Monday, October 7, 2013

The Day That Changed Everything

Although we had trouble conceiving,  the rest of the pregnancy progressed uneventful. At 37 weeks, Caleb was ready to make his arrival.  We had the nursery ready, my bags were packed, and we were so excited that we were going to be parents.  All ultrasounds revealed a healthy baby boy,  and so we had no expectations of what was to come.  I can remember sitting in Caleb's nursery,  imagining life with my little one.  One night,  I put my hands on my belly and thanked God for the little miracle that was growing within me.  Just as Hannah had done in the Bible,  I prayed and dedicated this child back to |God.  I felt both his conception and the fact that we had made it so far into the pregnancy was a miracle.  I prayed that God would use Caleb's life to bring Himself glory and that our family would be used to touch others.  Little did I know how God would answer this prayer.

As the contractions got stronger,  we headed off to the hospital.  Once we arrived and were admitted, things began to happen quickly.  I had chosen not to have an epidural,  not because I feel there is anything wrong with having one,   in fact I had an epidural with all 3 other pregnancies,  but because both of my sisters had gone natural and if they could do it,  I needed to prove that I could also do it.  Let's just say that my pride and my need to prove myself,  cost me a great deal of pain.  And for anyone that knows my family,  not one person cared whether I went natural or used all the medication they had to offer. The only positive to this course of action was that I never had to question whether my use of an epidural affected Caleb.  Just this past year I read an article where they were trying to show the correlation between epidural use and an increase in the rate of autism.  I was glad to dismiss that questionable cause in his diagnosis of autism.   

After much pain Caleb emerged a healthy baby boy with apgar scores of 9 and 9.   I held him and looked into his beautiful face.  As he began to fall asleep,  I handed him back to Bob.  Within a moment,  the course of our life would be changed forever.  The nurses noticed that he wasn't looking so well and as they whisked him away, our room filled with specialists.  Soon after,  he was  taken to the neonatal intensive care unit(NICU).  One would think that at this moment I would be in a panic,  but I truly thought it was just a little glitch in the newborn plan.  So I got cleaned up,  ate lunch,  and continued to wait.  When the doctor came in to talk with us,  he said that they were suspecting a blood infection,  which a few days of antibiotics would clear up.  Although I wasn't thrilled with this change in plans,   a few days delay in bringing our little one home wouldn't be too bad. They wheeled me down to the NICU to see Caleb and before I was even allowed in the doors,  I had to scrub my hands and arms.  To this day I cannot walk into a hospital and not feel  a tightness in my stomach at the smell of the special soap they use. Once the hand washing routine was complete,  I was allowed to enter the NICU.  I wasn't prepared for what I would see.  My little baby, that was lying in my arms so peacefully just a few hours ago,  now lay on a bed hooked up to numerous wires with a  tube down his throat that was breathing for him.  It broke my heart.  We sat next to his little bed and didn't even feel comfortable stroking his hand without permission.  Thankfully there was a nurse on staff who saw our hesitancy and encouraged us to touch him.  But picking him up and holding him would have to wait for another time.  I sat next to his bed in disbelief.  How does one begin to process life when everything that you had planned begins to change.   For me , I turned to my faith.  I truly believed that God had a plan for this little boy,  and so I began to figure out what that plan was.  I suppose you could say that this helped to carry me through the next two months, but in the long run,  this became a stumbling block.  The Bible tells us ," Many are the plans in a person's heart,  but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails",  Proverbs 19:21.  It is a very good thing that our future is not revealed to us.  If it had been,  I never would have had the strength to make it through the day.


 

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