24 Week Scare

Psalm 20:7

"Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God."

I am thinking I need to have a little meeting with Pastor George to discuss his decision to do these sermon series on trust.  Last year in February, he decided to do the first series on putting your trust wholeheartedly in God.  Learned some really valuable things and then got laid off.  An immediate test of the lessons I was learning in trust.  Lessons I thought I learned well and God's faithfulness was immediately shown in our lives as I found another job without a day of missed income.  Now 2010, for whatever reason, we are revisiting the series on trust from last year with some new wrinkles this year.  Couldn't we have a sermon series on blessings or heaven or maybe stewardship?  Surely I have lessons to learn in those areas.  Instead, we are back on trust, and again God is finding valuable lessons to teach us.  A few weeks ago we had the vasa previa to worry about, followed by that being ok, but finding our baby girl had a 2 vessel cord and some more things to be concerned about.  But through this we have really committed to releasing our worries and knowing that we are in the hands of our merciful, perfect creator, and honestly, it has not been a mental burden.  Lesson learned, lesson applied.

Enter 1/27/10. 

Yesterday, Meg had a fairly busy day between a luxuriuos morning-long meeting, some leisurely grocery shopping, and a priceless evening-filling baby class to teach at the hospital.  She let me know early afternoon that she thought she might be having contractions.  Hmm, 24 weeks along.  She wasn't really sure because she doesn't know what the different things she feels are exactly.  So, after finishing up her class about 9:00 last night she checks in with the labor and delivery folks to say she thinks she might be having contractions, could we please check?  They stick her on the monitor for a bit and sure enough, pre term labor contractions, 2-3 minutes apart.  They give her water, rest, and monitor for a bit to see if they will relax.  They do not, so they move on to medication to help stop the contractions.  I came over from home with some dinner for her, expecting that we calm the contractions and go back home, a little frightened, but armed with knowledge for the future.  Here's where the real fun started.

About 20 or so minutes after the contraction-stopping meds Meg started feeling a little light headed.  Thinking it was from not eating for 8 or so hours we got her some juice and heated up that dinner I brought.  I came back from the microwave to our friendly L&D nurse back in the room working on the monitor and Meg looking pretty pale and a little worried.  Soon, the L&D nurse starts working hurriedly to get the baby back on the monitor.  Suddenly, she hits the call button, calls for help and things go south.  They can't find a babies heartbeat.  Meg now has 3 nurses and a doc hooking her up to an IV, oxygen, bp, and bringing in an ultrasound machine.  They take off the monitor and are sitting, waiting, for this ultrasound machine to boot up.  In what seemed to be an eternity, but was probably about a min it finally starts up and they start checking our little babies.  Baby A, Benjamin, is found immediately and we see a strong heartbeat and all looks well.  Moving on to our little girl they are moving over her spine, looking for her heart.  They find her heart, but I don't see anything moving.  Meg is watching the same thing and equally becoming extremely worried, but with her medical knowledge she is anticipating the next step.  In perhaps a move of unmeditated graciousness, she asks me to call my mom and get her down to the hospital.  (my mom is the manager of the post partum unit at the hospital, and her caring nurse abilities remain quite intact.  she can also be quite good at being a go between with the staff for us).  I step out of the room in a panic to call her.  Breath.

I head back into the room to find the doctor with the ultrasound going still, but our baby girl's heart has resumed normal function.

The doctor finishes up and takes a minute to assure us all is back to normal, we had quite the scare for a minute, but all is looking good again.  In that moment of panic, Meg knew that if they could not quickly normalize or see that heart beating it was proceeding toward an emergency C section to try to save our girls life.  Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully our girl's heart picked back up. 

They decided to have Meg stay the night so they could continue to monitor her and make sure the babies remained ok.  And, as the doctor stated, the scare with the heartbeat also appeared to scare away the contractions as those had ceased during that time.  They also gave her a steroid shot to boost the babies lungs development as a safety precaution if anything further were to happen.  And finally, around 2:00 they wanted her to get some sleep so my mom and I went home.   All remained stable through the night and she was able to come home shortly after 6:00 to rest at home.

Enter 1/28/10

Meg is at home resting, I am at work, the babies continue to develop, and the Lord remains faithful.  If you have really read to this point, you might be crazy, but I also know you care about us.  We appreciate your care and ask again that you meet us in prayer.  We pray that our little growing babies would continue to grow, inside the womb preferably.  We pray that the complications would be minimal and that Meg is able to stay at home as much as possible.  We pray that we would be able to wholeheartedly put our trust in God and know that he is faithful.  Thanks to all of you for your prayers and your support for us.

Romans 15:13


"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."