a diagnosis and conception story

Our Sweet baby is still waiting for his first gulp of air, but we can already see the story of his conception and birth being in God’s timing.

Around the spring of my 30th birthday we started trying to get pregnant. This would be our third baby. We had learned in between baby number 1 and baby number 2 that it would take time. With no periods (true- I just don’t get them again for a year or more after having babies) we went through lots of pregnancy tests. My birthday came and went, the summer happened, the weather turned cold, Christmas came and still no pregnancy.

As I waited and watched other pregnancies, some wanted some unwanted, I tried to sit with all my feelings and not rush through them or push them aside. To hold onto contentment and desire at the same time. To both pray for a baby and thank God for the family he had already given me.

After Christmas came ear infection season. The boys had colds and ear infections back to back to back. Jesse (our eldest) was always sicker longer. A sneeze would turn into a fever within a day. At night he started having nightmares that caused him to yell and sleep walk.  

In the spring, after many tears and disappointing pregnancy tests, we decided to see an OBGYN then use a fertility tracker (I’m sure by now some of you are yelling advice at me, just know it hadn’t been this much of a wait with the other two). 

At last the morning of my OBGYN appointment came. For some reason I was nervous, and decided to take yet another pregnancy test.  And it was positive. I gleefully called and canceled my appointment and rescheduled it for an eight week OB check up. 

A few more weeks and we went in to see the first signs of the baby, that it was strong, that it was growing. The four of us, a midwife and a student all crammed into the room and they looked for the baby. But they couldn’t find the baby. They could see the home my body had made for the baby, but no baby. They said maybe I wasn’t as far along as I thought I was. Which couldn’t have been, so we left the office shaken, and wondering what was really going on.  

I kept praying that the baby would be healthy. That's all we wanted, a healthy baby.

A week later, the day before my 31 st birthday, a sweet friend went with me to an in depth ultrasound the midwife had requested. I was worried that I would learn that my body had lied to me that there had never been a baby or worse by far, that the baby had died. 

In moments they found a healthy baby with a healthy heart. What more could someone ask for. 

They teased that the baby must have been hiding because he was a full eight weeks along. Our due date was set to New Year’s Eve. 

For the next week our family was full and healthy and we thought all worries were gone. We went camping on the coast, had great family time. Jesse seemed to have left colds and fevers behind him and ran and played like he hadn’t for months. 

Then Everett (our middle child) coughed, two days later (a Wednesday) Jesse coughed. By the weekend it had turned into a fever and wheezing, unable to talk above a whisper. On Friday our doctor told us that Jesse had full blown Influenza. 

My birthday. One of the few days this year that I thought everyone was ok. 

By Sunday when he cried he couldn’t gasp enough air to breath. We knew we could either stay up with him all night and take him to our family doctor Monday morning, or take him to the Urgent Care. So Dan drove Jesse to Urgent Care. On their way there I called Dan and encouraged him to drive on to the Emergency Room. I felt like I needed to be with them so my mom watched Everett and my dad drove me to the ER. 

Once there the doctor started asking us about family history, our eating habits, where we buy our milk, and if we’ve been with anyone who’d just got off an airplane. 

They sent Jesse’s blood work back twice. Then had us sign a form saying we would drive him directly to the Children’s Hospital. Instead of saying “Don’t google blood diseases.”  they said “When we see this in children we think Leukemia.” 

We drove to the children’s hospital. Saw another doctor who reordered more blood work and told us, “Your son is with you now, be with him now”.  

Over that next week we had more tests and more conversations. Leukemia was going to be a new part of our lives. A new chapter to our story. In the midst of the overwhelm I could see God’s timing in the conception of our baby. If I had gotten pregnant when I wanted to we’d have a tiny baby in arms as we were at the hospital so many days and nights in the following weeks and months. If we hadn’t gotten pregnant yet the stress would have made getting pregnant about 100% harder.

They mapped out the next nine months and circled December and January and said short of a miracle, they would be the most trying months, when treatment would be the most intense. All I could think was: but we are having a baby.  How can I be at full term and carry a four-year-old to the bathroom to throw up? How can I give birth in one wing of the hospital and be in a different wing of the hospital holding my 4-year-old's hand and he’s hooked up to IV’s doing chemo?

When we were discharged after diagnoses 

30 days latter when the beast of steroids was completed 

It all seemed so wrong. How could something I prayed for come in the middle of such heartache? How could I have missed the slow death of one son while praying for the birth of another? But that's not fair. Dan and I had seen Jesse was sick, and had faithfully taken him to the doctor to be treated. But no one knew what was going on inside his bone marrow. When kids show up with ear infections who would guess it’s because they have cancer?

Jesse loves having his cousins over to "his hospital" to play. 

One day a friend spoke a few gentle words to me. She reminded me that as I had needed to trust God with the timing of the conception of the baby I needed to now trust God with the timing of its birth. 

Well then a miracle happened. Turns out Jesse’s body was made to fight Leukemia. His Leukemia is among the simpler to reverse and it reproduces so slowly that the doctors are able to treat it completely differently. By the end of November to early December our hospital stays will be over. Though treatments and doctor visits will last for years we are glad the intense part is almost complete (months before anyone thought it would be). Jesse has had minimal side effects to his treatment, and because of being able to treat it differently he will have zero life long side affects.

As I write this he is sitting next to me counting his trick or treat bounty just like any other kid. The baby boy (yes a boy) in my womb is rumbling ready to get out and play.

Everett's 2nd birthday :)