Miracle Month

I don't think anyone in this hemisphere doesn't know that for the last seven years, Jeff and I have either been trying to get or stay pregnant. Our calendar is littered with dates of losses and should-have-been-due-dates. But, May is our miracle month. Each Mother's Day I am brought back to my first Mother's Day as a mother... spent in room 227 of Gwinnett Medical Center's High Risk Pregnancy Unit. I think Mom's Day fell on day 69 of my hospital stay, at a point where I was hitting the 28 week point where I could sigh a little and start to allow myself to think about their impending birth. On Mother's Day, I knew it was going to happen. It was going to be okay. This day marks a series of anniversaries for us. The boys will have a birthday this week, I am reminded of the feelings, not only of the relief of their survival and the elation of meeting them, but also of coming to the end of my time confined to that hospital bed. The day that Jeff took me home after 12 long draining weeks, how strange it looked to see Spring in full bloom when the last time I went outside was in February. I remember how I had this unexplainable fear of leaving that hospital room, the instant carsickness I felt while still in the hospital parking lot, and standing in the driveway of our house, with no depth perception and eyes that actually hurt from the bright colors, crying of relief. We had done it. They were alive. Tiny, undercooked, not able to be held, but praise the Lord, they were ALIVE. We also have an eight year anniversary at the end of the month. May begins a relived journey through a month of sheer miracles.

After all that we have been through, all the losses and all the lack of explanation, all the medicines and failed try at adoption, it gets even more clear- God is good. I stop often and wonder how on earth these boys got here. We had so many tries that were unsuccessful... I know that I could very well have been sitting here, Mother's Day 2007, still avoiding baby showers and hiding at home instead of going to hear a sermon about moms. Somewhere along the infertility path, a nurse said to me, "Don't worry, you won't remember all of this when you have your baby." She was wrong. The sadness is gone, the fear and sense of failure has passed, but I never want to forget what got us here. It makes me the person I am today, the Christian, the wife, the friend, and the mother.

On the day after they were born, my OBGYN came in to my room. This is the man who was just what I needed, he was aggressive, strong, compassionate, funny. He was there on that first night of preterm labor, and he pulled no punches. "You are probably not going to be pregnant tomorrow. And if you are, you probably won't be pregnant the next day. We'll keep going like that as long as we can." He made sure I was in that bed. He made sure no risks were taken. I think he knew that I would rather forego the "benefits" of being wheeled to the porch to sit in the sun or getting to urinate in the actual bathroom than risk the lives of my babies. I even thank him for the 24/7 contraction and heartrate monitors that I wore for weeks and weeks on end, until my back ached so badly that all I wanted to do was to stand up and stretch, and instead took pain killers to sleep. Some of the nurses thought he was being to restrictive. I know he was saving my babies' lives.

On this day, he stood at the end of my bed and said it me, "I wouldn't usually say this, but none of us thought this was going to have a happy ending. You just don't come in here in labor at 19 weeks and walk away with babies." He knew it had little to do with him, or me, and all to do with God. God allowed me to be Asa and Addison's mom. People use the term "the miracle of birth". I think they use it, yet they have no idea the true miracle it actually is. God gave me permission, for whatever reason, to be the mom of these two wonderful boys. Each time we have another loss I am floored by the fact that these boys made it in this body. How did they? Thank God they did. I am truly blessed.