Yesterday on the street I ran into a lady that I met recently here in our city. She has a child Aaron´s age and just recently had a baby girl. She knew I was pregnant and out of politeness asked about how it was going. As most of you know, I´m pretty transparent...but at the same time I don´t want to overwhelm people with our news. Depending on the person and the amount of time I have, I try to give a general answer, "I´m hanging in there."
With a genuine heart, she delved deeper. As I revealed the news that our baby has Trisomy 18, the expression on her face passed from confusion to sadness. "I´m sorry. I don´t know what to say." She began to tear up. I felt bad that I´d dropped this bomb on her and tried to comfort her by telling her not to worry....there really is nothing that can be said. She apologized saying that she should be strong and should be the one encouraging me. She was so kind, so sensitive. I felt like the insensitive one, just standing there with a matter-of-fact face, awkwardly trying to console this new acquaintance of mine.
Then, last night I had a weird dream. I drempt that I started bleeding. I was losing the baby. All I could think of was, "No! Not yet!" It was a strange, vague, fuzzy dream. What I do remember is being in a labyrinth of a hospital and being confused because I didn´t know any of the doctors and didn´t recognize where I was. When I woke up I was still pregnant and my son was calling for his morning cup of chocolate milk.
After dropping him off at playschool, I swung past the post office to pick up a package my mom had sent. She often sends envelopes and boxes of books and videos for Aaron. I thought it was a package for him. When I opened it, I found this sweet pink jumper (pictured above in Aaron´s hands.) She had mentioned it to me on the phone. Ever-supportive, my mom had taken the time to learn more about this syndrome on the internet. She even went to visit and talk with a local family whose baby had had Trisomy 18. Without having to explain it to her, she understood that we want to look for opportunities for joy and hope in what might be viewed as a hopeless situation.
The jumper is for a 3-month old baby...much too big for a Trisomy 18 baby, who are often born much smaller than healthy babies. Sadly I thought, "she may not ever be able to wear this gift." And yet....I´m working hard not to be overwhelmed by the Trisomy 18 statistics. We don´t know exactly how the syndrome will play out. The only thing we DO know is that God is good and that He cares soooo much about us and about this baby. So, we walk forward, step-by-step. As the due date draws closer I think it´s going to be more and more difficult to keep moving forward....but we´ll cross that bridge when we get there.
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