He loves to climb. One day, after literally taking him off of
the dining room table about 10 times, he fell straight down, racking half of
his two front teeth off…$500 of pediatric dental attention later, he smiles
with his pointy front teeth and we thank God he’ll get new grown up teeth one
day!
While taking the kids bowling, Sam,
as usual, decided to run away from us…he tripped and fell into a set of
concrete steps, giving him a huge goose egg right between the eyes…for the
fourth time in his life!
Sam has eczema in epic
proportions. When he was a baby, he
would scratch his head until he bled…his head got infected and as a 3 month
old, we had to switch between applying antibiotic ointment to treat his
infection and strong eczema ointment to keep his head in check…we still have to
apply ointment every day to his poor, itchy skin!
Right after his sister was born, we
discovered that Sam knows how to open child-proof medicine bottles. He scaled the linen closet shelves, opened up
a prescribed pain pill and proceeded to chew on one…thank God he spit it out…poison
control was called, all is good, and we now hide ALL medicine…even the ones
that are “child proof.”
Speaking of poison control…Sam again
scaled the linen closet shelves one day, took a near empty bottle of pine sol
out and drank what was left. I was
changing the baby’s blowout diaper at the time, and only became aware of the
situation when he brought me the empty bottle asking for more…I then memorized
poison control’s number.
He knows how to unlock and open all
of our doors…even our old, big, wooden front door that gives adults a hard
time!
He has broken two pairs of my
eyeglasses, three pairs of my sunglasses, 2 vases, 3 picture frames, countless
toys, all the doorknobs on the first floor of the house (no kidding!), one
hinge off of a door, and has almost chewed through his crib.
He loves to hang on things, climb
on things, jump off of things and jump onto things. He likes to rip things…paper, plastic…whatever
he can rip. He will play with toys
sometimes…but unconventionally. If it
has wheels, he will stand on it. If it
is round, he will see how hard he can throw it.
And yes, he can climb out of his crib.
He hides our keys, phones, shoes,
and the boys’ favorite toys. He takes
apart anything he can and conveniently loses small pieces that are needed to
put those things back together. He has flushed various objects down the toilet, and has taken off parts of the sink, never to be found again.
Now, before you start judging me (too late, right?), please
know that I hardly EVER take my eyes off of this child! Most of his antics are accomplished while I
am attending to something that briefly requires my retreat…such as a diaper
change, switching loads of laundry, running to the screaming cries of another
child, or one of those selfish 5 second bathroom breaks that I seem to get
about twice a day! He is sneaky I tell
you! But he is ours, and I wouldn’t
trade him for anything.
The main problem with Sam is that all this is done with
innocent curiosity. Though he means
well, he’s exhausting. Just when I’m
finished fixing something, there’s another Sam-created issue to attend to. But there are so many wonderful things about
Sam too…he is probably our funniest child.
He understands what makes people laugh, and he loves to entertain
us. He says the cutest things. His new phrase is “I mama’s sunshine.” And he
is. He is incredibly sweet with
babies. He is so nurturing toward his
baby sister, and he has grown to love and play with other baby friends. One of his only calm activities is when he
takes care of his stuffed animals, making sure they are fed, changed, and
burped. And, he’s a snuggle bunny. There are really only three people in the
world that get the awesome privilege of a Sam-snuggle, though, which makes it
all the sweeter: myself, my husband, and my dad. But the best part of having Sam is that he’s
here. All of our kids are miracles…but I
still stand back in awe of how we didn’t lose him over and over again.
My children are so amazingly different from each other. My oldest is incredibly intelligent, my next is
athletic, and Sam is plain old adventurous.
He is the one that has frightened me the most in life. They’ve all driven me to my knees in prayer,
but I never really knew how to pray until we were blessed with our Samuel. And this lesson started soon after we
discovered we were expecting him.
As soon as we found out we were pregnant, something didn’t
feel right…it wasn’t pain, but just a strange feeling. I had 3 dreams in one week that I had been
taken to the hospital and it looked as though we were going to lose the baby,
but I always woke up before the end. My
husband decided that it was just hormones, and that I was fine; I needed to
calm down. Then, one early January day,
we were taking our oldest boys to an ice rink.
While getting into the car, I had this overwhelming feeling of panic. The whole drive over, I knew something was about to go wrong. Sure enough, as soon as I stepped out of the
car at the rink, I started to hemorrhage.
My boys were 3 and 1 ½ at the time. I told my husband to take them into the rink,
and panicking, I drove myself to the hospital.
My dad met me there. We waited…and
waited…I started to go into shock because of the blood loss. They told me I was having a miscarriage and
they’d get to me as soon as they could.
By the time I was in an exam room, the nurse was apologetic, not knowing
just how bad this was. They ordered an
ultrasound, but told me that I had lost the baby, and would probably have to
undergo a procedure to remove him. My
dad and I were devastated…we did the only thing we knew how to do at that
time: we prayed. Despite the many nurses who were all saying
the same thing, we prayed. Despite the
initial grief counseling I was receiving, we prayed. As I was wheeled down to ultrasound, we
prayed.
The ultrasound technician did her thing. I had cried so hard I didn’t think I had
anything left. Yet, in the middle of the
procedure, I started weeping. She asked
me why I was crying. After telling her
that I was still in shock from the news that I had lost my baby, she handed me
an ultrasound picture. I was staring at
what looked like a lifeless little alien…just as my chest started heaving
again, she turned the screen and I heard his heartbeat…live and loud, there he
was! She explained, though I do not
think she was supposed to, that I had what was called a sub-chorionic hematoma
that hemorrhaged. I had no idea what she
said, but I was elated!
By the time they wheeled me back upstairs, my husband had
joined my dad. The look of relief on their
faces was priceless. But we weren’t out
of the woods yet. The dr. came in and
explained that I was still actively bleeding.
The problem was that sometime during implantation, the placenta had
slightly torn away, but reattached. However,
it did not fully reattach and continued to bleed, but inside the outer walls of
the uterus. Ultimately, it burst,
leading to my hemorrhage. He explained
that it was still actively bleeding and needed to stop or else we would lose
our baby.
At a follow up appointment, my ob described to us the many
horrible scenarios that we were facing:
the baby could die from lack of nutrition from a depleted placenta; the
hematoma could burst again and invade the uterus, thereby killing my baby; the hematoma could grow so big and hinder the
baby’s growth, causing him to be severely handicapped; the continued bleeding could
put undue stress on my heart, endangering my life. Scared, exhausted, and overwhelmed, we left
the dr.’s office, bed rest orders in hand, looked at each other and cried. I was 10 weeks along, actively, internally
bleeding, and had been counseled to terminate the pregnancy for the baby’s sake
and my own.
We learned to pray like we never had before. We started combing the Word like we never had
before. We started seeking God’s heart
like we never had before. It was evident
that this experience was going to change us, we just didn’t know how.
Our first decision was to continue on with the
pregnancy. Despite all the risks, we
were told that there was still a small chance everything could turn out fine. I tried to mother my 3 year old and 1 ½ year
old on my own, despite my bed rest orders, for about a week…then I re-hemorrhaged
and ended up back in the hospital. The
nurses took about 45 minutes to find a heart beat. They couldn’t find it. They brought in an ultrasound machine, but
still couldn’t detect a heart beat. At
that point, they told us they had to bring in the dr. to confirm, but that they
were very sorry. When they left the
room, my husband broke down. We were
confident that the Lord had told us to continue on. We were holding on to His promises, and were
filled with faith. But this was
emotionally grueling. We sat there
crying our eyes out, praying for our little guy. Looking back, it seems so strange how
attached we were to our little guy at 11 weeks gestational age. Yet once you become an expectant parent, you
know how quickly and strongly that bond is formed. We had faith that this little man would be
born, and be healthy and whole. Twenty
long minutes later, the dr. walked in and instantly picked up the heart
beat. The bleeding had slowed and I was
sent home.
God met our every need for the next 30 weeks. Every week day, there was someone here to lift
Noah out of his crib in the morning, fix my boys breakfast, change diapers,
make lunch, and put them down for their nap.
I learned so many things in this season: one of which is that God is our
heavenly father. He nurtures us and takes care of us, despite
our earthly deficit. At the beginning of
this ordeal, I was angry and bitter that I was without my mother. But, at the end, I walked away with
confidence that it is God and not man who provides for me all the days of my
life.
Unfortunately, the next 30 weeks I battled with fear. I had weekly dr. appointments and bi-weekly
ultrasounds. I was told over and over
again of the risks, and was not given good news. We were told that if the hematoma did not
reabsorb completely at 20 weeks, that we had less than a 20% chance of having a
full term birth. The 20 week ultrasound
was a roller coaster: he was still
alive, and the hematoma hadn’t grown for
the first time, but the high risk ob advised us to terminate because the continued
bleeding was putting too much stress on my
heart. At 24 weeks, the hematoma had grown
again, completely covering the circumference of my uterus. The chances that we
were all going to come out of this healthy and whole were dropping week by
week. I continued to bleed on and off
through the entire pregnancy. Every time
I felt the baby move, I panicked that he would break the hematoma and that
would be the end. But God is so
good. He gave me peace throughout the
entire process. He brought the right
people into our home at the right time.
He enlisted some serious prayer warriors to do some serious praying on
our behalf.
At my 30 week appointment, we received another mixed
report. The hematoma was shrinking
slightly, but the baby’s growth was said to be abnormal. We were sent for an additional anatomy scan,
at which they told us that he may have a heart abnormality, that his legs weren’t
growing right, and that one of his arms appeared to be deformed. They rescheduled us for an additional anatomy
scan a few weeks later, hoping that the hematoma would shrink and that they
could get a better reading. Though it
had never actually decreased in size,
at 34 weeks, it shrank down slightly!
They were able to get a better reading, but still not great. We at least knew at this point that his heart
looked healthy.
Finally, at 39 weeks, my dr. suggested induction. The hematoma was still present, and my heart was
under stress. Our hospital experience
was unique in that we had plenty of
medical professionals assigned to us, most of which were “just in case.” To say that we were without fear that day
would be a lie. We had lived through a
30 week nightmare, and had beaten the odds.
But we weren’t out of the woods yet. There was still a risk that I could experience
complications. The hematoma was still
present, so there was a risk the baby could still be harmed by it. While it was a different experience than the
previous two births, we witnessed a miracle that day. I was induced at 5 a.m., and Samuel (meaning God heard my prayer) Jonathan (meaning a gift from God)
was born at 1:30 p.m. that afternoon. It
was physically taxing on my atrophied, stressed body; it was emotionally
draining trying to refocus my mind on faith and not fear; it was spiritually
exhausting recalling every promise of God that I had crammed into my brain
during the last 30 weeks. But as I held
my little boy, I thanked him for changing me.
Because of this experience, I would never be the same.
The following months after his birth included many other
hard trials. I honestly don’t know how I
would have handled them without the experience I just had. There were things about God that I knew in my
head, but this trial of my life sunk them deep into my heart where I am
confident they cannot be uprooted.
So every time we hear a crash in the house, a scream from a
tormented older brother, a locked door opening, or the galloping feet of my
fleeting toddler, we thank God for him.
We thank God that he entrusted us with this life. We thank God that he hears our prayers and
spares our lives. We thank God that He
is a good God, all the time. We
thank God that He gives us all testimonies, and that at birth Sam had quite the
story to tell of God’s awesome faithfulness!
I thank God that he knows the end result of my life and has ordered all
of my days to gently lead me and mold me into who I am supposed to be. He is sovereign and powerful, still working
miracles today. I am glad that we are
able to tell our kids about His faithfulness in such a tangible, real way so
that they understand the power of God in their lives.
I know that not everyone’s story ends like ours did. There are things on this earth that I do not
understand. But I thank God that He is
always in control and has written down our days before we were born. Despite our understanding, we must always
bless His name…there is no one like our God.
Happy Birthday to my Sam…a lover of adventure, a silly guy,
and one of the loves of my life!
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