as you know, its been about 3 1/2 months now since my last post. unfortunately, i have lots to fill you in on. so, let me start from the beginning.
not long after we got back from an amazing vacation back to America, once the jet lag was over and everyone was pretty much back to normal, the kids and I decided to go on an adventure. i don't get out too much with both kids by myself because it's just kind of tiring (no vehicle) and i honestly get really overwhelmed by the attention of the locals when i am by myself. Eliana does too, which then gets me more overwhelmed, so we just try to do most of our outings when we are with friends or with Daddy. anyways, all that is to say, we were up to the challenge, and i had a huge craving for blueberries. those yummy berries are only consistently available at one particular grocery store that we don't frequent often because it's more expensive, so we went out on a blueberry expedition. while there, I also picked up a pregnancy test...just to make sure. you know? well, when we got home, we found out we were being blessed with our third baby. after some clarification from a friend regarding the local tests (the directions are kind of confusing), we sat down for lunch (Vip happened to be home for lunch that day), i took a lot of deep breaths, kept thinking "wow, i'm going to be busy", and started to settle down into the idea of three little blessings running around our house. we were also just so humbled that the couple who were told they would never have any were now going to have three.
everything seemed to be going normal. lots of nausea, belly started to swell, food aversions (this time it was some barbecue potato chips that Vip often buys along with my morning coffee, which you know was very sad for me, the coffee addict). around 11 weeks or so i guess, the nausea started to taper off, which i thought was a blessing and not that unusual since i wasn't too far away from the second trimester, which has always been fairly easy for me. i still seemed to be growing. i even had to get a few maternity pants out. then at almost 12 weeks, we learned that we had lost our sweet baby. one of my worst nightmares came true.
the morning that we decided we needed to check on the baby to make sure everything was okay (we thought we were being crazy and overreacting), we decided to go to a hospital in our city where our friend works as an ultrasound tech. it's always nice to hear the heartbeat and we hadn't had a chance to do that yet. she didn't want to tell us any bad news (we are learning that this apparently is a common issue here), so she told us that my dates were probably off and the baby was too small right now for her see the heartbeat right now and to come back in a week. later, we found out that she really didn't' see the baby at all. (this revelation just added to the hurt for me) we thought it was kind of odd, so we called the american doctor in the big city near us to tell him what she said. he also thought it was odd, so we decided to just go ahead and go into the big city. after all, we never have any success with any medical issues we try to deal with here. they probably jsut didn't know what they were doing. so, some friends agreed to continue watching our kids (they were a huge blessing watching the kids all day), we hopped in a taxi, and went to the big city. while there, they did two ultrasounds. at the end of the second one, they confirmed that the baby was no longer there. i immediately started to bawl. they immediately told me "don't cry" "it doesn't matter" and "don't be sad". i cried even harder. as we grieve this loss, those words continue to haunt me. after another minute or two of crying, Vip helped me get dressed (it is not their practice here to provide you with any kind of cover while performing medical exams) the feeling of being exposed as you are being told you have lost your baby and it doesn't matter was just too much.. we walked outside, sat on a bench and cried some more. then, a nurse who had come from our global clinic to help us (who was very helpful) told me "it's okay, you already have two beautiful, healthy children". i cried even harder. (as a side note, please do not say ANY of the above things to anyone grieving a miscarriage!) we continued to sit in the lobby of that hospital waiting for the foriegn doctor to arrive and confirm it all. i just wanted to run away, but we waited. i think we were still just holding out a little hope that it was a mistake and that my dates were just way off. we were wrong. after a while, we were able to leave.
so, now we are wading through the grief. the last two months have just been difficult for many reasons that i can't go into here in blogland, unfortunately. but, losing this baby was just the end of a long string of hurts and challenges. the things that were said to us when we found out about the loss has also proved to give us a whole new wave of culture shock. i don't say any of that to complain or whine. i say it just so you can know where we are and hopefully pray for us too.
we went a week after those first ultrasounds for another ultrasound to make sure everything was okay. after that, we felt like we just needed to get away. so, we tagged along with some friends who were going to Seoul for the weekend. the first night we were there, Titus got sick, apparently with the croup and an infection, and had such a hard time breathing that Vip had to take him to the E.R. at 3 a.m. wheezing, barking, gasping for breath. another nightmare. it's just the croup. we've done that before. aren't we overreacting? but, this time he couldn't breath. he wouldn't respond to the steam of the shower. he couldn't suck on his beloved paci and calm down. we were just numb with shock after that night i think. thankfully, we were where there was an E.R. that we could trust. they immediately gave him a steroid shot and took good care of him. he spent the rest of our trip sleeping in the stroller (so thankful we had taken it) since he wouldn't lay flat in the pack n play. now, he's getting better thankfully, but still not perfect.
so, we have currently kind of shut down. we do the bare minimum of our responsibilities, but other than that, we are spending lots of time in the Word, listening to lots and lots of praise music, and trying to have fun with our kids. we feel that we just took the entrance ramp to the road to healing, but we still have a very long stretch of road. honestly, i don't really think this is a hurt that will ever be healed. it's just a hurt that we will learn to live with.
the title of the post was "waiting by the red sea". I've been reading that passage a lot lately. i feel like we are there. right in the middle with the soldiers behind us and the big sea in front of us. as i read it, the thing that stood out to me this time that i had never paid much attention to before was that God blew over the waters all night long to separate them. i guess i have made the mistake of just remembering the cool special effects from the movies and always pictured it immediately opening up. but, His Word has a much more special word for me than an immediate passage way appearing. they were there all night watching and waiting to see what God would do. were they scared? probably...i know i would be. were they confused? probably....have you ever seen a see open before? maybe they didn't even think that this was his solution till later on in the night once He had been working for a while. so, we are just standing by the sea, waiting for Him to make a way and show us where to go as we run away from the grief, trials, and disappointments waiting to overwhelm us at our rear. we know that He is blowing the waters apart, but the way hasn't been made clear yet.
so, that is where we are. if i get around to posting in the near future, i have no idea what they will look like. but, i hope i can be real with you as we go down this road, wherever it leads. but, we would covet your prayers right now for our family.
