Chapter 6

JJ loved the trains!

On Saturday we met with our friends the Clements. A God ordained get together to be sure. Rodney and Danielle had two little boys, but they had suffered some miscarriages. Their testimony was assuring of God’s grace and mercy and that God’s way is best. I was beginning to see that nothing that happened at this time was incidental or coincidental. God had already had this time in my life orchestrated for His glory.
On Monday, we went to uptown Charlotte to meet with the specialist. As I sat in the waiting room looking at the other pregnant women with their round bellies, I looked at myself and knew that I did not even look pregnant. I just felt like I was not supposed to be there. I thought surely this problem could not really be happening to me? They called us back to the ultrasound room and began the screening. The technician took her time and thoroughly examined the baby. I asked her if she could tell if it was a boy or girl. She could not because the image was too grainy and the baby did not move very much. Without the amniotic fluid, the image of the ultrasound is very grainy and harder to read. She tried to find a pocket of fluid to measure and could barely, just barely, find any at all. It was almost immeasurable. She was finding a normal heart and brain, but again the fluid was low and there was a mass in the belly. She left to show her findings to the specialist. After what seemed like forever he came in and started to look for himself. My inner prayer was that even with these problems they were finding that the baby could still survive it. The doctor looked at the blood flow and tried to determine if the baby even had kidneys. He was not sure. He felt that even if there were kidneys, they did not function. His words were cautious and he did not say anything definite to us. He said that if the kidneys did not function and provide the amniotic fluid, that when it was time for the lungs to develop, the lack of fluid would prevent them from developing and functioning. He said that I could miscarry at any time, or that I could go full term, the baby could be still born, or die shortly after birth, or could be okay. He scheduled us to come back in a month to see if there would be more fluid or changes, which he said he did not really expect to see.
He briefly mentioned that we could terminate the pregnancy, but that it would be expensive and we would have to go to a special place for that. We easily replied that was not the choice for us to make, God was in control and we knew it was not our life to take.
Then we met with the geneticist. I prayed that she would not find that this was a genetic problem; because if I lost this baby, I knew I would want to try again. Nothing from her questioning seemed to point to a genetic link. If we wanted conclusive testing it would need to come from the baby after birth. For example performing an autopsy to see what the actual problems were. Both Joey and I were very calm throughout that checkup. Joey told her that our calmness was not that we did not care, but that we had our faith in God and that He was in control not us, and that we loved this baby already. Joey was already using a bad situation to honor God and I knew that from his example that I needed to be ready to speak up at every opportunity to share the Good News that was within me.
As Joey and I talked on the way home we agreed that our hope was that if this baby could not survive, that the Lord would spare us from going full term and spare this baby from pain and suffering. I prayed that God would be merciful and take this baby on home to heaven. Our hearts’ desire remained that we wanted God to heal our baby and let this baby live. A multitude of questions began to surface, and we prayed for wisdom. Would we name this baby? Would we bury this baby? I began to search frantically online to try to find out anything I could. Thankfully I found helpful information from WebMD. (For your own information, you will find this article at the end of this testimony chapter 30.)