Just a note: Thank you so much for your prayers for the twins last week. Our ultrasound went great. Baby A was measuring a week behind B-now they only measure about 3 days a part which is great news.
I miscarried at 8 weeks pregnant with my first pregnancy in 2016. Though spotting and bleeding had started earlier in the week, I did not find out for sure that I was miscarrying until the doctor preformed an ultrasound right at the end of 8 weeks. I remember the entire experience vividly, from biting my nails in the waiting room, to seeing the baby on the black and white screen surrounded by large splotches of red. I remember how hot the tears were streaming down my cheeks as the tech told me she could not detect a heartbeat. And most of all, I remember looking over at Jon and him looking back at me during the worst moment of my life thus far and feeling like everything had suddenly stopped.
It’s a day I will never forget.
After having my HCG levels tested at the beginning of my current pregnancy, my midwife informed me that I would have an ultrasound at the 8 week mark. Not knowing if I would even make it that far, I prepared my heart for the worst while hoping for the best. When 8 weeks arrived, I prayed for a baby. I prayed for a sac. I prayed for a heartbeat. Most of all, I prayed that this ultrasound would be completely redemptive from the last.
On the day of the ultrasound, it felt as though my heart was beating in my ears as I approached the elevator. Jon squeezed my hand as we approached my OB office. I filled out the required paperwork and sat looking out the window. Finally, my name was called.
I stood up and approached the voice that had called my name moments earlier and almost stopped dead in my tracks. I knew that girl…but from where? As she took me back to the room where I would have the ultrasound she smiled and said “I scanned you before” and it all made sense.
The sweet tech from the miscarriage…from my previous practice…was not only at the new office (associated with a completely different hospital) but was performing my ultrasound for the first time in this pregnancy. I didn’t know what to think, but prayed even harder that this “deja vu” type of experience would be much different than the last.
I looked at Jon wide-eyed as I got undressed. He smiled and responded to all of the unspoken anxious thoughts in my head “It’s okay. You’re fine.” Unsure and frightened I climbed onto the table, laid down and pulled up the sheet. I concentrated on keeping myself from trembling as she walked back into the room.
I held my breath as she started preforming the ultrasound. At first, the screen above me was blurry and then all of the sudden two black bubbles appeared. The tech looked at me and smiled. She asked “Have you been pretty sick?”
Though I wanted to respond with “Yes, actually I’ve been dying”, I was more concerned with what those two blobs were on the screen and why exactly there were two. I asked, naively, “What is that?” (secretly convincing myself that one had to be my placenta). The tech responded with “Well, what do think that is?” I looked back at Jon-now he was the wide-eyed one- and turned to the tech and LAUGHED.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t freak out. I laughed. A smile was permanently stamped across my face the rest of the day.
The tech went on to tell us that not only were we having two babies, but they both were healthy and had strong heartbeats. This ultrasound had been more than I could have ever asked for or imagined and OF ALL PEOPLE to give me the news. The only thing running through my mind over and over that day was this “So that YOU may know I am God”.
“I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.”-Isaiah 45:3
You may call it a coincidence. You may not see the coincidence in it at all. And you may see, like I did that day, God’s hand all over it. To think that he loved me enough to not only be with me that day, but orchestrate the very details of that day so that I would KNOW He was with me, was incredible.
Mama’s, I don’t know what you’re going through, or if you are still in your season of suffering, but I want to leave you with these words by Selah, written by a family that had also lost a child because I KNOW them to be true:
We live in the shadow of the fall
But the cross says these are all
Places where grace is soon to be so amazing
It may be unfulfilled, it may be unrestored
But when anything that’s shattered
Is laid before the Lord
Just watch and see, it will not be unredeemed
With love,
B.
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