Continued Hope

This post has been long and difficult to get through, but I am so glad that I have written it out… gotten it out of my head and onto paper so that I can clear my mind of the recent past and begin looking forward. And maybe it is perfect that I write this today. Yesterday I had a little scare (which at the time was huge) as I had a tinge of color on the tissue. My mind saw blood. (At this point most reading this will think that it was a silly over reaction, and those few women who have walked this path with me will know exactly what that means to think you see blood).

My heart went insane. Being friends with many midwives is such a blessing, because it provided the means to hear the baby’s heartbeat right away… strong and steady, like every time before.

Thank you, baby.

I need to calm myself the heck down. I need to have a place to go where I find peace, and it can’t be outside of myself.

Everything is ok, it really is, and I need to give faith a place to stay, instead of treating it like a nervous bird that is ready to escape.

While I ponder how to catch that bird and make a nest for it, you can read the last portion of the post called Hope (click here if you need to read the first part of that post).

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It was nearly an impossible to transport my heart from the place of grieving it had been in for two months (which in reality was just a continuation of two years of hurt over all of the lost babies) to a place of joy, but then I realized there was this tiny twinkle of a feeling that had been there all along. It was the feeling that propelled me all those times to try again to get pregnant. It was the feeling that had come to me in the car ride to the hospital, and that had compelled me to love the being inside me with the tiny heartbeat, for whatever time I would get to have, when I believed the baby was in my fallopian tube. I guess it was that hope that I had had in small measure all along.

We shared our news with our close friends with joy, all the while knowing that it might be temporary. “Cautious optimism”, we called it. I smothered my kids in smiles and appreciation when we got home. They might be getting a little brother or sister after all.

We felt like celebrating, so we took the kids out to eat, even though they were unaware of all that had transpired over the past two days. When we got to the restaurant and got out of the van, Guy called for my attention and pointed up. There, hanging above us, were holiday banners not yet taken down from Christmas.

“Hope” they said. We smiled. We had used the word so often, and still do, in connection with this, our last pregnancy.

I don’t want to start my sentences with “if” any more. “If everything works out”, “If the baby makes it”. I don’t want to avoid talking about the future because I am afraid the future I am planning for is not the one I will get to have.

So now, as an act of faith, we talk about the name.

We have talked about “Hope” for a girl. Of course. But there is yet more to be learned from this experience. Certainly, it is not over, as this week has proved. Yesterday, when I was panicking that I thought I’d seen blood, Guy asked me if I wanted my scriptures to read for comfort. He turned to Hebrews 11:1 and left them on my lap. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” I read again.

Only this time I read the whole chapter. It turns out the chapter is not actually about hope. It is about faith. It recounts the many miracles that were made manifest through faith. I smiled when I found Sara, tucked in amongst the prophets; “Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.” I’m guessing she was in the over 40 crowd. Way to go Sara.

Here is how I read verse one, now. “Faith is the evidence (baby) of things hoped for (pregnancy) but not seen" (oh, how I wish I could see, right now, the tiny form inside!).

And here is a new “If” that I think I can use without fear;

If this baby is a girl, maybe we will name her Faith.