Friday, April 3, 2015

Good Friday '06 - Book Excerpt

We just got home from a white knuckled drive home from church.  Matthew had been asking a lot of probing questions about Jesus and becoming a Christian, so I really did not want to miss a chance to take him to see the Stations of the Cross that our church was having tonight.  The rain was coming down hard.  The kids were shouting over the rain so they could be heard.  Heaven forbid we ride in silence.

My phone pinged with texts the whole time I was driving.  Eric wanted to know where I was.  My sister wanted to make sure we were safe.  And then I saw a text from one of my sweet friends.  She is 11 weeks pregnant and has been cramping all day.  She sent a text to our little group of prayer warriors to pray over her and her baby.  She has had several miscarriages and a high-risk pregnancy, so she is obviously and understandably quite shaken.  I was immediately taken back to my own scare on Good Friday in 2006 …


“A couple of weeks after I found out I was pregnant I had a business trip to Cincinnati scheduled for a regional sales meeting.  It was the first time I had traveled since my IVF.  I couldnt give myself the Intramuscular shots and had needed Eric to administer them to me each night.  By this time they had switched the progesterone I was getting nightly from a shot to a suppository.  I was excited to get to see some of my dear friends from work.  Eric left town as well to go audit a company in Dallas, Texas.

The industry I worked in was very male dominated. There were 23 of us in my sales region, and I was the only female.  I was blessed to work with a great group of guys.  I only confided in a couple of the guys, Mark and Andy, with whom I had a close friendship, that I was pregnant.  They were so excited for Eric and me to have the family we so desperately wanted to have.

One night the entire team went to dinner at a restaurant across from our hotel.  During dinner I felt some odd cramps that lasted a few minutes then went away.  Immediately it was like all the conversation in the background was 100 miles away.  I sat in my seat frozen and thought, “No. No. No. No!!!!!!!!!!!!”  It happened again.  It took everything in me to not burst into tears and run away.  I calmly excused myself and rushed to the ladies room.  As soon as I sat down, blood gushed from my body.  When I looked down I saw a pool of blood and a big clot in the middle.  “NO!!!!!!!!!!”  I stared at the clot and thought, “No God. Please dont let that be my baby!”

I quickly pulled myself together.  I sailed by the table and told everyone I was feeling under the weather and rushed back to my hotel room.   I felt another cramp and ran straight to the bathroom.  Again blood gushed from my body and another clot came out.  I panicked and called Eric.  I was absolutely hysterical.  We couldnt lose our baby after all this!  It took a few minutes for him to even be able to understand what I was saying through all the tears and hiccups.  He calmed me down and reminded me that my friend, Christy, had experienced bleeding in her pregnancy and that I should call her.

Christy was such a blessing to me.  She was also a nurse and she was able to calm me down and get me to think rationally.  She had me lie down and take deep breaths.  She then encouraged me to call my doctors after-hours number.

One of the on-call doctors called me back immediately.  He was so calm and caring with me and I was so grateful.  He had my chart and was able to look at my beta numbers.  The doctor told me they couldnt really be sure what happened until I had an ultrasound.  He thought that because my beta numbers were so high that if I had indeed had a miscarriage, maybe it was one of the twins.  I got an appointment for ten o’clock the next morning for an ultrasound.

That night was the longest of my life.  Eric frantically tried to get on the earliest flight back to Nashville.  I quickly gathered all my things and drove from Cincinnati to my parentshouse in Louisville, Kentucky.  I barely remember the two-hour drive.  God again watched over me as I drove through my tears.  I cried on the phone to Eric and my friend, Kristen.  The only prayer I could even get out was, “Please, Lord, please.”

When I finally got to my parents’ house, my parents were waiting for me.  I will never forget the tears and hugs that met me.  I looked at their faces and saw broken hearts too.  Their hearts broke for their baby and the grandbaby they were so excited to finally have. 

My mom laid in bed with me that night and prayed with me.  She wrote down a scripture to encourage me.  The scripture was Psalm 147:13.  “For He strengthens the bars of your gates; He blesses your children within you.”  I kept that scripture next to me and prayed it continually.  That note is still in my Bible today.  A calm came over me.  I had so many people who were praying for me that night that I know it gave me the peace I needed.  I was finally able to pray something more.  I prayed, “Lord, please look after my babies.  Please put them where it is best for them to be.  Whether it is here with us or in Heaven with You.  And please help us be at peace with that.” If they werent in my arms, they would be in His.  My tears slowed down and I fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning my parents drove me the rest of the way to Nashville as I laid down in the passenger seat.  My mom and I talked on the way.  She said, “Stephanie, you know that God is in control but that doesnt mean that the Devil doesnt intervene to try to hurt you.” I pondered that a minute and then said, “Well then the joke is on him because I have prayed more than ever and turned to God during this time!”

Eric got on an early flight.  I got to Nashville Fertility Center (NFC) before Eric.  I was already back in the ultrasound room before he got there.  He came back a few minutes before I had my ultrasound.  We clung to each other and cried all the tears that we missed the night before.  We gripped each others hands and prayed with all our might for Gods protection over our baby.

Dr. Whitworth came in and did our ultrasound herself.  I laid back with tears streaming down the sides of my face as I gripped Erics hand.  I prayed Psalm 147:13 in my head over and over as she moved the wand to try to find a baby.

And then she did.  She found a baby with a heartbeat!  Then she found another baby with a heartbeat!  And then she found a sub chorionic hemorrhage (SCH) that was right next to my cervix.  It was also right next to one of the babies and was twice the size of it!

I dressed and we met with Dr. Whitworth to discuss the ultrasound.  We were so excited.  We had not only one, but two babies with heartbeats!  They were alive!!  However, we were anxious to hear about the SCH.  It looked like a huge blob that was ready to gobble up my babies and I was scared.

Dr. Whitworth told me that I had to take it easy and let it heal.  It could take a couple of weeks or months.  With time, hopefully the clot would heal and be absorbed into my uterus.  I would go home on bed rest and come back the following week for another ultrasound.  She also switched me back to taking progesterone via an IM shot until the end of my first trimester.

Another long week of bed rest and lots of prayers.  I took my doctors orders very seriously.  I stayed in bed except to shower, potty, and throw up.  Yes, my morning sickness finally reared its ugly head!  I still cramped and spotted some, but it gradually lessened.

When I went back for my follow up ultrasound, we saw that the babies had grown to twice their size!  The SCH was still there, but it was getting smaller.  It was still way too close to Twin A.  I went home and did the same thing again, hopeful for better news the next week.  By the end of two weeks the SCH had been completely absorbed by my uterus!


We were so grateful.  Finally I felt like I could enjoy being pregnant.  I also let myself really think about and revel in the fact that we were going to have twins!  I had been hesitant to think about it too much before because I was so scared that we were going to lose one of them.  People ask me all the time what I thought when I found out that we were having twins.  I felt nothing but absolute, pure joy."

And to think that this was just the first bump in the road for us during my pregnancy !  Not to mention the years of bumps just to get pregnant.  To learn more about how I survived infertility twice, go to:   www.amazon.com/dp/1503370879

Please take a moment to say a prayer for my friend to calm her anxious heart and for her baby to be healthy.

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