I was going to try to write about this in order from the earliest events to the most recent, but because so much time has passed I'm going to just jump around. So here it is...
I'm 12 weeks pregnant. Praise God we had no difficulty in conceiving. My surgery was a success, and my fertility was in no way adversely affected. After the events of the last year, my doctor had me go in for an early ultrasound at 6 weeks to make sure the pregnancy was not ectopic (that it was in my uterus). As it turned out the pregnancy was in my uterus, but the baby was developing too slowly. We met with my doctor, and he informed us that we should prepare for a miscarriage. We waited a week, had another ultrasound, and saw again that the baby was measuring a week behind. I saw a very slow heartbeat (also an indicator of a likely miscarriage). I spoke to the doctor, and he said he still was not convinced it would be a viable pregnancy, but that he also wasn't ruling out that it might be. I appreciated his hesitation to give me a miscarriage diagnosis, as I've heard about so many other women in this situation whose doctors told them their baby was not viable. They went on to wait a couple weeks, and sure enough their baby was fine. I waited one more week, had another ultrasound and saw a great heartbeat (140 bpm) and a baby that was measuring over a week behind but still appeared to be doing well.
At this point I was over 8 weeks pregnant. I'd love to be able to say I was just over joyed, but I'm going to be honest. I was terribly faithless and had been since my first ultrasound. Wouldn't you think that after everything this past year, I would have learned to be hopeful? To be trusting my Father? To behave and think like a real Christian? I am so ashamed to say I did not. In fact, I left that ultrasound so struck my by sin and how poorly I'd responded to this trial in the past few weeks. Here I was pregnant this whole time, not rejoicing in it, but having completely given up. I had already been mourning the loss of my child, while all along this little one was continuing to grow inside me. Just typing the words and reading them is difficult.
Let me go a step further. That week I left for Florida for my sister's wedding. Within a couple days of being there I noticed that all of my pregnancy symptoms became non-existent. No nausea, no more headaches, very little exhaustion and no more indigestion. I should probably mention that I also had the slightest bit of bleeding. I called the after hours doctor who was on call and described my symptoms. He said that I may be having a miscarriage. Yet again, I gave up all hope. In fact, I was CERTAIN the baby had died. I got home and the following Monday had an ultrasound to confirm my suspicion and was shocked to see a very active baby with a strong heartbeat. At this point, the heart rate had made it all the way up to 171 bpm. I was completely astonished. It didn't make sense to me. I didn't feel pregnant anymore, but indeed I was. Again, I realized how faithless I was. This time, I made a conscious effort to have a positive, hopeful attitude....but a few days later some more bleeding came and along with it so did the doubts....
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