October 17th (part 1)

10.17.14

      On Friday morning, after a very busy week with doctors appointments and balloon releases, I went in for my last NST before the weekend. I was really happy I had asked for the extra appointment because it just eased my mind that our baby girl was tolerating my irregular and weak contractions okay.
       Twenty minutes after they hooked me up to the monitor, Dr D's medical assistant came in and took the strip back for analysis. Within about 5 minutes she came back and told me that everything looked good, just one semi-strong contraction but the baby's heart rate was just fine with it.
       I went off to work and covered one of our afternoon cases locally. After my first bout with preterm labor, I discussed with my managers that I needed to stay closer to our hospital instead of driving my regular 30-45 minutes away to cover cases. They had been 100% supportive and it made it so much easier to make my biweekly (or in this case, triweekly) doctor visits.
       The case that afternoon was a bit long, and I ended up finishing up at about 4:30. The nurses I worked with that day were the same group that had come to Kaitlyn's memorial service, and they had been nothing but sweet and supportive the entire pregnancy. This time, one of the male nurses asked me how I was doing with everything and I gave him the update on my most recent NST results.
        "I'm so ready," I told him as I was packing up my stuff. "This baby could come tonight and I would be just fine with it. I'm tired of waiting and all these meds make me anxious."
        "I bet!" he laughed a little bit at my boldness.

        On the way home I called my mom, which is a typical drive home for me. As I was talking to her, I felt a contraction that was pretty strong.
        "Did you drink enough water today?" she asked me.
        "No, I probably didn't. I'll go home and down a big glass and get off my feet and all that jazz," I responded to try to ease her mind. Some people may not know this, but dehydration can actually jump start labor.
          I asked my mom how my grandmother was doing and she let me know that she thought my grandmother probably wouldn't make it through the night.
          My mom has a true gift (which she'll never admit to) with helping people pass away peacefully. Unfortunately, she's had a lot of practice with some really good friends. I remember when I was a senior in high school, one of her good friends had terminal cancer and my mom served almost in a hospice nurse capacity, spending hour after hour at her friend's bedside and helping with the housework.  Weeks before Alex and I got married, another best friend lost her battle with cancer, and weeks before we lost Kaitlyn, my mom lost another friend in a freak accident.

         As soon as I got home, I parked it on the couch with a big glass of water and waited. Ever since I had been put on the medication to make the contractions stop, I had kept a note on my phone so that I could track the break-through contractions to see if I needed to talk to Dr. B about increasing the dose at all.
         While I sat and waited, I started to notice that my list of times for contractions was growing faster than it ever had before. When I first started tracking them that afternoon, they came every 15 minutes, but before it was 5:30, we were down to every 3 minutes. About that time, Alex got home from work. I had given him the short version of what was going on, and as usual he was playing it cool.
          "So, do you want to go see a movie or something?" he asked, gauging my reaction to how serious the situation was.
          "Yeah that's what I want to do..." I replied a little sarcastically. "Maybe some salted down popcorn will make these contractions stop."
          "Hmm, what's the plan then?" he asked.
          "They say that you have to have contractions for an hour before you call the doctor, and I'm 30 minutes in. So let's wait another 30 minutes and see if they go away. Otherwise I'll call the on-call doctor and see what we should do."
           So we waited another 30 minutes, my notes on my phone growing with the times of contractions still 2-3 minutes apart. When my arbitrary deadline approached, I nervously called the number to reach the on-call physician. I left her a message, and was sure to mention Kaitlyn so she would know that I would be a nervous patient when she called me back.
            After about 15 minutes or so, my phone finally rang. It was Dr D, the same doctor that had read my NST that same morning. I repeated what was going on and waited to see what her suggestion was.
           "I'm still not convinced this is true labor, so let's wait another hour and if they don't go away call me back," she said kindly.
           "Okay, no problem," I said, somewhat relieved to have a plan.
           We sat on the couch and waited. Just like clockwork, the contractions kept coming every 3 minutes and I kept charting them on my phone as they came and went.

               As the hour came to a close, Alex asked me what I wanted to do.
              "I want to go to the hospital and make sure she's okay," I said firmly. "I feel her move after every contraction, but I just want to make sure she is tolerating the contractions okay."
               "Okay," he agreed, and we hopped in the car to go to the hospital. I called Dr D and left her a somewhat short message telling her we were going to L&D just to make sure everything was okay, and she called back to let us know that she would meet us there.
                It was about 8:00 when we checked in to L&D, and it felt like de ja vu from two weeks ago. I got hooked up to the monitor and watched and listened to the little one's heart rate, and sighed with relief that there didn't seem to be any fluctuations in her steady rhythm as the contractions continued on.
                "Okay," the nurse said. "We're just going to keep watching you for a little while to see what is going on. I'll be back in about 10 minutes to check on you."

Pregnancy, Stillbirth, and Infant loss awareness day

10.15.14

October 15th is pregnancy and infant loss awareness day. I didn't even know about this day last year, but had several of my friends participate in the Wave of Light in Kaitlyn's honor. The Wave of Light is where you light a candle from 7-8pm in your time zone so that the light travels the entire globe in memory of the babies lost. This year, Hope Mommies requested that Elyse and I organize a balloon release for the local area Hope Moms to come to in addition to the Wave of Light. We were excited to do so, and we had a pretty good turn out of moms in the area show up.

I filled in some of the extra balloons with names of my friends' babies.

The whole Hope Mommies group. My only sad thought of this picture is that the fabulous Mallie Ray took it- which is only sad because she should have been in it with us. 

     It was neat to see this group come together just because we all have different stories. Some of us only know each other through the Hope Mommies group, others have shared Mallie as a Now I lay Me Down to Sleep photographer, and still others have known each other through the Hope Mommies Bible study that Elyse and Michelle have both lead.

    After the release, we all went down the street to a BBQ place to have a nice dinner and light our candles for the Wave of Light. Elyse had a friend that took the time to write all of our baby's names on the votives that held the candles.

Hope Mommies Candle

I left a candle for Alex at the house. I wasn't sure if he would use it or not, but he sent me a picture 

of this candle lit during the 7-8pm hour.

Me and Elyse, both about 36 weeks pregnant.

The next weeks

10.6.14-10.15.14

      The weekend seemed to creep by: I was trying my best not to worry or overdo it, but I found myself doing constant kick counts and counting down to the time when I would get to go to the doctor to see our little girl on the ultrasound screen.

       Monday finally rolled around and we went in to the office to talk to Dr. B about "the plan". She still wanted us to try to wait until 38 weeks to deliver, which I was less than thrilled about. We decided to switch to biweekly checks, meaning that I would continue having full biophysical profiles including sonograms and an NST, and we added an extra NST each week. It definitely seemed to help my anxiety, and I continued taking the medicine every 6 hours, even setting an alarm on my phone every night for 2 AM to be sure I didn't miss a dose. I was a nervous wreck, and again the only thing I kept referring to were my notecards filled with scriptures.
        Each time I went into have an NST, the story would be the same. Maybe a weak contraction or two, but nothing regular and nothing severe. Baby girl's heart rate was tolerating everything just fine, so we kept waiting, each day inching closer to our goal.

         On the afternoon of the 15th, I had one of my usual biophysical profile appointments complete with a sonogram and some time with Dr. B. My next appointment wasn't until the following Monday, and I expressed to her that it made me a little uncomfortable to go that long without being checked out.
         "I know everything is looking good, but it just feels like that is a really long time without having eyes on her at all. Would you be okay with me coming in for an NST on Friday?" I asked her in the exam room.
          "If that's what you need, that's totally fine. I'm actually off on Friday, but I can see if one of my partners minds reading your test," she replied. "I'll let you know in just a minute who that will be."
           After I gathered my things and opened the door to leave, Dr B let me know that her partner, Dr D, would be available to read my test on Friday. I was pretty relieved that I would be able to come back in without any hiccups.

            The other thing that happened that morning was that my grandmother, who had been struggling with Alzheimers disease and congestive heart failure, had slipped out of her chair in the middle of the night (sleeping sitting straight up was the only way she was able to rest) and broke her hip. It was really hard on my Dad because her Alzheimers had gotten so bad that it would have done more harm than good to put her through a surgery to fix her hip. So instead, the doctors just did their best to make her comfortable. It was only a matter of time before she would leave us to go be with her husband and her Maker in Heaven.

        

Discharge

10.03.14

       The next morning was another surprise visitor. One of my favorite nurses that I am so thankful for, Gail, came in to see us. She was just coming on shift and immediately took charge of my care (which makes me laugh even now!), writing her name on the board to replace the night nurse's name. She also gave me her cell phone number and told us that if something happened between now and Halloween (when we were scheduled and all of our previous nurses had scheduled themselves to work to be with us), to text or call her and let her know so she could swing by.
        About 9 in the morning, Dr B came in and looked at the strips from overnight. They had started a medication at 10 pm that was to be taken every 8 hours, so she had a good chunk of time to see if the medication had worked to stop the contractions. Luckily, it had.
        "So we'll go ahead and discharge you on this medication and I'll see you in the office on Monday," she told me as she picked up the long stretch of paper that had been printing off our contractions and heart rates over night.
         Fear.
         "If something happens over the weekend..." I said quietly.
         "Don't hesitate. Come back in to L&D and we will hook you back up again."
         "That scares me. I mean, you have plenty of time there where the contractions weren't affecting her heart rate? There's no reason for you to keep me longer?" I almost begged. I didn't want to go home and be responsible for deciding when it was "emergent" enough to come back to the hospital.
          "Well, we can't monitor you like this indefinitely," she said gently. "This medication is really effective, and you'll be on it every 8 hours but if you start having breakthrough contractions at the 6-7 hour mark then you can move it up to every 6 hours."
           "I'll just take it ever 6 hours then, I really don't want to mess around with this," I told her hesitantly.
           "That's no problem. You'll probably still have a contraction every now and then, but nothing this regular for a long period of time. Our goal is still to get you to 38 weeks before we deliver."
            Ugh. Four more weeks of this. I wasn't ready.
 
             The rest of the day I pretty much tried to recover from the excitement of the hospital. Mom and Dad decided that they weren't needed and left to go to Austin, and Alex headed to work that afternoon to not miss too much of it.
             And I went back to my notecards. Reminding myself every time I got scared that I wasn't in control, the baby's days were already written, and that our God is good.

One night with The King

10.02.14

      After a couple of hours of talking to different familiar faces and letting the nurses watch my contractions, it was decided that they needed to start me on a medication to make the contractions stop (hopefully). Alex settled in for a night on the couch next to me, and I tried to get comfortable in the hospital bed without moving the monitors too much.
      The nurses had kind of "taught" me to read the monitors so that I was educated on what all was going on. Constantly in the background, the baby's steady heart beat was thumping along at around 150. When I would start to feel a contraction, I could look up at the monitor and see the climbing hill and peak of when the contraction maxed out followed by the slow decent back down to the baseline all while listening to the baby's heart rate. It was incredibly reassuring and scary at the same time because there were points where the baby's heart rate would drop down into the 120s. Not that 120 is scary, but any kind of rapid heart rate change made my pulse go up just because the slowing of the steady sound of 150 had become so familiar.
      Once the decision had been made to move me to a room and keep me overnight, I called my parents to check in with them. They had decided to drive up from West Texas and be with us while I was in this premature labor, something that really made me uncomfortable because I felt that they were only coming because they were worried that we would deliver that night. Also, since my grandmother had been going downhill with her Alzheimer's disease, that week had been particularly rough on my parents with figuring out how to best care for her without wearing themselves down completely. It was my Dad who tried to comfort me a little on the issue.
      "We just feel like we need to be there; we're not panicked or in a hurry, we just want to be there..." he said in his calm-but-tired voice.
      "Yeah but what are you guys going to do when you get here? You're just going to sit up here and stare at me and there's really no use in that," I told him.
      "Well that's okay, we just want to be there in case you need us."
      "Dad, there isn't anything anyone can do right now. Alex can't do anything, y'all can't do anything, even I can't do anything. This is all up to God and if tonight is when we're suppose to deliver her then that's what's going to happen. This is just between me and God right now, and having everyone else's anxiety around me isn't going to help me calm down to try to help these contractions stop."
       His end of the line was quiet for a minute.
       "Okay. You're right. We are already on our way, but if you decide you don't need us this weekend we'll head on to Austin since we were headed there anyways. We just want to be close incase our granddaughter comes tonight."
        "That's fair. I just don't want y'all to come up here and be worried around me," I reaffirmed.
   
         I really wasn't trying to be a jerk, but it just felt overwhelming to have everyone rush in from out of town. First off, I didn't want my parents making the 5 hour drive in the middle of the night. My parents aren't old by any stretch of the imagination (number wise or acting wise), but in the back of my head that fear that I had been battling all week took a different turn. "What if your parents are killed on the highway? They would be on their way up here to be with you and if nothing even happens then they died for nothing. Your daughter wouldn't know her grandparents because you scared them into coming."
         I had to start my verse-battles again. I started repeating the verses I had written on the back of those notecards that had lived in my purse for a week.

         Eventually, our room quieted down. We turned off the TV and Alex fell asleep on the couch. Every few hours, the nurses would come in and ask me to roll over or shift my hips a little bit because the baby's heart rate didn't like the position I was in. After one of these episodes, I couldn't go back to sleep so I just laid there and stared at the ceiling.

          Thub thub thub thub thub thub thub Baby girl's heart rate at 150.
          Thub      thub     thub     thub      thub Baby girl's heart rate at 120.
          Contractions come, contractions go.
          Repeat.
          Thub thub thub thub thub thub thub.
          A girl could go crazy focusing on those heart beats.

          Thub     thub      thub     thub      thub
          Leave it to us to make another stubborn child that is making her own schedule.

          Thub thub thub thub thub thub thub
          Contraction starting
          Thub       thub      thub     thub      thub
          I wonder if this is what happened to Kaitlyn.

         I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the devil loves doubt and worry because it makes us question our Maker, but still the thought shocked me. When I had felt the wave of movement in the office I had been reminded of that same feeling I had towards the end of my pregnancy with Kaitlyn. I had always thought it was her shoulder or her arm making a movement across my stomach to get more comfortable, but now I know that it was really contractions and I just didn't realize it.
        If this baby girl was having a hard time tolerating my contractions, why wouldn't Kaitlyn? This baby was head down and had been for a while, but if a baby is breech does it make it harder for them to tolerate labor? Her head was right under my rib cage and who knows where her cord was.
        Did I have contractions before I felt her stop moving?
        After a year of grief, it's hard to remember.
        I laid there and stared at the ceiling and cried. I cried for my daughter that was gone. I cried for my daughter that was still here. The fear had taken a stronghold on me and it was hard for me to shake it in the dark room of the hospital.

        And then something popped into my head- a conversation I had with Kate when I was seeing her again before Kaitlyn's birthday.
        We had talked about fear and doubt, and she reminded me that every one of Kaitlyn's days were written long before I got pregnant with her. Every second of her life, every kick, turn, head butt, everything; was written in God's book before she was even a thought in our heads.
         And the same went for this baby.
        There was nothing I could do that would change the course of this baby's life because God had already written her story.

"Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written,

every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there were none of them."

Psalm 139:16

          Such freedom. Such peace from the promises of God.
          I breathed a little easier after that. The anxiety was still there, but it was now background music instead of concert-loud in the front of my mind.
          All I needed to do was cling to Jesus and the promise that there was nothing going on in my body that He didn't already know about.
           Peace.

Week 34

10.02.14

     On Thursday I had another appointment with Dr. B. We had switched to weekly visits at 32 weeks along and every visit now consisted of a full biophysical profile. What this means is that I got a sonogram and a non-stress test every time I went in to see her.
      This day wasn't anything out of the ordinary: sonogram first and everything went great, then the non-stress test. The MA had asked before if I would mind doing the NST first since it takes 20 minutes, but I had to tell her I couldn't do that because I would have a panic attack if I thought it took her too long to find the baby's heart beat. She had been super sweet and understanding, even apologizing for not thinking that it could be more stressful to go in that order.
       This time, as I was hooked up to the sensors for the NST and surfing the internet on the phone, a wave of movement crossed over my stomach. It felt like a huge roll, like the baby had decided to literally cross my entire abdomen to get more comfortable.
        On the NST machine there are two numbers: one that reads out the baby's heart rate and the other reads out the percentage of contractility, or how strong a muscle contraction is. The second number got up to 96% when that wave went across my stomach, but since I could see the baby's heart rate I never really worried about it.
         A few minutes later, the MA came back to check on me.
         "I'm just going to run this strip over to Dr. B to see what she thinks..." she said.
         "Yeah something ferocious happened a few minutes ago!" I laughed.

         After a wait, the MA came back again to get me to go see the doctor.
         "Your husband's not with you today?" she said as we walked down the hallway. It was really my first indicator that something was up.
          I sat in the exam room waiting on Dr. B to come in and started feeling anxious. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew whatever they saw on the monitor wasn't what they were expecting.
          Finally, Dr B came in and sat down on the rolling stool that is in all the exam rooms.
          "So, you're having contractions. Have you been feeling these?" she asked.
          "Is that what that was? I just thought it was the baby doing a big roll or something," I said, rather shocked.
          "Yeah, they're contractions," she paused. "What I see on this strip isn't awful, but I think I want to watch you a little closer. So if it's okay, I'm going to have you go ahead and head over to Labor and Delivery and they'll be expecting you. They'll hook you up and we'll just watch this a little longer."
           "Oh it's that serious?" I asked, definitely shocked now.
           "Well they are pretty regular and on the one that you felt the baby's heart rate fluctuated just a little bit, and with your history I don't want to mess around so I would just feel better if we watch you for the next couple of hours. Two, at a minimum. It could be an overnight stay, depending on what we see. And if I say this out loud it won't happen, but there is a possibility that I would need to deliver you tonight."
           "Okay," I agreed. Their office is attached to the hospital and there is a pedestrian bridge that connects the two. It had started raining pretty badly outside, and as I walked along the corridor I called Alex to tell him what was going on.
           "Do I need to come over?" he asked.
            I stopped walking and thought for a moment. I knew that I was just going to go over to the pre-op area of L&D and sit on the monitor for two hours. Honestly, I didn't feel anxious at all. I had been reciting my verses in my head all week and I knew that if this what how our delivery was suppose to go then it would be okay.
            "No," I shook my head as I said it. "You're just down the street, 5 minutes away. I'll call you if I need you. Just be sure to keep your phone where you can get to it if I need you."
             The next call was to my mom, and it went a little differently than my conversation with Alex.
             "We need to come up there," she said, which it was a 5 hour drive from where they were to Dallas.
             "No, we don't know anything yet, Mom," I said. "If something happens then, yeah, you can come up."
             "Well... Okay," she said reluctantly.
              I wasn't trying to play the hero, but my parents had had a rough week because my Dad's mom had really started going downhill with her Alzheimers. She had also developed congestive heart failure and I knew that my Mom had spent the majority of her week trying to help my Dad with caring for my grandmother. In my heart, I didn't think we would be delivering that night and I didn't really want my parents driving in the middle of the night to come all the way up here for nothing.
           
              I asked when I got to the check-in desk if one of the nurses who had been with us with Kaitlyn named Nell was around. They told me that she had just scrubbed in on a c-section, but they would let her know that I was there when the procedure was over. The nurse who hooked me up had already been updated as far as our history with Kaitlyn, and she told me that she remembered the day we came in. It was a strange sensation, having someone tell you that they remember you even though you'd never met.
              One of my coworkers was downstairs and I had texted her earlier to let her know that I might not be coming in to work tomorrow if I was admitted to the hospital. She had decided to pop up for a minute and check on me, and then she graciously went to get me some "smut" magazines to pass the time (you know, the celebrity gossip magazines that speculate about who's getting divorced and who has a love child with so-and-so). Kristy was a little excited that we could be welcoming our little one, and it was at that point that I let it slip.
               "I don't have my hospital bag packed..." I said. "I don't even have an outfit for her. I'm terrible!"
                With that, Kristy pounced.
                "Its a girl!?" she said, excited.
                "Haha, yes it is!" I said. "Don't tell anyone because we really don't need anything, but yes it's another girl!"

                After about an hour, Dr B came in. Kristy was still there chatting with me because we like to talk and hadn't seen each other in a while.
                Dr B pursed her lips a little as she looked at the strips. "Well, you're still having contractions," she said.
                 "Well, if I get to have a vote, I say please keep me overnight if you have any hesitation at all about what is going on," I said. "Otherwise I will just go home and worry about how her heart rate is doing."
                "Done. You'll stay tonight and we'll see if we can't get these to stop. We're going to start a bag of fluid to see if maybe you're just dehydrated," she said. "They will get you moved into another room that has a couch for Alex to sleep on."
               
                 Kristy asked me if I wanted her to stay around until Alex got there, but I honestly still felt fine. I knew they were watching the contractions and doing everything they could to stop them.
                 Slowly, it started to get out that I was there. One of the first people in was Nell, fresh off a c-section in the back hallway of labor and delivery. She was shocked that I was there, but happy I had let her know to come see me. She asked all about how Alex was doing and how he had handled our second pregnancy. It was nothing but compassion and love.
                 Next came Morgan, the nurse who was in training with Gail when we first checked in with Kaitlyn. I had thought about Morgan a lot because I knew that we would have changed her course as a nurse because she saw one of the absolute worst case scenarios very early in her training. She was thrilled to see us, and wanted me to be sure to let her know when Alex got there. She excitedly told us that she had switched to the night shift and that she was loving it.
                 With Morgan came Robin, one of the nurses who had helped lead the grief group at the hospital. Eventually Carol came in, the CRNA who had done my epidural with Kaitlyn. She hurriedly wrote down her personal cell phone number on a paper towel so that I could text her directly if something were to happen and we needed to deliver. She told me that if she wasn't on call she would still come in and do my procedure.
               
                  As all these visitors and familiar faces came in and out of the room, my phone had somehow decided to go on silent. It laid right next to my leg, but since it never vibrated I never felt that Alex had called me 8 times.
                 It still hurts me that I did this to him. Understandably, he lost it. He thought something had happened and I wasn't okay or our second baby girl wasn't okay. When I finally saw the missed calls and immediately called him back, he wasn't ready to talk or come in to the hospital yet. Once he gathered himself, he came into the room and I apologized for the hundredth time for doing that to him.
                "Everything is fine..." I said to him.
                "Then why are you here?" he asked abruptly.
                 It was at that point I got shaken out of my denial. Everything wasn't really okay or I would have been at home already. I would have been sent home after a few more minutes in the labor and delivery holding area, not staying overnight. Everything wasn't okay.
                 It was scary.
                 It was unknown.

Fear.

9.27.14-9.29.14

      That Saturday, we had a dinner party to celebrate our newest addition. We had invited all of our friends from the area: people from the hospitals I worked at, some local Hope Mommies, and some of our couple friends from church.

       It wasn't until Monday that it hit: fear. Almost crippling fear.
       Maybe I had focused so much on Kaitlyn's birthday and just getting through that important day that I didn't realize that I was scared to death of the birth that was looming ahead. Dr. B had recommended a second c-section because I had a vertical tear off of my incision from where she pulled Kaitlyn out, and we had scheduled it for Halloween morning. I had tried to make light of it, saying that I wanted to dress up for Halloween which would include me painting my stomach like a pumpkin. I even considered writing "cut here" across my scar to make the nurses laugh.
       But after we got through Kaitlyn's birthday, everything became real. That Sunday night, I had a near panic attack while I was sitting on the couch. The thing to do starting after about 28 weeks is to start monitoring the baby's movement by doing kick-counts. Basically, you sit very still and count how long it takes the baby to move 10 times and if it takes more than about 40 minutes you have reason for concern. Our little one was so active that I always tended to hit the 10 count mark at about 5 minutes. On a bad day, it was 10 minutes.
       Sunday night, after a long day where I had been preoccupied, it took 20 minutes. I panicked. Completely panicked. Was that a significant change? Enough to warrant a trip to the ER for a sonogram?? How was I suppose to know what to do?
        I panicked to Alex and he told me to breathe. We reviewed the different protocols for kick counts (one includes where you re-start the 40 minute timer to make sure it wasn't a fluke), and ultimately he told me to go take a bath and try to relax a little. Thankfully, when I got in the bathtub and relaxed our normal 5 minute kick count happened. I still had a hard time sleeping that night, even though I tried to reassure myself that everything was fine and that they baby's movement hadn't slowed down or stopped.

       During August, I had participated in a book study at church called Crash the Chatterbox by Steven Furtik. The book talked about spiritual warfare in the form of negative "chatter" heard in our heads. One of the exercises we did at the very beginning of the class was to take notecards and write lies on one side and Biblical truths on the other. My cards looked like this:
      Lie 1: What you are doing is worthless
      Truths 1: 1 Corinthians 9:24 "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run so that you may obtain it."
                     Galatians 6:9 "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up."

       Lie 2: You will never be good enough
       Truth 2: Luke 12:7 "Why, even the hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows."

        Lie 3: This (loosing Kaitlyn) will happen again
        Truth 3: Hebrews 10:23 "Let's hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, because the One who made the promises is reliable."

      That Monday when fear hit me, I decided to that I needed more notecards. I asked one of the other Hope moms that had also lost a full term baby and had gone on to have a healthy child to send me her list of verses that helped her cope during the last month of pregnancy.

"I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, 

and all over the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you."

Luke 10:19

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fears. 

For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears 

has not been perfected in love."

1 John 4:18

"I sought the Lord, and He answers me and delivers me

from all my fears."

Psalm 34:4

"Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them,

for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. 

He will not leave you or forsake you."

Deuteronomy 31:6

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life... 

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sew nor reap nor gather into barns,

and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they?

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan?"

Matthew 6:25-34

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as 

the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled 

and do not be afraid."

John 14:27

"Do not be afraid, for I am with you;

I will bring your children from the east and 

gather you from the west."

Isaiah 43:5

"But now, this is what the Lord says- He who created you, Jacob [Amy],

He who formed you, Israel: 'Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; 

I have summoned you by name; you are mine."

Isaiah 43:1

       If the last verse sounds familiar, its because it comes from the same book in the Bible that we picked Kaitlyn's verse out of:

"Look at the sky and consider: 

Who created these?

The one who brings out their attendants one by one,

summoning each of them by name.

Because of His might and power,

not one is missing."

Isaiah 40:26

      I tucked these notecards in my work bag and anytime I started to feel the creep of fear coming into my mind I would pull them out and read through them. It didn't matter to me if I stopped in the parking lot of where I was headed or if I needed to pause in the hallway on the way back to the lab. I stopped dead in my tracks and read the promises of God. Honestly, I don't think anything else this world has to offer would have combatted that fear as well as scripture.