Miracle baby arrives!

Hi

I am thrilled to announce the birth of my daughter on 24th July 2008. (I haven't been able to post this earlier because I left my blogger password at work)

Mrs...being an older mother with a history of miscarriages ...went for a routine check the day before, and they found that the baby had wriggled out of position and was now 'in breech'. So they demanded that she come in for a caesarean the next day.

At 9lb 12oz (4.42kg), it was probably the best thing for her.

Mrs has given her a fantastic name - long and a bit of a mouthful, but with a deep meaning such that her very name is a gospel message wherever she goes, without being embarrasing. Shame this is an anonymous blog!

The first week was increasingly difficult, until we twigged that she wasn't getting enough milk and switched to formula. Instant new baby! She slept 9.5 hours last night. So much for 'breast is best'!

This birth is of the essence of this blog. It is quintessential. A normal life with God is an adventure that leads you to do things that you would not normally do without him. It is a NORMAL LIFE ADVENTURE.

For those that have not been following the story, we are an older couple in our 40s, with 6 other children. I had had a vasectomy owing to my wife's arthritis medicine being harmful to unborn babies. But the Lord called Mrs to have another child. After prayer for healing she was able to come off the drugs (though she still has rheumatoid arthritis), so we sought guidance about vasectomy reversal. My GP laughed his head off, and then told me 101 reasons why it was unlikely to work. I could not get it done on the National Health Service, but a private doctor was much more positive and had me dome within weeks. We got pregnant quickly, but miscarried at 7 weeks. After a longer wait, she became pregnant again but miscarried at 14 weeks. Then we had a long wait, and seriously doubted if we had heard the vision correctly. We had more prayer for pregnancy and healing. eventually, she did become pregnant agian, and this time has carried it to full term. Normally, rheumatoid arthritis flares up after a pregnancy and she has a hard time after the miscarriages, but so far she has been ok with this one (though it's too soon to say for sure). So, God has givin the vision and then he has fulfilled it. (see my post for 21 July 2006)

"I'm confidenent of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it". (Philippians 1:6)

baby due soon

Waiting (im)patiently now for our baby to be born. (click the 'pregnancy' label/tag to get the full history behind our MIRACLE baby - and as a PS to reinforce that today's BBC website has an article about the reduced chances of MEN of my age being fertile)

It’s due at the end of the month, but the midwives say it is a big baby, and given other health history issues they don’t want to let it go past the due date. So Mrs is seeing the specialist on Wednesday. Hopefully they will decide to induce it early rather than let it grow bigger.

But… for my birthday celebration I have organised a paintballing expedition this weekend. I have said that ideally, the baby would come afterwards, since I have already paid for it and invited guests etc.

Mrs thinks this is very selfish. But I did deliberately arrange the trip two weeks before the due date – surely that is enough! But many of my guests have been unable to come, and the substitutes have also had other previous engagements, so I still have 25% vacancies. She thinks this is divine guidance that my paintballing ‘aint gonna happen, because the baby will come first.

We will see who is right!

IMPORTANT POST

This blog is titled 'Normal Life Adventure'. The idea is that as I write about my 'normal' life with God, I will reveal how life an apparently mundane is actually an adventure with God.

So, it's all supposed to be about guidance and miracles.

Lately there has been very little in my blog about this side of my life. I got tired of writing that it was all falling apart, that my faith was weak, that I was doubting my ability to read what God is telling me. And I have spent a long time getting embroiled in theological rows, which I enjoy and learn from, but which are in some ways very unproductive.

In this post I return to the blog's theme.

God tells me what to do. I do it. (well, that's the theory, at least)

In this post I talk about Pregnancy. The few brave souls that have followed my blog since it started will know that my wife and I have been trying for a baby, believing it to be God's plan for our life. It's long story - the latest post on it was this one. It has been long and hard, full of ups and downs, joys, depressions, two miscarriages etc.

Now after all of that, I am happy to announce that we are pregnant again. I have been wanting to say earlier, but waited until now becasue we are now past the stage where the previous miscarriages have occurred. And we have seen the scan - a living baby, wriggling, with its heart pounding away vigorously.

So now, I have a happy wife again. She has smiled properly for the first time in a year. She has started to emerge from deep depression, and started to get involved with things at church again. She is deliberately using her story as a witness, to tell of how God is working in her life. We have never felt the baby was just to give us pleasure, we have always seen it as also being a gateway to other areas of service in the church and the community. And now it is happening. And it's good news, and we are very pleased.

Hallelujah!

Still no baby

Yet another month passes with no pregnancy.

More despondancy, more gloom, more questioning if we have read God's will correctly, more 'opportunities to see God's perfect timing' blown away, more cynicism, more planning for perfunctory dutiful sex, more value placed upon the child that miscarried in January (which would have been born this month).

We have now been trying for 14 months, including the two miscarriages. Seems longer!

This comes just after a visit my her mother, father and sister. Rather than taking the opportunity for reconciliation their words adn actions served only to deepen her sense that they really don't care for her. So her flesh and blood don't love her, and it feels that God does not love her either.

It is not for me to defend Him.






Yet this blog is about walking on water. And today's verse of the day at left reads:

Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jeremiah 32:17)

So we have to keep on trusting in God.

The rollercoaster calms down

We have done a bit of research.

It seems that many of our worries are a consequence of the early signs of menopause, rather than anything else.

This is good in some ways and bad in others. The irregular periods are not a series of mini-miscarriages or failed implantations, they are just irregular periods. And quite a lot of the sensations may be menopausal rather than fertilisation, implantation, etc. So our emotional rollercoaster can now ease off a little. Fewer false hopes, fewer let-downs. The bad news of course is that there is a reduced chance of pregnancy – it’s harder to get the timing right and conditions in the womb are less favourable. But this also means that the possibility of two eggs being released is slightly greater, which might render the twins she wants.

Was it a miscarriage?

Reading the signs, it may be that what Mrs has experienced over the last few days was a kind of mini-miscarriage. She may have been more pregnant than the test indicated – we think that there was probably something happening but that it was doomed to fail from the start. This could be counted as a week 8 miscarriage, though we doubt that any embryo had developed to the 8-week stage. This would explain why she felt things were happening, why the last period was small, why she felt bloated, why she didn’t ovulate last month, why this period was large and [sorry guys] clotty, and yet why the pregnancy test had been negative. Hopefully the way is now open for the next attempt….

Is this it?

Well, don't tell anyone, but we might have a pregnancy going.

We have had some sensations but they felt different from the usual fertilisation and implantation things (more fo a burning feeling), and then she had a period, so we hought it was out.

But come this months ovulation, nothing happened, instead, the feelings seem to be getting stronger, more like morning sickness.

So - it may be good news something may be working. But then again, it may be a repeat of last summer's miscarriage when she didn't develop along her normal lines and it ended a 7 weeks.

Watch this space.

If this is a pregnancy, it came about while we were rocking the caravan on holiday - great stuff! Anyway, we have one fantastic name for it if it is a boy - a name that would be full of divine anointing. Can't wait!

Same old questions

So we have blood spots. Month after month the same questions – is this implantation or an out-of-synch period as the body settles down after the miscarriage?

Since it has gone on a bit too long, does this mean it really is a period, or does it mean that her protracted ovulation sensations meant that she released two eggs on two days(being out-of-synch after the miscarriage) and hence two implanatations on two days?

There is a very narrow boundary between faith for miracles and pure fantasy, and I suspect we cross to the wrong side too frequently.

Gather the broken pieces

This weekend I attended the final year group meeting of my training course prior to my licensing in April.

We each had to do a presentation on our three month placement. ie I had to listen to 17 sermons!.. well sixteen, actually, becasue numebr 6 was mine. It was of course the best and most enlighteneing and stimuleted the most discussion up to that point. I surprised them all by truning up in a cassock and surplice, and spoke about how much my views of vestments (and most things anglo-catholic) had changed during the placement.

But good though my talk was, it was totally outclasssed by the person after me. She was a lady in her 70s, short, clinging to the lecturn to control her nervous shaking, and yet she delivered a fantastically well-prepared talk, whihc he best stand-up comedians would have been proud of, and she had us rolling about in fits of laughter with tears rolling down our cheeks.

Another woman's talk also contained God's word for me for the time - based on the feeding of the five thousand, where the disciples are told to gather up the broken pieces, and of course find that these are more than there was to start with. she was speaking about a placement at a homeless charity, but for me it applied to our own circumstances, where we feel broken and can't understand why this has happened if we were in god's will. yet in the feeding, the bread started off in jesus's hands and it was good and perfcet, yet had to be broken by him so that more could be made of it. and so, i now felt, that we were in God's will, in a perfect place, and yet he had to break it to make it more. THis has helped me to understand some of why god has given us such a rough time of late.

And so I went home, and Mrs was gald to hear what I reported, especially since she could report to me that she had had some blod spotting - which almost certainly meant that she was pregnant again. And so we were ecstatic for 24 hours.

It helped that our youngest, riding his new bicycle on his 7th birthday, was cycling off into the distance on just his second day without trainer wheels!

But the joy was short-lived, since this morning her bleeding has expanded to a full gush and it turns out that it is just her cylce getting back into routine after the miscarriage, and not a pregnancy.

So why did God allow us to be told there was a ripe follicle when we went for the scan? Why did he lead her up the garden path with an appearance of a definite implantation blood-spotting, only for it to be a period? why does he give us these falkse dawns? why the rollercoaster of ecstasy is despondancy?

Why does he put me back in a leadership role for the workpace alpha, discussing "how does God guide us?", when I am really messsed up about these things? How can I preach when i barely believe?

And so I open up my blog to pour out his frustration and rage, and find that the verse of the day in the panel at the top left is “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:9)I have been missing the point. I want God's love to be expressed in him solving what I think are the problems, but he shows his love by adressing the REAL problem. And are not my trivia nothing in comparison to what he has done?

Back at Church

On Saturday I watched the film "In America" with Mrs.

This is a fantastic film, mainly about coming to terms with the loss of a child, and is partly autobiographical. Losing a child that has been born and cradled in your arms and that you have watched grow and have held conversations with is clearly far worse than my own experience with miscarriage. But since our own loss was more than just the baby but also all of the plans and dreams attached to it, we felt the message fo the film was very relevant. We cried. And we felt better. And afterwards I felt that I could go to Church in the morning, and actually worship for the first time since the miscarriage.

In the morning, Mrs told me that she had been up all night, unable to sleep because fo the rheumatoid arthritis, which has flared up as a consequence of the miscarriage. She cried. She felt that even now the miscarriage won't let go of her and let her move on. Having planned to go to church, she now felt she couldn't go, partly through sheer exhaustion but also because the problems were still overwhelming her. She went back to bed.

I carried on with my chores. I was supposed to be going to the early service, but now had to cancel. I stayed at home and wrestled with my kids. [I won, even against those who are bigger than me now]. I laughed. But in private I also cried - deep belly sobs, for the first time in years. I told God I couldn't cope any more. And I cried out to Him to heal her. Again. And again.

At about 10:30 I started telling the kids to get their shoes on ready for the 11 o'clock service. And Mrs emerged from the bedroom, dressed! So my prayer was beginning to be be answered!

We walked to church, slowly as she hobbled along like an old lady, taking 15 minutes over the normal 5 minute distance.

As we arrived, our cell group leaders responsible for our pastoral care, who had been conspicuously absent when all we needed was just a card from them, came up to us and made a public show of embracing us and welcoming us in. We barely resisted the urge to thump them.

The service was one which I would normally have raved about, with good songs and a powerful sermon. But it is hard to sing songs of love to the one you feel has wounded you and let you down. You know theologically in your head that that is not how it is, but that is still how it feels in your heart. And so for most of the songs, while the congregation danced and waved, we could only sit on the back row with tears streaming down our faces.

The sermon was about trusting those who have let you down, so it was very apt, and we felt God spoke to us through it.

Afterwards, still not really up to talking to people, we made a sharp exit and headed to Pizza Hut (a reward to our kids who all got exceptionally good comments from the teachers at their various school's parents' evenings).

In the evening I was supposed to be leading the evening service as part of my training, but they had phoned me during the week asking me to let the Vicar do it for some programming reason, and I was only too happy to oblige.

Today I couldn't get out of my turn to lead the Alpha Course group at work. "Session 5 - How and why should I read the Bible?". It went OK, but one does feel very hypocritical taking on the role of Christian teacher when one is so messed up and lacking faith inside.

Now I know that this will all work out well in the end - that is the whole point of me having a blog and writing about the ups and downs of the Christian life. But it is rough!

Sad News

I’m sad to report that our long-hoped for pregnancy has miscarried.

Mrs had suffered bleeding for about a week, but encouraged herself with books that said this can happen in successful pregnancies, together with the fact that she still had strong morning sickness. But when she went for her routine visit to the midwife on Wednesday, she was sent for an emergency scan at the first available appointment last Thursday morning.

On Wednesday evening the bleeding got worse, but then stopped and we thought it was just a scare.

At the appointment, the screen showed the shape of the baby clearly. Mrs was straining her neck to see the screen, and the nurse was telling her to lie down and relax, but she was saying “Is there a heartbeat? Is there heartbeat?” I couldn’t see one, but bluffed that I wasn’t sure where to look. Then the nurse said “I’m really sorry, but there’s no heartbeat”, and it was all over. Tears. Tears.

Measurements showed that the baby had stopped growing at 11 weeks and 3 days – roughly the time the bleeding started, though Mrs was now technically 14 weeks. It was uncomfortable to think she had been carrying a dead baby that long.

I took the rest of the day off work.

We went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch – which was very nice.

I fetched the youngest kids at the end of school, and told them in the playground. I told two or three mothers, and asked them to pass the news around to save us having to go through the story over and over, and to tell people to give us space until we were ready to face the world.

We told the other children as they came in later. The ones we thought would be most upset seemed blasé. Only the 16 year old boy seemed to show any real understanding and compassion. (The next day the 6 year old said “Why did the baby have to die?” so he is probably upset too. For the others I think its just becoming routine for Mum to have miscarriages)

Mrs retired to her bedroom, unable to cope with children running around the house with the usual noise and fights, oblivious to her feelings.

During the night it all came out in a rush, so at least she was spared from carrying it any longer.

On Friday I came out with a flu, and failed to get my morning jobs done in time and took the morning off work. This gave time for a good chat with Mrs.

We decided to call the baby “Noah” – which means ‘rest’ – which is a name our girls had asked for some time earlier. But I choked up when Mrs suggested it. I often listen to a song by Michael W Smith called “Hello, Goodbye” (For lyrics go here andscroll down to the 10th song) – which tells the story of his own son called “Noah”, that died at the age of 12 days. I always found it deeply emotional, but I will always cry when I hear that song now!

Won Saturday, Mrs was on bed all day. I wanted to get all my normal stuff done and also do all her chores, but being full of flu did neither. And needing to take the children out to help them buying presents for Mrs’ upcoming birthday meant I was even more behind. And since the weekend storm blew several panels out of our fence and I had to buy and erect replacements so the neighbour could let her dog out, meant I was even more behind.

Skived church on Sunday. Mrs still in bed. I couldn’t face the public, and still full of flu, still behind on chores. Mostly caught up during the afternoon.

Today I’m back at work, feeling much healthier.

Mrs is back in bed, and frankly pissed off, and declined my goodbye kiss. I think she is disappointed that I didn’t do more over the weekend, and is understandably not in any mood to be tolerant. I think her greater anger is towards God, but that is for another post.