She will only see the baby

The first time I stepped into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit I was bombarded with sound.  Sound from everywhere!  Monitors going off, ventilators breathing for babies, nurses and doctors talking and moving.  And tears.  Not crying, just silent terrified tears.  I am amazed that silence can sometimes be the loudest sound in the room.  My first day I looked into the eyes of another mother standing beside the plastic box that held her baby.  Her silent tears held every one of those sounds.  Her child would die 7 months later, having only left the hospital to die at home.  Her tears are still the sound in my heart when I remember.

Then the light. The babies actually had to improve enough to go into an isolette.  They stayed on the open table until they were stable enough for the little boxes, then, they covered their isolettes with blankets to block some of the light.  Can you imagine growing in lights and sounds when you should have been warm and dark in your momma?  I felt assaulted by everything going on.  So much information, such tiny babies, such real fear. 

I also felt so sorry that my girls had to live that way.  I felt guilty that I couldn't do better for them.  I hated that my body didn't hold them and I ached because my arms couldn't hold them.  They had to go through it alone.  I wanted to somehow take it for them, but I couldn't.  I watched as they were stuck, poked, scanned, medicated, breathed for, and felt helpless.  I willed them to live and would have done anything to make that happen.  It was a selfish desire to want that at any cost, because it cost them everything. 

There is a weight in that unit.  So many parents and babies, afraid and sick.  There is an unspoken terror of death.  Losing a child is so unnatural.  There is no way to prepare for it.  It felt completely wrong, like a sin to even think of the possibility, but it was always there with us.  Every night we would leave the hospital to sleep and dread that middle of the night call saying something was wrong.  We began to look for the parents and babies in the morning to see who was still there.

The social worker asked us early on about bringing Hannah to see the girls.  I couldn't imagine it.  I felt so overwhelmed in there, I thought it would terrify Hannah to see her sisters that way.  The social worker told us not to worry and then said something I will never forget: "Trust me, she will only see the babies.  Children don't see the tubes and wires, they see the baby because they are looking for a baby." 

Hannah walked into the nursery and saw the baby.  She had no expectations of perfect.  She had no idea that every baby wasn't born that way.  She hadn't dreamed them and felt them move inside of her.  She didn't know the feeling of overwhelming sorrow for all they were going through.  She could walk in and be genuinely excited because she was a big sister.  Children are amazing.  I wanted that childlike heart too.  I wanted to see my babies, just them.  It was hard for me to do that, but a few times I think I did.  This is a picture of Emily the first time I saw her whole face.  She had been extubated (breathing tube removed) for just a few minutes and I snapped a quick picture. 

I guess the point isn't seeing them when the tubes are removed, but being able to see past all of that.  Being able to look at that mess of tangled wires and sounds forcing life into them and seeing a child.  A real living breathing human with a future and filled with potential and love.  I wonder if God looks down at me like that.  Does he see the tubes and tangles I make in life?  Does he look at me and see my mistakes and insecurities; the artificial things I reach for to force life into myself?  I know he deals with that mess I am, but I also believe he looks past all of that and sees his child.

As I was writing this today, I could feel God asking "You know I see you, but how do you see me?  Do you see me as complicated and confusing?  Do you wonder about my answers and my care?"

Wow.  Can I look past all of the sorrow of the world, the insecurities in myself, the necessity of provision and see his face?  Do I see everything that complicates that relationship with him, or I can I come to him with a childlike innocence; without expectation and the weight of loss and regret and see a king who created me?  His arms ache to hold me, just as I ached to hold my girls.  To comfort as I desired to comfort.  That and immeasurably more.  Can you trust me Andrea?  Can you allow me to work in you that which is pleasing to me?   Can you trust your girls to me? 

That is the desire of my heart.  To trust him completely.  To walk with Jesus daily, to fill with his word.  Looking at that new terrified mommy up there gently touching her sick baby, I can't believe the person he has molded today.  Faith is a choice I have to make every single day, it is a verb--an action that requires moving forward when I want to stand still.  Most of all, it is reaching up and taking his hand, or some days crawling into his lap and allowing the Prince of Peace, the Living Water to fill in the holes of a sometimes very painful life.

The Big Day

I have been trying to write about one of the most important days of my life for more than a week now.  One would think the memory of such a monumental, life changing day would be easily filled with words and descriptions of everything that was going on. 

I had hoped to create a picture of waking up knowing that something was very wrong; of how the doctors started a trial of a different contraction medication only a few short hours before the girls would be born to see if it was possible for me to go home.  I wanted you to hear the whisper in my consciousness of God telling me that this was it.  The day I could never turn back from.  I thought it would help to explain how awful I felt not being allowed to stand up and shower or wash my hair in almost two weeks.  I had hoped you could have experienced the profound moment when I knew my hair was the last thing I would think of.   I wanted you to be there as I was bleeding to death, flying down the hall on my hospital bed while a nurse rode with me pulling my rings off.  I wanted you to feel what it was like not knowing if Jeff would make it; if any of us would make it. 

I am surprised to find that I can't have you there with me.  I'm shocked to know I can barely go back there myself.  My babies were born 3 months before they were due and they nearly died that day.  I almost died that day.  In some ways I think we did die, and in that exact moment we were also born.  All of us to a new life and purpose, to a foreign land.

Jeff did make it to the hospital that day only to find my room empty. He had that awful moment of not knowing if the babies and I were okay. Someone brought him to me just as they were starting my C-Section. As the girls were being born, Jeff looked at them and started laughing and saying "they're huge, they are so big".  I'm sure you can imagine the eyes above those masks in the O.R. looking at each other like "What??"  They were tiny compared to full term babies, but he had expected little palm of your hand babies. They cried when we weren't sure we would hear any sounds. They were born 2 minutes apart. Emily first weighing 2 lb 12 oz and then Abby weighing 2 lb. 11.87 oz. They were stabilized and sent to the NICU.  Later I would learn that preterm babies often do well for the first few minutes of life and then need help. That was the last typical thing my girls did.

Looking back, I can see how awesome Jeff's perspective was, even though at the time I thought he was a nut. Our children were the smallest babies born that day. They were sick and unable to survive on their own. That didn't matter to him, what he had expected was so much worse than what he saw. That was maybe one of our first days of actively seeking the good, when everything seemed so bad. His natural inclination to look for the positive in a situation helped me form that attitude myself, even from the first minute of my new life.

These are pictures the hospital took of my girls after they were stabilized. They take them so parents have a picture of their child alive. I couldn't see the girls for myself yet. My daughters could have easily died before I ever laid eyes on them.  I think these pictures look horrible.  I can't tell you how thankful I am that they aren't the only pictures I have. I have had the opportunity to take so many more, but these were the first.

Emily Claire

Abigail Grace

So as I look back to 12 years ago, it has been an unbelievable journey.  How could I have known looking at those pictures then, what a complicated road we would travel?  My heart has broken so many times over those little girls, so frail and small.  How grateful I am that God has eagerly taken every shattered piece of my heart as I learned to pick them up and hand them to him one by one.  He put them back together again, not the same, but in a pattern that he can use in a way I could have never dreamed. 

There's something about a that name...

Emily Claire and Jack Robert.  They were the twins I was sure I was having.  Emily and Jack playing on their plastic Alligator See-Saw.  Aren't they cute? 

Not quite.  So Jack is a girl.  A girl we hadn't even thought of a name for.

I was on labor and delivery being admitted to the hospital when I began to have serious bleeding.  All of the sudden, everything changed.  Doctors and nurses were running in and out of my room, the monitors were going off.  I began having huge contractions and I finally realized at that moment that the babies might actually be born that day.

I was started on I.V. Magnesium for contractions, fluids for blood loss, and given steroids to develop the babies' lungs.  They were doing everything they could to keep them in a few more days.  It was terrifying.  Twelve years ago, about 1/2 of the babies born at 26 weeks survived.  I knew that I could lose one or both of them.  As the day wore on, my contractions settled and the babies seemed to be maintaining their heart rates.  After we made it through that first day, it became a waiting game.

I was placed on complete bed rest.  There are no words to describe how much I hated not being able to get up.  I couldn't wash my hair or go to the bathroom.  I could only sit up for meals.  Everything started to ache after a few days.  My stomach was tender from the monitors constantly pressing into it; I had I.V.'s and that awful steroid injection.  Man, that thing hurt.  The magnesium makes you feel...I'm not sure what the word is, maybe disconnected.  It causes hot flashes and muscle weakness.  I found myself sitting for hours watching the monitors, exhausted from doing nothing.  I had a few visitors, but we were fairly new to the area and didn't know many people. 

The hardest part of the 10 days all of those treatments bought us were the days Hannah came to visit. I had never been away from her for more than a day or two. I missed her so much, and even though I was doing what I needed to do for the babies, being away from her was terrible. I wasn't much of a crier, except when she left my hospital room in the evenings, I couldn't help it. We were being very brave, but it wore on us all.

I thought of the babies a lot as we waited.  We had named Emily weeks before, but we couldn't think of a name for Baby B.  I felt horribly guilty.  I felt bonded to Emily calling her by name.  She seemed so real to me.  Baby B felt real too, but not in the same way.  She needed a name.  Jeff came to the hospital one night after work for a quick visit, I think there was a playoff game on (this is January), and he wanted to go watch it.  I started to cry about the baby not having a name.  I thought she would die with no name.  It was the saddest thing I could think of.  She could be born and die as Baby B.  It sounded like Jane Doe to me. 

So, he stayed and we hashed out names.  I'm sure it went much faster because that game was on.  We had discussed Abigail before and I didn't like it.  Somehow that night it seemed right.  **Cheesy Moment Alert**  I loved Little House on the Prairie.  There was an episode when Caroline wanted a boy, but had a girl and Laura says "we were all truly blessed by the coming of baby Grace".  I had secretly wanted a baby Grace from then on.  So Abigail Grace came to be that night.  Jeff left to watch his game and I wrapped my arms around my belly and called my girls by name as I promised Emily Claire and Abigail Grace that I would do everything I could to keep them safe. 

Do you know that the concordance in my bible offers eighty nine references to the word "name"?   Eighty nine times, someone's name was called, changed, or written in the book of life.  God even named his own son (can you see God pouring over baby names....no, I don't think so)  He was to be and is Jesus. There's something about that name.  Master, Savior, Counselor, Friend, Lord, King, Exalted One, Holy, Son of God, Redeemer, The Christ.  Calling on His name saves us from sin, guides and directs us.  We pray in his name; ask in his name.  That one word and all it represents brings us before the throne of God.  Jesus.  It's really beyond me how very important that name is.

Names are important to God and to each other.  My babies needed names because it was then that I knew them.  I wrote them when they were born and it was official, unchanging.  Those are the names that are written in the book of life.  They are the names that helped me to say welcome to those little girls, and if I needed to, I would have called them by name to say good-bye.  I have an awesome God that called me by name too, because it was then that I knew him. 

John 10:3, 14-15
The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice.  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me-just as the Father knows me and I know the Father- and I lay down my life for my sheep.

Last days

The last  Friday before my life changed forever was just a regular work day for me. I woke up at 4 a.m. having a few contractions.  Nothing more than what I had been experiencing except the time of day.  They started earlier than usual.  I took my meds, went back to bed and woke up at 7 a.m. with them starting again.  I took my Nifedepine every four hours that day; I had been taking it every 6 hours.  The last hour before the next dose of medicine was due, the number of contractions I was having went significantly up.  They weren't painful though.  I rested and they slowed, I drank more water that day which seemed to help too. 

By the end of my work day, even though they weren't more frequent they were getting stronger.  I never stopped the doctor and let her know what was going on.  It's one of those things I look back on and wish I could do over.  I walked to her office, I was going to say something, but she was talking to another doctor.  I stood outside of her door and waited and thought of all I still needed to get done.  I had to get Hannah from school, we were going to do the baby registry that weekend, and I was so tired.  She was still talking, so I turned around and walked out.  I don't know if walking in to that office would have changed anything, but it's one of those places in my mind I replay from time to time.  It's what I would have done differently.   It's a place I let the busyness of life take over.  I made the choice to keep going; to finish my plans.

Jeff, Hannah and I went out to dinner that night because I was too tired to cook.  As we sat waiting for our food, my back began to hurt terribly.  I have a very high pain tolerance, but I couldn't sit there.  We took our food to go and went home where I could put my feet up.  I didn't think I was in labor, I just didn't feel good.

As it turns out I wasn't in labor.  I wish it had been so easy. 

I woke up Saturday morning slowly becoming aware that something was wrong.  It didn't take long to realize that I had been bleeding.  It was exactly like the dreams I'd been having.  Step by step, I knew just what to do. When I woke Jeff, he panicked a little but I was completely calm.  I was scared, but God had prepared me.  We called family to get Hannah, called the doctor, and went to the hospital.  I was exactly 26 weeks pregnant that day. 

When I got to the hospital, I had what they call an irritable uterus.  I wasn't regularly contracting, but it signals the possibility of trouble.  I had an ultrasound that seemed to take forever.  My back was killing me.  I barely made it through it.  It confirmed the presence of fluid behind the placenta.  For me, I realized that horrible back pain was actually the placenta tearing away.  I had partial tears (placental abruption) that were responsible for the bleeding, but the babies looked fine.  It was then that I learned Baby B was a girl.  Three little girls.  Oh Boy!  I was admitted to labor and delivery for what I was hoping would be a few days of observation.

So that was it, the day that began a series of events that changed our lives.  Walking across the parking lot, through those double doors was essentially walking into a parallel plane.  Everything would be familiar to me when I walked back out again, but nothing would be the same.  There would be a faint echo of the life I used to live, the dreams I dreamed and the way I saw the world. I felt it then.  I knew when we were driving to the hospital that morning.  I had a sense of the landscape getting in smaller and smaller; of leaving what I knew. 

I desperately wanted it back.  I wanted the familiar more than anything, even that first day, when I didn't yet know how different it would be.  I wanted to be slowly waking up and registering for my baby shower.  Immediately, I wanted life as I thought I was scripting it.  I couldn't even begin to grasp the concept of God wanting to change me.  I literally walked out of my own and in to his plans for me that day.  I wish I could say I did it willingly and with a glad heart, but I didn't.  I was so afraid, I couldn't even say it.  I smiled and told everyone that this was going to be okay, and I tried to believe it myself.

I still thought the babies would be okay.  I hadn't thought of the possibility of something happening to them.  I was thinking of everything that wasn't finished yet.  We had just started the nursery; we had almost nothing for the babies.  I was thinking of Hannah and how she would be taken care of.  I was still really focused on the physical aspects of being hospitalized and off my feet for the rest of the pregnancy.  I was upset that I couldn't finish.  I felt like I could deal with this if I had everything ready, but it just wasn't to be.  Having that underlying feeling that something was really wrong could still be ignored....for just a few more hours.