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!

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….

Moving On / Paris [Chapter 1]

Well I’m having a dreadfully dull day at work so I might as well spend time on the blog – though I had more or less given up on it since it was taking to much time and too much emotional energy engaging in debate on other blogs.

Mrs has finally stopped bleeding, nearly 4 weeks after the main miscarriage and 6 weeks after it started.

It has been a major blow to her physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but I think things are finally beginning to pick up. It’s perhaps hard for any new readers out there to appreciate how the miscarriage devastated the whole of her life. The pregnancy was THE PLAN to resolve an ongoing mid life crisis, and an on-going sense of rejection in various walks of life. More importantly, we felt it was the path God had sent us on, and so when it failed we had a lot of questions about whether we had heard correctly from God, whether God does in fact give detailed guidance for day to day life, how much prayer works and how much life is predestined (in love of course) regardless of how we pray. For example, my daughter’s class at her Church of England school had been praying specifically that the pregnancy would be protected against miscarriage. So that means that about 30 children who might have developed a faith and belief in the power of prayer will no longer have that belief. Can God then blame them if they lack faith later in life?

Another factor was that for Mrs this baby was going to be her passport to renewed activity in the children’s work at church, from which she has felt excluded in the past. And yet the people that she would have to work with in that work are the people who have wound us up most in the aftermath of the miscarriage – everyone else in the church ahs expressed sympathy and sent cards, but these particular people – one being our cell group leader tasked with our pastoral care, has not sent a card and has cold-shouldered my wife when she could have been a real comfort. I can’t tell the whole, story here, but we feel really betrayed by the people who should have been there for us when it counted, and these are the people Mrs was hoping to work with in her grand solution to life, and yet can’t now stand being in the same room with them. So there are still huge frustrations and issues to deal with, and the big question of her life remains unresolved.

But it is not all doom and gloom. We also received a nice card from some other people that we have found difficult in the past, and so this may be an opening for better relationships there.

Also, while Mrs was still pregnant, I booked a three day break for us in Paris as a Birthday present. This was to be a case of ‘if we don’t do it now we never will’ sine the baby would put an end to travel for a long time. In the end the holiday became more of a therapeutic break, part of comforting her after the miscarriage. Easy Jet got us there and back in relative comfort, though we had to sit separately on the way there and coming back it was clear that the French skill at organising railways does not extend to organising the boarding of planes.

We stayed in a two-star hotel. Originally this was supposed to be “Hotel Modern” at Rue Forest near the Moulin Rouge, but when we arrived for our pre-booked room they said it was being refurbished and that they had moved us to another hotel just out the back, with better rooms and a quieter area. Well it was quieter, because it was a long walk from anything useful. (Hotel du Roi Rene in Batignolles), and the ‘better rooms’ were dingy and small. The shower was hot but barely dribbled, and the electric socket was loose. I would not recommend either hotel to my worst enemy.