Happy 5th birthday my Bug!

It's Sunday June 22 and I am 27 weeks and 3 days pregnant. Except there is a problem.

I woke up for church that morning knowing right away something wasn't right. While Jeffrey made some phone calls I got in the shower refusing to believe anything was wrong with me but having enough sense to know that we needed to check and be sure. I couldn't be having problems because we hadn't taken any child birthing classes yet and we still had 13 weeks before she was suppose to get here. Everything just had to be fine. When I got out of the shower I sat down on the bed while Jeffrey was talking to the on call Doctor from the hospital. When he hung up he was immediately in action and said we had to go to the hospital.

The drive there seemed so long even though Jeffrey was speeding. Calls were made for prayer. I needed people to be praying for her by name I said. It was important to me. I knew God knew her and her name but I needed everyone else to think of her as Kati and not just a baby I was pregnant with.

We went up to labor and delivery and the nurse preformed a new test on me, it came back negative and she tried to explain away what was happening to me saying it had to do with heat. Her phone rang and she told me to go ahead and get dressed, all was well.

I could tell by watching her that the call was about me. She did the test again but in a new way and it came back positive. I was leaking fluid. At twenty-seven weeks when a baby can not yet breathe on its own, I was leaking fluid. The hooked me up to monitors only to find that the nervous stomach I thought I was having was really contractions.

I was admitted and given meds to temporally stop the contractions. I was told they would work for a few day but sometime within that week I would have a little girl. Although I was scared the idea of holding the little girl we had dreamed of for years seemed wonderful. I told the nurse that as soon as she was born I wanted her placed right on my chest. That's how I had always pictured it, she would be born and they would place her slimy wet body right on my chest and I would be the first thing she would see. I would finally be able to put a face to all the squirming I had felt, finally see the face of a little girl who had already had her name for years.

Right there on my chest is where she needed to be and I was told no. That when the scary reality began to set in. I was told that she would immediately be taken away to the NICU and it would be a while before I would get to see her. It was sinking in. Although she would be borne and statistics said she would have a great chance of living there would most likely be problems. When the nurse brought in the steroid shots it made the day even heavier. She explained that at this point in the pregnancy Kati's lungs were like Saran Wrap. When she breathed out, expelling all of her air her very thin lungs would stink together, making her unable to fill her lungs up with her next breathe.

My baby wasn't going to be able to breathe. This can't be happening. We have dreamt and longed and loved for this little girl. This isn't how it is suppose to be. I was suppose to here at forty weeks, big and fat. I am suppose to roll over in the middle of the night to waken Jeffrey and say "It's time". We were suppose to be calling friends and family to say, "She's here!" not "Please pray that everything will be alright."

They brought me papers about the NICU policies and things that might be wrong with her. I had to sign this and that but really from that moment on things were a blur for me.

There were a blur for me until later on that night. The room was dark, Jeffrey was just a few feet away finally sleeping, on a very small and uncomfortable couch. The only sounds were Kati's heart beat on the monitor and the swishing any time she turned. They were precious sounds to me. I quietly opened a children's book and began to read to her every so quietly so I wouldn't wake up my stoic husband. And from the next room a horrible sound came. A woman in birth. I could her her struggling threw the pain. Minutes later the room was filled with the muffled sound of a babies first cry and I began to do crying of my own. I wouldn't be able to hear my Katibug cry. She would be unable too and they would take her away. I could her the rejoicing from family and friends for the new life next door but all I could think about was what if Kati had some server problems and would be in pain for the rest of her life? What if she could never have the normal life? And I realized right then that all my prayers for her had been selfish. All the things I had wanted were for me. I hadn't once prayed for God's will. And at that moment I prayed the hardest prayer I have ever prayed in my life. I gave her back to God and told him if I wasn't' meant to have her now then I wanted him to take her because I knew I would have her again in heaven. I didn't want to be selfish, I wanted what was best for my little angel bug.

I cried myself to sleep that night. The next morning we were taken to a different room way down in the hospital and they did a better sonogram that any we had every had before. The were checking on my fluid but I was looking at the most beautiful face I had ever seen. I got to see her fat cheeks and could tell she had Jeffrey's long eye lashes. I wanted to the sonogram to go on for hours. There, right there on that screen, was the face of my Kati, my long dreamed about Kati. It was so clear it was like looking at a baby. Although I cared about my number count for my fluid what I really cared about was that adorable nose that I was really seeing for the first time. And I cried again.

And spent many of the next days crying but something wonderful and amazing happened. The end of the week came and Kati was still inside of me. By this point, according to the doctors and nurses, my meds should have become ineffective to my body and I would have already gone into labor. And then that week past too and still no birth. After two and a half weeks they checked me again and I wasn't leaking fluid anymore. My doctor told me in the 22 years he had practiced medicine he had never once had a patients sac heal it's self back up. He couldn't' explain it but I could. I knew that God had preformed that miracle and saved my Bug. I didn't know why and I still don't need to know why, this is all I know,

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

He has a plan for my girl. Even if I will never know what it is this side of heaven, I know he has a plan.

And I will eternally be glad.