Baby Desch Scare

Happy Friday one and all!! I am soooo glad it's Friday. Even though it's been a short week with Memorial Day off, it's still nice to have the weekend! Josh is taking the youth camping tonight, which will be a blast, but me and Baby are staying home. It's hard enough to get comfortable in a bed, much less on the ground. But I'm sure they'll have a great time.

Yesterday we got a scare from our baby... he/she has up to this point been very active and moved lots and lots, putting my mind at ease as to his/her well-being. But ever since Monday afternoon he/she has been different- those movements have seemed much more lethargic. I'm not getting kicked in the ribs and seeing my belly take on different shapes and strangely moving blobs. By yesterday I was getting concerned, since I was used to all of those antics going on at pretty regular intervals. I had felt him/her move a little in the morning, and then I didn't remember anything all afternoon. Finally I called the doctor and asked to talk to the phone nurse, thinking that she would say that the movements are just different now since the baby is getting bigger and bigger in a space that isn't growing, and he/she just doesn't have room to move as much. But she said the baby should be moving, and asked if she could talk to the doctor and call me back. She called back about 5 minutes later and said that Dr. Speese wanted me to come down there immediately and get hooked up to the fetal moniter. So I had to leave work and go down to her office, all the while praying that nothing was wrong. I had felt like maybe something was wrong since Monday night, so I thought it was a good idea to go.

I got there and was ushered back to this little room with a leather recliner and a boxy machine, which was the fetal moniter. The nurse put these big straps around my belly to catch and moniter Baby Desch's heart rate, and put the recliner back so I could get comfortable. It was so wonderfully reassuring to hear that swishy little beat again and know that even if Baby wasn't moving, his/her little heart was still beating. The nurse brought me some sweet tea (YUM!!) in hopes that a little sugar and caffeine would get the baby moving. She gave me this little button and told me to push it every time I felt the baby move. I sat there in that chair for at least a half-hour while the machine recorded the baby's heart rate and I marked whenever I felt a movement. The doctor looked at the print-out from the machine and said that Baby Desch seemed to be doing fine. I asked her if maybe his/her size is keeping him/her from moving as much, and she said maybe just expect more swishy movements instead of big huge kicks, since there isn't as much room.

I am so grateful to the Lord that everything seems to be OK!! Being pregnant has been such a sanctifying experience for me. I love this little person inside of me so much, but have absolutely no control over his or her well-being (apart from the very obvious things like not doing drugs while pregnant). The only thing I really can do when I'm concerned about him/her is take my concern to the Lord and pray, and then trust that He cares about us and our little baby and has good plans for us. Yesterday was definitely one of those days! I guess we're already learning a big lesson about parenting- that the only way you can parent is to do the best that you can do to take care of that child and love him or her with your whole heart, and then pray that God will shape him/her into the little person that He wants them to be.

Have a wonderful Friday!