Kiss Your Miracle

As I write this on July 15^th, I’m remembering this day last year. It was my due date with Skylar and I was more than ready to have my baby girl. But apparently, my body wasn’t. At my OB appointment that day, my doctor shook his head sadly and informed me that no, the baby hadn’t dropped yet. And no, I still wasn’t dilated.

As Adam and I left his office that day I felt defeated. My pregnancy until that point had been easy. I was so happy to be pregnant after our infertility that none of my aches and pains bothered me. I could feel the baby moving a lot and felt fairly confident that everything would be fine. But once July 15^th had come and gone, I fell apart emotionally. I had nothing but time on my hands and the more I thought about what might happen, the more anxious I became. What if I had to be induced? I’d had my heart set on a natural birth, not one where I spent my labor lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a fetal monitor and an IV. What if the induction led to a C-section? What if something went horribly wrong during the birth?

It turns out that we did have a few complications when Sky entered the world on July 22^nd, but the doctor handled them quickly and we left the hospital two days later as a healthy family of three. My point is not that my fears were ridiculous. Tragedies happen every day. It’s that my fear didn’t accomplish anything except to make me, and probably Adam, miserable for a while. If God had planned to allow a catastrophe in our lives, worrying about it ahead of time wouldn’t have changed the outcome. As a teenager I worried about infertility, and realizing years later that I’d been right about it gave me no satisfaction.

I understand why God tells us not to live fearful lives. And I’m thankful he understands just how difficult it can be for us to actually do that. Psalm 103:14 says that God knows how we were formed and “he remembers that we are dust.” I find that very comforting, especially when I feel fragile and scared. Eleven weeks into my second pregnancy, I could easily give up the joy that should go along with expecting a child, trading it in for a list of fears. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that the solution to fear is strength – as in, strong women don’t worry. But the paradox of scripture is that we are only strong when we concede our weakness. And when I look at it that way, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I’m a Christian. It’s okay to admit that I can’t do anything on my own, even manage my own fear. God will never reject me or be disappointed in me for that. All he asks of me is to come to him, trusting that regardless of what the future holds, he loves me with an unfailing love and he will always be with me.

One morning on our vacation in Michigan Adam and I went outside to take Sky for a walk, only to find our stroller squished beneath a massive tree limb. Apparently, the branch had fallen from the very top of a tree next to my parents’ house, landing with enough force to damage two bicycles and bend the steel frame of our deluxe, baby-shower-gift stroller. Adam managed to get it rolling again, but now it pulls hard to the left. It doesn’t look so good either. “Maybe we can get another one, a double stroller for when the new baby comes,” Adam said. “Yeah,” I said, knowing we were both thinking about how much a big double stroller probably costs.

We trudged back inside and I found myself wondering why stuff like that happens. Sometimes it seems like the crises we walk through eventually have a deep impact on our faith in God. They can shape our character and even bring out the best in us. But little things like stubbed toes, fender benders, the flu, a wrecked stroller – they’re just plain annoying.

I guess life in a fallen world means putting up with aggravation. How we react in the unexpected hassles we face probably says a lot about the quality of our character. And if that’s the case, then I need to work more on how I handle minor annoyances. I tend to complain a lot and call it “venting,” which makes it seem like my whining is actually therapeutic and somehow beneficial. But when I stop and think about it, I have to admit that I don’t like to be around people who complain, especially about temporary, insignificant things. (The exception to that, of course, would be funny people – a category in which I do not place myself.) I figure that at the very least, I should try to be a person that I myself can tolerate. So maybe the next time I lose my keys, I’ll be careful with how I respond. Maybe. We’ll see. Losing your keys is really irritating.

I don’t consider myself an overly emotional person. Sure I get teary-eyed over things – when a friend is going through something difficult or when I find myself in a crisis. But I don’t usually get worked up over small stuff. Friday though, was an exception. I had a meltdown over something minor. Complete with big fat tears rolling down my cheeks. And it happened on an airplane packed with people.

We were about to leave O’hare Airport in Chicago for Orlando after spending the week with my family. And yeah, I was a little sad to say goodbye to everyone, but that’s not why I lost it. I actually started to cry over our seats on the plane. When we booked our tickets online we made sure to get two seats together near the front. But somehow when we checked in, we were given new seats in the very last row. And once we boarded I realized we had two inner seats; the third seat on the aisle would be taken by someone else. With as much as I typically get up to pace around with Sky during an average flight, this meant I’d constantly be asking that person to get up and let me by. “Maybe I can just ask him to switch with us,” I said to Adam as the plane filled up. “Or maybe that seat will stay empty,” I added hopefully. Sky was already fussy and kept trying to squirm out of my arms. “Oh,” said Adam, looking out the window. “What?” I asked. “Well, we can’t see out.” I leaned over to the window and saw nothing but a big, silver jet engine. Normally that wouldn’t be a major issue, but my pregnancy nausea is definitely made worse by motion and focusing on the horizon is what usually keeps me from actually throwing up. “Let me know if you want me to check your carry-on,” announced a flight attendant cheerfully over the speaker. “We have a completely full flight today folks!”

As more people crowded onto the plane the temperature seemed to rise. Behind us, flight attendants loaded drinks into their cart, talking loudly as they worked. Our row of seats backed up to the bathrooms. Would that icky plane-bathroom-smell be stuck in my nose the entire flight? Suddenly I had a vision of finally getting Sky to fall asleep in my arms only to see her startle awake with the first slam of the bathroom door. Adam sat next to me, calmly eating a bagel sandwich. “I think I’m going to have a panic attack,” I told him, and in a flash, big, hot tears filled my eyes and spilled over. He glanced at me and then looked back again, stopping mid-bite. “What’s wrong?” he asked in surprise. I couldn’t speak. Skylar was starting to cry at that point, so I jumped up with her and walked into the little space between the two bathrooms to try to compose myself. This flight is only three hours, I reminded myself. I have plenty of friends who’ve flown internationally with babies and they all survived somehow. But I still couldn’t stop crying.

A minute later an older man took the aisle seat in our row. When Adam asked if he would mind sitting by the window, the man explained that he had two young children sitting up in the front and asked if we would mind switching seats with them. “Come on,” Adam said to me joyfully. We grabbed our stuff and headed forward to a pair of seats in a row by themselves on the other side of the plane, with a clear view out the window. I sat down and cried some more. Not because I wasn’t grateful, but because I’d even started crying in the first place over something so small that quickly resolved itself anyway.

My mom’s favorite piece of advice in any given situation has always been, “Let a little time go by. See what happens.” And there’s wisdom in that. It’s just not easy to do, especially when your body’s full of raging pregnancy hormones.

Adam, Skylar and I are currently staying with my parents at their house by Lake Michigan for the week. Vacations are definitely different from our pre-baby days. Packing and unpacking has taken on new meaning. Our first day here we went straight from the airport to Walmart to get all the stuff we couldn’t fit into the bags we brought on the plane – diapers, wipes, formula, and a pac-n-play crib – which we then spent an hour trying to arrange in our little room while still allowing space to walk. Even the rhythm of our days has changed. Instead of sleeping till ten and enjoying a lazy breakfast, we’ve been up at six every morning with our slightly disoriented and very excited child, trying to find things to do while we wait for the rest of the house to wake up. I’ve actually been much more tired since we got here than I usually am at home, which seems backwards.

But still, there’s something therapeutic about being away. Getting a break from the routine, being in a new place, having time at the beach – it’s been great. And more than all that, this trip is about family. On the fourth of July, our extended family came to my parents’ house to celebrate the holiday and a few summer birthdays. There were about thirty of us sitting around, eating hot dogs and cup cakes, talking and laughing and opening presents. Sky’s birthday is coming up soon and I told my mom I wanted her to help Sky open one of her gifts. So my mom pulled her up onto her lap and helped her peel away the wrapping paper that covered a small picture frame. When my mom turned it over she gasped. It was one of our ultrasound photos with the caption “Happy Birthday Big Sister” written on it. “Really?!” shrieked my mom. “Are you really having another baby?!” Suddenly everyone was hugging us, asking questions, and congratulating us.

Being able to tell my family about the pregnancy in person is a big deal. I usually only see my family two, maybe three times a year. It’s just the reality of living 1200 miles away from them. Adam and I have lived in Florida near his family since the year we got married in 2003. And Florida’s been good to us. I had a nice run teaching high school here and Adam’s worked for his father’s business for six years. His mom and dad love Sky and are very involved grandparents. They come over for dinner once a week and Sky’s little face lights up when they walk through the door. But sometimes I wonder about Sky’s relationship with my family. I want her to know my parents the way she knows Adam’s, and my siblings too. I have six brothers and sisters and they’re all amazing, fun people. She has cousins here too. Is it possible for her to be close to them even when we live far away? Maybe. But not in the same way.

Marrying someone from a different hometown is not uncommon. My little brother married a beautiful girl from England and I know they struggle with the same dilemma, especially now that they have a baby of their own. One of them will always have to sacrifice; one of them will always live far from family. My mom misses her grandbabies, but she does a good job at not making us feel guilty for living where we do. When I asked her about it she said, “Well, my philosophy is to receive what I’m given. I’m grateful for the time I do have with you and I try not waste it by focusing on how I want more.” And that seems to be a healthy way to approach any area of life. But it feels unnatural. I have to admit that when I’m here I spend a lot of time fantasizing about how we could possibly move here. It’s hard not to feel wistful when I see my mom so happy with Sky in her arms and when I feel the cool northern air I prefer to Florida’s heat and humidity. But when I look at it realistically, I know that those wistful feelings wouldn’t go away if we lived here; they would just shift to Adam’s family. And my mom’s phrase – how we waste time wanting more – keeps echoing in my head. How many hours have I spent that way, fixated on wanting something, oblivious to what I already have? I hope that someday we do live near my family. But for now, I’m going to do what I can to pay attention to this moment and appreciate the time I have with them today.

To be completely honest, there was one more factor in my decision not to go back to work that I didn’t mention at the time: a positive pregnancy test. I started feeling sick in the beginning of June and this time around I knew right away it wasn’t the flu. At least for me, pregnancy nausea feels different than a stomach bug. Things I normally love sound awful. The thought of coffee or wine is enough to make me gag. Salad and vegetables? Terrible. But grilled cheese or macaroni? Heaven. Somehow I’m able to feel nauseas and still eat more and worse than usual. So when I suddenly had morning sickness along with the inability to keep my eyes open past 9:30pm, I told Adam we should think about doing a home pregnancy test.

When we did the test, the control line showed up clear and dark. A light second line appeared a few minutes later, so faint I wondered if we were imagining it. “Is this positive?” Adam asked. “I don’t trust it,” I said immediately, anxiety tightening my neck. It’s not that I didn’t want to be pregnant – it’s that our years of infertility trained me to hate home pregnancy tests. I’d heard that any second line is a positive, but ours was so very faint. I looked closely at the stick, narrowing my eyes. How cruel for it to not even give us a straight answer.

Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to me. Maybe I was pregnant, but the baby was stuck in my fallopian tube. That would throw off my hormones and maybe give us a barely-there positive. I only have one tube to begin with (my other was removed during surgery years ago), and at one point a test showed my remaining tube as 100% blocked. We know that God opened the tube enough for Sky’s little embryonic self to pass through it, but the pessimistic, fearful side of me didn’t assume that would automatically happen again.

At that point we hadn’t made our final decision about my work situation. “There’s no way you’re going back to teaching now,” Adam said suddenly. “Not if you’re pregnant again.” I stomped around the kitchen making dinner. “I can’t think about this right now,” I said. I was planning to get up at 4am the next morning to fly with Skylar to Chicago to see my family. “Let’s just wait until I get back next week,” I said to Adam. “I’ll do another test and maybe it’ll be easier to read.”

A week later our second test was the same as the first and I wanted to scream. How could it not have changed at all? Shouldn’t the line be darker by now? Or nonexistent? Stupid pregnancy tests! I felt like I’d been trying to keep my emotions on pause – not get too excited yet, but not let myself feel disappointed either – and a girl can only do that for so long. I called my doctor’s office and because of my history, they scheduled an early ultrasound, but not until the end of June. “That’s three weeks away!” I said to the nurse on the phone. “Yes, I know,” she said sweetly. “And if you have any sharp pains or bleeding, feel free to call us right away.” I hung up in a daze. Apparently, if the baby was in my tube, I’d figure it out on my own in a less than enjoyable manner. I sighed. Three weeks felt like forever.

In the meantime, Adam and I talked more about my work decision. I taught through my first pregnancy and was willing to do it again. Wouldn’t another baby on the way make things even more stressful financially? But when Adam gently asked me how I felt about it, I admitted that it sounded awful – just the thought of teaching full-time while pregnant and with a toddler at home overwhelmed me. “So that’s that,” he said calmly. “The money will work itself out. This is the right decision for us either way. It’s what we were leaning towards already. The new baby just makes it an easier choice for us.” Adam looked more relaxed than ever, but I was a big ball of nerves. What if we weren’t actually having a new baby? What if I was about to lose my only remaining fallopian tube instead?

Thankfully, pregnancy-induced exhaustion took over my brain every night and I had no trouble sleeping. I even began to feel a bit more settled as the days passed. A verse from Psalm 139 came to my mind whenever I wondered about the baby: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (v. 16). God knows how long this baby will live, I would remind myself, and he loves this child even more than we do.

Still, I spent the morning of the ultrasound on the verge of a panic attack. When we were finally called back to the examining room, I laid down on the table, explaining to the tech that I have a tipped uterus and sometimes it’s hard to get a good picture of it. I was barely able to get the words out when right there on the screen was the image of a tiny baby – 2 cm to be exact – tucked in exactly the right place, its little heart flickering away at 170bpm. Adam held Sky with one arm and reached down with his free hand for mine. “Everything looks great! You’re eight weeks and four days,” said the tech. “Your due date is February 2^nd.”

Throughout the rest of the day I cried quietly on and off. One miracle baby was enough. But two? I thought about the summer of 2007, when we felt God leading us to wait rather than try IVF again. It made no sense to us at the time. The pain of wanting a baby was so intense that it colored everything else in my life. To think that God had planned to bless us with not just one child, but children – the word “extravagant” comes to mind whenever I think about it. Life can be so painful, even vicious sometimes. But God has been sweet to us, removing our biggest heartache. The day of our ultrasound I wanted to pray, but couldn’t find the words. Anne Lammot, one of my favorite writers, says that some of her best prayers are “Please, please, please,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Sometimes I’m just glad that God already knows my thoughts.

I know we’ll face hardship down the road in one way or another. A healthy pregnancy now does not guarantee a healthy nine months or a healthy child. And I will admit, even if things go perfectly, the thought of having a newborn when my firecracker Skylar is just a year and a half old terrifies me. But for now, my focus is on our Almighty God and what he has done for us again, blessing us with another life growing beneath my heart.