After my last blog of kind of whining and feeling pitiful and sorry for myself about the aches and pains that come with being a pregnant gal, I went home that night and started to read my Daily Guidepost from a book my mother gave me for Christmas. There it was, dated January 30. I would like to share:
MON - JAN 30
A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. -----John 16:21
A friend of mine shows me his brand new son, all of 2 days old, the size of a loaf of bread, his father looking like he's been sleeping in the woods for a week. I accept the infant gingerly as my friend shuffles off to make coffee. The kid weighs half of nothing, and he is sound alseep and drooling on my best shirt, which makes me unaccountably happy.
Do we ever salute and acknowledge and celebrate miracles enough? I watch the kid breathe; his chest is about the size of a sparrow, but it keeps inhaling and exhaling---miracle. His fingernails are the size of the letters in this sentence---miracle. I remember twice being in the hospital watching tiny people emerge from my wife and sobbing for any number of reasons, one being sheer astonishment at the perfect, moist, glistening beauty of those tiny miracles.
Do we ever acknowledge that every breath we draw and word we speak is a miracle? Hardly. Birds, bread, kindness, rain, the dawn that came again today, the silver river of drool filling the pocket of my best black shirt---miracles. Maybe there are too many miracles to sing properly; maybe we would never do anything but gape in awe and mumble, "Oh, bless me, thank YOU, thank YOU," if we were really attentive and respectful to the ocean of miracles. But once in a while we should pause and bow, perhaps with a dish towel over one shoulder in case of miraculous rivers.
Dear Lord: Listen, this whole idea of infinitesimal new people emerging from people we love---very cool invention. Your creativity is astonishing all around, but this tiny-new-being-emerging-from-older-amazing-being-thing---that is just deft.
-----------Brian Doyle
I absolutely love this entry. It has been my favorite since I started the book. Of course I felt like it was speaking directly to me. What an eye opening entry about exactly what was going on in my life and a real slap in the face as to how blessed I am. As if that was not enough I had a second doctor vistit.
The last 2 times I had heard my little boy's heart beat on the doppler I had thought it sounded odd. Irregular noises and beats. Not the normal crazy active baby sounds I have heard in the past. Irregular, quick then slow beats of his heart. A tech heard it, a nurse heard it, then my doctor heard it. She ordered that in my last ultrasound they take a closer look at his heart. This of course worried me. At the ultrasound, we all saw his irregular heartbeat on the screen. Then suddenly, no abnormality to it at all. For 10 minutes we watched. Nothing. Was this the work of Tricky Ricky again????? Surely a fetus cannot control his own heart rate and think he's being funny. This doctor called the heart rate normal and I went back to my OB doctor. 20 minutes after the ultrasound, a funky sounding irregular heart rate on the doppler again. This time, I was sent to Texas Children's Hospital for another look. Those were really scary words as kids that are there are sick. I worried and was told not to worry, and worried some more.
Blessing surrounded me again on that day. Premature atrial contractions were what the TCH doctor called the different skips/pauses in his heart rate. This is easily monitored and normally goes aways after the baby is born---miracles.
I have so much to be thankful for and had so many blessings given to me that I do feel like I should be standing around "gaping in awe." So Much to thank the Lord for! So Much to be appreciative of!
As I sit here 1cm dilated and 80% efaced (yes that is what I was told this morning in my doctor's visit AND that she did not think I would make it to my due date of March 11) I have SO MUCH to be thankful for and and am SO anxious to see this little boy!
