Exodus

It’s been a tough weekend.   Cam got home from a week underway on Friday, only to be notified that the ships were all sorteeing (meaning leaving port to avoid the hurricane) first thing Saturday morning.   Given his current schedule, this would have meant he’d be gone ‘til Thanksgiving, with only Friday night at home.  I have to admit: I was just barely holding it together before the sortee order, and once that hit I couldn’t keep the tears at bay.   When it rains, it pours, and wow, it pours a lot lately!  Thankfully, the sortee was canceled at the last minute, and I was able to pick Cam up at lunchtime Saturday and have a blessed few more days with him home. 

Friday marked 30 weeks in my pregnancy, and only 10 weeks until our little girl is due.  I wish I could say that I’m looking forward to January 3rd, that I’m ready to be done with pregnancy and have her here already, like I hear so many other pregnant women saying.   But the truth is that I am terrified.  I lie still, focused on feeling her moving inside, with a desperation for it to be this way forever.   Absolute desperation.  I want to do only this, every hour of every day for the next 9 weeks.   I don’t want this time to end.  I feel her every movement, I know when she wakes and sleeps, I eat for her, my heart beats for her.  I know her.   And all the sacrifices I will make for the sake of her life… feel worth it. 

My greatest fear is losing her.  And while she’s here inside, I feel like she’s mine to keep, although I know that’s not necessarily the truth.   I’m afraid that once she’s born, I won’t be able to hold her again for far too long.  I’m afraid of the pain she will have, the needle sticks, her lying alone in her isolette, hurting, when I can’t pick her up and comfort her.  My heart aches for all she will have to endure, and the million times I’ll wish I could take all of her suffering on myself.

As I read Psalm 139, which I now know as our little one’s chapter, I am amazed that these feelings I have for my little girl are the same ones my God has for me.  Only he knows and loves me so much more deeply and perfectly than I can imagine.    

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”

As my heart aches for my precious little one, so must my heavenly father’s heart ache for me.   Why is it so hard sometimes to cast all my fears and burdens on Him, and let him care for me?  I won’t be able to take them from our little girl, but He can take them from me!   Exodus 14:14 says “The LORD will fight for you, you need only to be still.”  God, help me to be still and trust you.  

Another Day, Another Doctor

If you haven’t heard, we go to the doctor a lot.  This is a good thing because they are doing everything they can for our baby girl.  It’s also a good thing if you love to pee in cups.  Or get weighed with all your clothes and shoes on.  Or if you relish the comfort of the papered exam table with nowhere to put your feet and nothing to lean your pregnant aching back against while you wait for the doctor for 47 minutes reading the same poster over and over.  But I digress.   Point is, if you come to my house and it’s a mess, it’s because I spent FIVE HOURS in the doctor’s office yesterday, so try to withhold judgment.

We finally met with our Pediatric Surgeon at CHKD, and wow, I can’t say enough good things about him and about CHKD in general!  We are so blessed to have a nationally acclaimed children’s hospital a few miles from our door!  We got to visit the NICU, and everyone there was so warm and wonderful.  

Our surgeon surprised us by presenting a very conservative treatment plan for the omphalocele. Here’s the plan:

Once this precious girl is born, she will NOT have immediate surgery as we’d been told before!  It’s too risky, he informed us, unless the O ruptures and we have no choice.  The new plan is to wrap the O until she is stabilized, and then cover it in a cream that will encourage the skin to grow up the sides and over it.  It’s called “Paint & Wait”, because that’s exactly what we’ll do.   Her surgeon wants to achieve full skin coverage before she can be discharged from the NICU, which can take anywhere from 2-6 months, barring other complications.  This means that the O will still be there, visibly protruding, but that it will be protected by skin just like the rest of her body, and she’ll be able to commence normal baby activities!  She will eventually wear a compression wrap to encourage her abdomen to grow big enough to accommodate the organs that are outside.  Once her abdomen is big enough, “closure” surgery will be done to enclose everything into a normal-looking belly.   He predicts that the closure surgery will not happen until she’s at least 3 years old, which came as a big surprise to us!  We never imagined she’d have the O for so long.  But it’s the safest way to treat giant O’s, and gives her the best chances, so we’ll take it.  We’re so thankful that the Lord has given us a doctor who will do what he can and let God do the rest.   We know only He can make her complete.

Babymoon

Last week, Cam and I spent a gloriously sunny, warm week in Siesta Key for our babymoon!  Amazingly, the Navy survived without him for a whole week!  We soaked in all the activities that will be harder to do in the upcoming summers with a little one in tow, like riding bikes around town, stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking, lying on the beach for hours reading a book, savoring a leisurely romantic dinner...  

Wow, is vacation ever going to be different from now on.  But bring it on!   I just can’t wait to see those teeny little toes in the sand with ours.  I’m looking so forward to her clinging to our fingers as she kicks in the surf for the very first time next summer.   Hopefully, before Cam deploys, we can introduce our sweet girl to the ocean at “our” beach, Fort Story, where we had one of our first dates and where we later got married. 

Sunset Catamaran Cruise

Sunset on our beach

 Sunset Paddle (are we noticing a theme here?)

  Cam's-eye view of mama & Cupcake

28 week belly

     Our pea in the pod

Looking back: 100 days

Journal: September 24, 2012

100 days!

When Cameron is deployed, I always celebrate the 100-days-til-Homecoming mark.  During a long deployment, when you get pretty much to the double digits, it starts to seem more doable, so it’s worth celebrating!  During Cam's first deployment, my awesome roommates surprised me by covering my bedroom door in decorations to honor the occasion:

Cameron on his ship

Awesome, beautiful roommates who I miss, who even made a cake, complete with Cameron cake topper!!

Well September 24 officially marks 100 days until Cupcake’s due date!  100 days to get her nursery looking ship-shape, 100 days to savor this thing I love called “free time”, and another thing I love even more called “sleep”.  100 days of just Cam & me.  100 days until our life changes dramatically, beautifully, amazingly, forever.    100 days until we meet our little one, our cupcake, our fighter.  Happy 100-days-to-go, sweet baby!  You listen to your mama and stay put in there 'til then!

(Now that I'm finally posting this, we only have 84 days to go!!)

Annnd a Homecoming pic thrown in for good measure, because Homecomings are pretty much the best:

November 2005

A Post A Day...here we go!

It seems like there's so much to tell about our little one that I thought a post-a-day week would come in handy, and maybe get me used to this blogging thing a little faster.  

Looking back: 
Journal, September 17, 2012

No news is good news!

Today was cupcake’s 3^rd fetal echocardiogram—that’s a detailed ultrasound of her heart.  (Number one was at 17 weeks, along with her chromosome testing and anatomy scan, and number 2 was a couple of weeks ago but was inconclusive.)  Well today was successful.  She was cooperative and held still enough for the cardiologist when she couldn’t be bothered to be still for anyone else!   She’s very busy in there, you know.  Probably making some arts and crafts or training for a triathlon (which I suppose would be the eat-sleep-poop one that everyone tells us about!).   In fact, she prompts commentary on her high activity level at each and every visit.  We love that she is so energetic; she’s our little fighter, and that active spirit is going to come in handy here in a few months.  Plus, nothing in the world beats the feeling of her little feet thumping away in my belly!

Today the doctor confirmed what she’d suspected at our 17-week echo, and as always, an appointment that reveals no new hurdles is a good appointment!  Cupcake’s heart is tilted/rotated off axis, which is a common effect of omphalocele.  The O creates a pull on the abdomen, causing other organs to shift.  Thankfully, the tilt doesn’t affect the structure or function of her heart, and it looks pretty much normal—beautiful and strong!  Yay!  Our baby girl does have a small Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), which is a hole between two of the chambers of her heart.  (You can read more about VSD here if you’re interested: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002089/   )  The cardiologist and neonatologist both feel it isn’t a major concern at this point, and that it may close on it’s own either before or after she’s born.  They’ll keep an eye on her heart and the VSD, along with everything else as we go along.   Close, little hole, close!

In a chapter of our lives that is absolutely chock full of uncertainties, we are learning to accept the idea of never quite knowing the answers, while getting pretty good at clinging to the hope that it’ll all turn out ok.   We can only know so much about what we’re facing with our baby girl, and every morning greets us with that reality.  There are many questions that will have to remain unanswered until she arrives in January.  That has been a real challenge, dealing with the unknowns.  Not knowing how hard it’s going to be on her, or on us; not knowing when or what type or how many surgeries she’ll have, not knowing how long she’ll be in the hospital, not knowing when we’ll get to hold her for the first time.  All the while clinging to the knowledge that there is a plan, that the things that are unknown to us are known by our Heavenly Father.  One of my favorite verses has always been Jeremiah 29:11, 

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans for wholeness and not for evil, plans to give you a future and a hope.

Oh the sweet peace, the comfort, in those words from the Lord.  

As I silently adored this precious little munchkin flickering on the screen today, I felt so thankful for these moments we've been given.  In the midst of this storm, I am certainly blessed in a way not many expectant mothers are.   I get to see my baby girl every couple of weeks, sometimes weeks in a row, often for an hour at a time.  I get to watch her bop around, kick and stretch, hiccup, and touch her precious face with her tiny hands.  I get to watch her growing, changing, bit by bit, and inch by inch.  I saw her hands turn from rounded balls to five-fingered wonders.  I saw her ears change from tiny nubs to beautiful, perfect pinna.  I hear her courageous, strong heart beating week after week.  I’m amazed as I watch God’s graceful hands forming her, this beautiful miracle I’m carrying.  This is one of God’s greatest gifts, and my heart is so full of astonishment, love, and gratitude for every minute.