I remember...

I remember the day that I found out we were finally going to have another baby. We had been trying for 2 years and then some...Now, finally, we were adding to the family. I was ecstatic. My husband was traveling but I couldn't wait to tell him. He answered the phone on the other end and I screamed the news in his ear. We were thrilled. Everything proceeded along as normal and we had all kinds of plans for this new one. His big brother and sister were already fighting over who would hold him first. At 20 weeks, we went in for the ultra-sound to find out if he was a boy or girl. We took the kids and waited impatiently in the waiting room. I climbed up on the cold table and watched the screen with excitement. I was a proud mommy and very happy. God had finally answered our prayer and it was a day to remember.

Slowly, the technician measured things and looked at the baby, and very quietly, got up and left the room. I looked at my husband and said, "how hard can it be? just tell us if he's a boy or a girl???" I was irritated. It seems like time started standing still right about then. Later, the doctor came in the room and asked the kids if they would like to go get some stickers from the front office ladies. I started to feel sick. Why did the technician leave? Why are they asking my kids to leave? Why is the doctor in here? Why, why,why??? Little did I know that this one word was going to summarize my entire life for at least another year. The doctor began to show us, on the ultra sound, all of the problems that the technician had identified with our sweet little boy. Fluid everywhere. On his lungs, on his brain, on his heart. Too much amniotic fluid. Bladder wasn't emptying. blah, blah, blah, it all faded into echoes in the room as I had as close to an out of body experience as I will probably ever have. Words wouldn't come... tears wouldn't come... I couldn't breathe. What was he trying to tell me?

Somehow I left the office knowing that I was to return early the next morning for an amniocentesis so they could make a definite diagnosis. I'm not sure how I knew that. It is all a blur. The rest of that day was made to be as normal as possible. We did not tell the kids anything as of yet, because we didn't know much. I found out that life could be lived from one second to the next. I could only think about the very thing I was doing that second or it became so overwhelming that I started to get weak in the knees. I remember speaking to my mother on the phone and telling her that "right now I am making spaghetti for my kids and I can handle that." "So, that is all I will think about." I really didn't talk to God about it yet. If it was true, I was mad and I really didn't want to talk to Him at that moment. But, surely there was some mistake. Still, I didn't sleep a wink that night. Even if nothing was wrong with my baby, they wanted to poke a huge needle into my stomach tomorrow morning and that did not make for sweet peaceful dreams...