Before & after

Isaiah is just over 3 months old, and in celebration of his health and wellness and the wonderful challenges and changes he's brought to our family over the past 3 months, I want to publish these "blurbs." They kept piling up as drafts during February, which was possibly the most difficult month of my life, and I want to remember how they all tied together.
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Today I'm scared. It's February 7, one week before my mom get here, Ezekiel and Eden are feeling less than their best, and I am seeing way too many early labor signs to feel confident about making it to my due date and past this huge mountain of uncertainty and fear that seems to be blocking my way at the end of every day. I don't know how I'll handle it on many levels if Isaiah comes now. God knows I don't want to leave my children to go to the hospital when they're ill and needing me to take care of them. But I am writing this today because I believe in faith that a day will come next week when I can finish this post with an amazing account of God's healing and perfect timing, coming through for me yet again. I also am feeling a bit under the weather and am asking His healing mercy on me so that I can focus my whole body on the task of delivering Isaiah at the appointed time. God, please give me peace and calm my body down to wait for the birth until the family is well again and our most effective childcare is in place. In Your Name, amen.
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Today is February 9 and I'm sitting with a baby on my lap getting ready to be discharged from the hospital. God came through yet again, as always, and answered all my prayers - even if not the way I imagined He would. We just welcomed Isaiah with no extended family in town and all of his immediate family members battling colds! In addition, our doula Pam was busy with another laboring mom last night, so Mason and I experienced much of labor on our own at home. This alone is enough to strengthen our marriage, our family bond and our faith in Jesus who in all things works for our good. The many moments in which He inclined our hearts about what to do are coming together in my mind to illustrate how intimately He knows us and bent down to listen and help us through a very difficult situation.
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Well, this is turning into the longest running post of all time. Today is February 20 and things feel hard, really hard. We're all on the upswing from our illnesses but this momma's heart is breaking watching her 1-week-old sweetheart battle congestion and a cough that have caused him to look bluish on a couple of occasions. We are praying and trusting and depending on God to get us through this adjustment and see our sweet Isaiah through this virus. But in the midst of all this, I do want to chronicle his birth story, because the closer to his birth the better as far as my memory of the details. I don't want to forget how it went down even though his entire arrival on the scene is still a bit shocking to me and I'm not sure I've fully realized the fact that he's here and our family is forever changed.
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Alright. Today is February 23 and I am once again sitting in the hospital with Isaiah, but this time in the PICU of a children's hospital. He was admitted on the 21st after I took him to the pediatrician out of concern that he wasn't eating well and seemed very ill. The last few days and weeks have been among the hardest of my life, and if I had seen my husband for more than 5 minutes recently to ask him, I think he would concur. Isaiah was not in stable respiratory condition when we arrived here, but by God's grace he is steadily recovering from bronchiolitis, pneumonia and hypoxia. Mason and I have been tag teaming between home and hospital, big kids and baby. He's generously been sleeping at the hospital and feeding Isaiah my stored milk while I go home to bathe and put to bed Ezekiel & Eden, eat dinner, take care of the house, pump, shower and and get some rest (he, however, has not had a chance to shower for a few days! Thank you Mason for letting me be the one to get the daily shower since it had to be one or the other. What a man!). We're excited for Isaiah's full return to health but are having to take it day by day, moment by moment because we don't know how many more days he'll need to stay and don't want to get ahead of ourselves - we just need to quietly follow behind the Shepherd one step at a time, as one of my favorite quotes says. A couple of friends have had the unique outsider's ability to look in and say, "none of this has gone how you had planned." I never realized it on my own, but yes, seemingly everything about Isaiah's pregnancy, birth, and the 2 weeks following (AND his existence) have been out of the narrow scope of our "plans." Whatever that means. Our plans are just ideas we think might happen or want to happen, but GOD'S plans are eternal, forever, from before the foundation of the world. "For I know the plans I have for you," He says, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" - Jeremiah 29:11. Those are the plans I want. Nothing more or less. Even if they hurt and are hard.
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Today is February 26 and we just learned that if Isaiah can stay off his oxygen tube all night, we'll get our walking papers tomorrow! While this is a huge answer to the prayers of many, my heart is still heavy from the burdens of others on this hall. As I walked back from the bathroom where I jumped up and down behind closed doors about our upcoming release, I passed a heartbroken sobbing mother on her way to the waiting room. There is suffering here that I never want to forget. I had never seen it before, and it has changed me. I'm not sure if I've shed more tears for Isaiah or for the sweet precious little toddler next door who appears to have not opened his eyes or moved from his bed for the past week as his mother paces with red bleary eyes, or for the little blond angel who was just wheeled into a room across the hall with the curtain quickly shut as all the nurses donned masks and rushed in. God, don't let me forget what I've seen and experienced this week. I want it to change my life. I hope I remember the agony of being told my baby wasn't in stable respiratory condition and that he might have to be put on a ventilator and that he was in bad shape. I hope I remember the anguish of driving away from the hospital, away from my baby for 6 nights. I hope I remember every painful heart wrenching moment because this is real suffering and it's happening all around me every day. When I am back at the breakfast table with my 3 little lovies I will think of the weary, anxious moms who are heading back to the ICU for another long, maddening day of wishing they could hold and heal their child rather than struggle through another day of watching their precious little one receive treatment after treatment in a hospital bed that has been made to look like a crib, reminding them even more that this is not home and this is not where they belong. I don't know how God will use this newfound compassion, but I pray He does. I pray He uses this whole experience for His glory, and I know He will. It's already for my good. Months ago I embarked at His beckoning on a journey to end my indifference to suffering, and this seems to be a huge step on that path. I used to turn my eyes and heart away from things that caused me to hurt for someone else. I would remain positive and cheerful and pray for them, but I didn't want to enter into their hurt, make it my own or cry and grieve with them. Now I see that for every tear I cry God cries a thousand more and weeps with those who weep. How can I not be willing to enter into someone's suffering yet still claim to follow Jesus who was a man of sorrows? He was sorrowful yet always rejoicing. That is a new understanding I've gained from this week - how that dichotomy can even exist.
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Today is March 1 and here I end the saga of this post. We've been home with Isaiah for 2 wonderful days and I'm still realizing new ways that God's been faithful to us. Even just nursing my baby at this moment reminds me of how easily I could have lost a good milk supply by our 6 nights of separation, especially since pumping is so stressful for me. And if I hadn't had a huge supply of stored milk from my handy milk saver, Mason wouldn't have been able to take night duty for me.
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The end. Grateful to have this account so I can remember what God has brought us through.