can’t help but believe that if mothers saw what I saw, they would not choose to terminate their pregnancies.  Even though the pictures are sort of blurry and distorted, when I saw that little face, I immediately fell in love with that baby.  I am now even more eager to see him in person in a few more months!

Fear Not

At 8 weeks pregnant, over my Christmas break from school, I had my first ultrasound.  I was so sick and tired at that point that I knew I was either really pregnant or I had the flu!  Still, though, even after a positive reading on an at-home pregnancy test (yes, they are really accurate!) and after positive HGC level readings at a series of blood draws, I still couldn’t really believe that I was pregnant.  I didn’t look different; I couldn’t see anything. I felt sick, but I thought I would just feel pregnant.  So at the ultrasound, after what seemed like quite a bit of silence, I blurted out, “So, can you see anything?”  The sonographer responded by turning the monitor so I could see.  There was a little bitty peanut the size of a kidney bean, with a little heart beating 150 beats a minute.  I still look at those pictures and have a hard time thinking that it looks like a baby, but from that first peek at the baby, the sonographer was able to get measurements and estimate a due date: August 9, 2011.

Still I was scared.  I had a fear that we would lose the baby—that God would take away the pregnancy in order to ensure that we didn’t cling to closely to anything in this world, and to bring us closer to Him.  I know that is God’s greatest desire for us.  But still, I didn’t want to go through the pain of losing a child.  One Sunday at church, during communion, I had to face my fears.  I wanted to affirm my faith in God and yet I felt I couldn’t totally surrender the baby to Him.  Then, the band started playing the song “Oh, how he loves us” and it hit me: Yes, God desires to bring us close to him and loosen our grip on this world, but He also deeply, incredibly loves us.  He wants to bless us, he wants to protect us.  And the little baby I’m carrying is His—He loves him more than I ever could.  He created him, He is knitting him together.  I know this truth doesn’t mean that I will never experience pain, but it means that I can live confidently and I do not have to be afraid.

My belief in this newfound truth was tested at my 12-week check up.  As soon as I got into the examination room, the nurse as usual checked for the baby’s heartbeat.  She put the gel on my stomach and took the Doppler reader and proceeded to poke around and get a reading on the heartbeat.  But there wasn’t one.  She didn’t say anything—she just poked and prodded and finally after a few minutes gave up and said we should wait for the doctor to arrive.  I panicked.  As soon as she left the room, I voiced my fears to Alex. Why couldn’t she find the heartbeat?  What will we do if something is wrong?  Alex calmly looked at me and said, “It’s in God’s hands.  I’m sure everything is fine, but if something is wrong, we’ll get through it.  And if we never have kids, it would be devastating, but we would still have one rocking life!”  His perspective calmed me down, but not as much as when the doctor came in, took the Doppler herself and immediately found the heartbeat.  Turns out that my due date was incorrect in my file and the nurse assumed I was further along than 12 weeks.  She was looking for the baby to be up higher than he really was.  Nothing was wrong.  And like Alex said, even if there was something wrong, it’s all in God’s hands.  There’s nothing I can do to control this pregnancy or the health of this baby.  I can eat right and be careful not to get in hot tubs or ride horses, but at the end of the day, God is in control.  And oh, how he loves us!