Kiss Your Miracle

I don’t consider myself an overly emotional person. Sure I get teary-eyed over things – when a friend is going through something difficult or when I find myself in a crisis. But I don’t usually get worked up over small stuff. Friday though, was an exception. I had a meltdown over something minor. Complete with big fat tears rolling down my cheeks. And it happened on an airplane packed with people.

We were about to leave O’hare Airport in Chicago for Orlando after spending the week with my family. And yeah, I was a little sad to say goodbye to everyone, but that’s not why I lost it. I actually started to cry over our seats on the plane. When we booked our tickets online we made sure to get two seats together near the front. But somehow when we checked in, we were given new seats in the very last row. And once we boarded I realized we had two inner seats; the third seat on the aisle would be taken by someone else. With as much as I typically get up to pace around with Sky during an average flight, this meant I’d constantly be asking that person to get up and let me by. “Maybe I can just ask him to switch with us,” I said to Adam as the plane filled up. “Or maybe that seat will stay empty,” I added hopefully. Sky was already fussy and kept trying to squirm out of my arms. “Oh,” said Adam, looking out the window. “What?” I asked. “Well, we can’t see out.” I leaned over to the window and saw nothing but a big, silver jet engine. Normally that wouldn’t be a major issue, but my pregnancy nausea is definitely made worse by motion and focusing on the horizon is what usually keeps me from actually throwing up. “Let me know if you want me to check your carry-on,” announced a flight attendant cheerfully over the speaker. “We have a completely full flight today folks!”

As more people crowded onto the plane the temperature seemed to rise. Behind us, flight attendants loaded drinks into their cart, talking loudly as they worked. Our row of seats backed up to the bathrooms. Would that icky plane-bathroom-smell be stuck in my nose the entire flight? Suddenly I had a vision of finally getting Sky to fall asleep in my arms only to see her startle awake with the first slam of the bathroom door. Adam sat next to me, calmly eating a bagel sandwich. “I think I’m going to have a panic attack,” I told him, and in a flash, big, hot tears filled my eyes and spilled over. He glanced at me and then looked back again, stopping mid-bite. “What’s wrong?” he asked in surprise. I couldn’t speak. Skylar was starting to cry at that point, so I jumped up with her and walked into the little space between the two bathrooms to try to compose myself. This flight is only three hours, I reminded myself. I have plenty of friends who’ve flown internationally with babies and they all survived somehow. But I still couldn’t stop crying.

A minute later an older man took the aisle seat in our row. When Adam asked if he would mind sitting by the window, the man explained that he had two young children sitting up in the front and asked if we would mind switching seats with them. “Come on,” Adam said to me joyfully. We grabbed our stuff and headed forward to a pair of seats in a row by themselves on the other side of the plane, with a clear view out the window. I sat down and cried some more. Not because I wasn’t grateful, but because I’d even started crying in the first place over something so small that quickly resolved itself anyway.

My mom’s favorite piece of advice in any given situation has always been, “Let a little time go by. See what happens.” And there’s wisdom in that. It’s just not easy to do, especially when your body’s full of raging pregnancy hormones.

Adam, Skylar and I are currently staying with my parents at their house by Lake Michigan for the week. Vacations are definitely different from our pre-baby days. Packing and unpacking has taken on new meaning. Our first day here we went straight from the airport to Walmart to get all the stuff we couldn’t fit into the bags we brought on the plane – diapers, wipes, formula, and a pac-n-play crib – which we then spent an hour trying to arrange in our little room while still allowing space to walk. Even the rhythm of our days has changed. Instead of sleeping till ten and enjoying a lazy breakfast, we’ve been up at six every morning with our slightly disoriented and very excited child, trying to find things to do while we wait for the rest of the house to wake up. I’ve actually been much more tired since we got here than I usually am at home, which seems backwards.

But still, there’s something therapeutic about being away. Getting a break from the routine, being in a new place, having time at the beach – it’s been great. And more than all that, this trip is about family. On the fourth of July, our extended family came to my parents’ house to celebrate the holiday and a few summer birthdays. There were about thirty of us sitting around, eating hot dogs and cup cakes, talking and laughing and opening presents. Sky’s birthday is coming up soon and I told my mom I wanted her to help Sky open one of her gifts. So my mom pulled her up onto her lap and helped her peel away the wrapping paper that covered a small picture frame. When my mom turned it over she gasped. It was one of our ultrasound photos with the caption “Happy Birthday Big Sister” written on it. “Really?!” shrieked my mom. “Are you really having another baby?!” Suddenly everyone was hugging us, asking questions, and congratulating us.

Being able to tell my family about the pregnancy in person is a big deal. I usually only see my family two, maybe three times a year. It’s just the reality of living 1200 miles away from them. Adam and I have lived in Florida near his family since the year we got married in 2003. And Florida’s been good to us. I had a nice run teaching high school here and Adam’s worked for his father’s business for six years. His mom and dad love Sky and are very involved grandparents. They come over for dinner once a week and Sky’s little face lights up when they walk through the door. But sometimes I wonder about Sky’s relationship with my family. I want her to know my parents the way she knows Adam’s, and my siblings too. I have six brothers and sisters and they’re all amazing, fun people. She has cousins here too. Is it possible for her to be close to them even when we live far away? Maybe. But not in the same way.

Marrying someone from a different hometown is not uncommon. My little brother married a beautiful girl from England and I know they struggle with the same dilemma, especially now that they have a baby of their own. One of them will always have to sacrifice; one of them will always live far from family. My mom misses her grandbabies, but she does a good job at not making us feel guilty for living where we do. When I asked her about it she said, “Well, my philosophy is to receive what I’m given. I’m grateful for the time I do have with you and I try not waste it by focusing on how I want more.” And that seems to be a healthy way to approach any area of life. But it feels unnatural. I have to admit that when I’m here I spend a lot of time fantasizing about how we could possibly move here. It’s hard not to feel wistful when I see my mom so happy with Sky in her arms and when I feel the cool northern air I prefer to Florida’s heat and humidity. But when I look at it realistically, I know that those wistful feelings wouldn’t go away if we lived here; they would just shift to Adam’s family. And my mom’s phrase – how we waste time wanting more – keeps echoing in my head. How many hours have I spent that way, fixated on wanting something, oblivious to what I already have? I hope that someday we do live near my family. But for now, I’m going to do what I can to pay attention to this moment and appreciate the time I have with them today.

To be completely honest, there was one more factor in my decision not to go back to work that I didn’t mention at the time: a positive pregnancy test. I started feeling sick in the beginning of June and this time around I knew right away it wasn’t the flu. At least for me, pregnancy nausea feels different than a stomach bug. Things I normally love sound awful. The thought of coffee or wine is enough to make me gag. Salad and vegetables? Terrible. But grilled cheese or macaroni? Heaven. Somehow I’m able to feel nauseas and still eat more and worse than usual. So when I suddenly had morning sickness along with the inability to keep my eyes open past 9:30pm, I told Adam we should think about doing a home pregnancy test.

When we did the test, the control line showed up clear and dark. A light second line appeared a few minutes later, so faint I wondered if we were imagining it. “Is this positive?” Adam asked. “I don’t trust it,” I said immediately, anxiety tightening my neck. It’s not that I didn’t want to be pregnant – it’s that our years of infertility trained me to hate home pregnancy tests. I’d heard that any second line is a positive, but ours was so very faint. I looked closely at the stick, narrowing my eyes. How cruel for it to not even give us a straight answer.

Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to me. Maybe I was pregnant, but the baby was stuck in my fallopian tube. That would throw off my hormones and maybe give us a barely-there positive. I only have one tube to begin with (my other was removed during surgery years ago), and at one point a test showed my remaining tube as 100% blocked. We know that God opened the tube enough for Sky’s little embryonic self to pass through it, but the pessimistic, fearful side of me didn’t assume that would automatically happen again.

At that point we hadn’t made our final decision about my work situation. “There’s no way you’re going back to teaching now,” Adam said suddenly. “Not if you’re pregnant again.” I stomped around the kitchen making dinner. “I can’t think about this right now,” I said. I was planning to get up at 4am the next morning to fly with Skylar to Chicago to see my family. “Let’s just wait until I get back next week,” I said to Adam. “I’ll do another test and maybe it’ll be easier to read.”

A week later our second test was the same as the first and I wanted to scream. How could it not have changed at all? Shouldn’t the line be darker by now? Or nonexistent? Stupid pregnancy tests! I felt like I’d been trying to keep my emotions on pause – not get too excited yet, but not let myself feel disappointed either – and a girl can only do that for so long. I called my doctor’s office and because of my history, they scheduled an early ultrasound, but not until the end of June. “That’s three weeks away!” I said to the nurse on the phone. “Yes, I know,” she said sweetly. “And if you have any sharp pains or bleeding, feel free to call us right away.” I hung up in a daze. Apparently, if the baby was in my tube, I’d figure it out on my own in a less than enjoyable manner. I sighed. Three weeks felt like forever.

In the meantime, Adam and I talked more about my work decision. I taught through my first pregnancy and was willing to do it again. Wouldn’t another baby on the way make things even more stressful financially? But when Adam gently asked me how I felt about it, I admitted that it sounded awful – just the thought of teaching full-time while pregnant and with a toddler at home overwhelmed me. “So that’s that,” he said calmly. “The money will work itself out. This is the right decision for us either way. It’s what we were leaning towards already. The new baby just makes it an easier choice for us.” Adam looked more relaxed than ever, but I was a big ball of nerves. What if we weren’t actually having a new baby? What if I was about to lose my only remaining fallopian tube instead?

Thankfully, pregnancy-induced exhaustion took over my brain every night and I had no trouble sleeping. I even began to feel a bit more settled as the days passed. A verse from Psalm 139 came to my mind whenever I wondered about the baby: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (v. 16). God knows how long this baby will live, I would remind myself, and he loves this child even more than we do.

Still, I spent the morning of the ultrasound on the verge of a panic attack. When we were finally called back to the examining room, I laid down on the table, explaining to the tech that I have a tipped uterus and sometimes it’s hard to get a good picture of it. I was barely able to get the words out when right there on the screen was the image of a tiny baby – 2 cm to be exact – tucked in exactly the right place, its little heart flickering away at 170bpm. Adam held Sky with one arm and reached down with his free hand for mine. “Everything looks great! You’re eight weeks and four days,” said the tech. “Your due date is February 2^nd.”

Throughout the rest of the day I cried quietly on and off. One miracle baby was enough. But two? I thought about the summer of 2007, when we felt God leading us to wait rather than try IVF again. It made no sense to us at the time. The pain of wanting a baby was so intense that it colored everything else in my life. To think that God had planned to bless us with not just one child, but children – the word “extravagant” comes to mind whenever I think about it. Life can be so painful, even vicious sometimes. But God has been sweet to us, removing our biggest heartache. The day of our ultrasound I wanted to pray, but couldn’t find the words. Anne Lammot, one of my favorite writers, says that some of her best prayers are “Please, please, please,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Sometimes I’m just glad that God already knows my thoughts.

I know we’ll face hardship down the road in one way or another. A healthy pregnancy now does not guarantee a healthy nine months or a healthy child. And I will admit, even if things go perfectly, the thought of having a newborn when my firecracker Skylar is just a year and a half old terrifies me. But for now, my focus is on our Almighty God and what he has done for us again, blessing us with another life growing beneath my heart.

I don’t have anything all that interesting or profound to say about this photo – just had to show it to you. This is Skylar, my high-energy, sleep-fighting, hates-to-be-strapped-anywhere baby, covered in peanut butter and rice cake and fast asleep in her high chair. If you look closely, you can see that she actually has peanut butter on her eyelids because she rubbed them with her messy hands as she got tired. Before this, she had never drifted off whileeating and I don’t expect her to do it again. But I’m glad I took this picture. Some moments are meant to be savored.

I’ll never forget the day during my pregnancy when we found out our baby was a girl. Of course we would have been happy with a boy too, but when the ultrasound tech told us we were having a daughter, I was thrilled. I remember how fun it was to start calling the baby “she” instead of “it,” to start talking about names, imagining what she’d look like. I went shopping that afternoon, and bought a few girly baby outfits just for fun. But as the weeks passed I began to think more about having a daughter, and the unique responsibility of trying to raise our little girl to be sensitive and sweet, but also confident in her identity as a child of God.

We’re all aware that girls in our culture face intense pressure to be beautiful and well-liked, and I started wondering what I could do as a mom to help my daughter feel secure in her own skin. I don’t think sheltering her completely from the outside world is the way to go (as appealing as it sometimes sounds), and that means she’ll be exposed at least somewhat to our looks-obsessed media. Most girls want to be pretty and I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But I’d love to somehow expand her concept of beauty beyond the specific look of a magazine cover. I don’t want her to waste time feeling inadequate because she’s not perfect. But sometimes that feels like a lofty goal. I’m her mom, but I’m still just one voice. I thought about it many times during the pregnancy: how much can I realistically do?

And then one day this thought came to me clearly: stop criticizing yourself. At first it seemed strange. Shouldn’t I focus on not criticizing my daughter? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. When I’m around someone who’s always saying she needs to lose a few pounds, I start to feel self-conscious in front of her. Especially if she’s smaller than I am. And if I spoke up about it, she would probably say, “Oh, I’m not talking about you. I just mean for me.” But I’ve gotten the message. Weight is very important to this person. And I already struggle with that idea enough on my own; I don’t need anyone to emphasize it to me. But before I make myself sound too innocent, let me confess that I’ve been on the other side of that conversation too. How many times have I been the one to make a negative comment? But lately I’ve been more aware of the women I know who never cut themselves down. Just being around them is a relief. I can focus on the relationship itself without analyzing how I look that day. And that’s how I want my daughter to feel around me – that I’m a person she can be herself with.

So near the end of my pregnancy I decided that I would train myself to keep my mouth shut about my physical appearance, and I’ve tried to stick to that. I have to admit, it hasn’t been easy. Next week we’re flying north to be with my extended family for the fourth of July. We’ll be at my parents’ house near Lake Michigan, which means lots of beach time and bathing suits. The other day I took Sky shopping with me and oh my word, it was hard not to verbalize the stuff in my head! My brain was shouting negative things with every new suit I tried on. I wanted to comment on my ultra-white skin, my post-baby belly, and how unfair it is that cellulite is cute on babies but not on grown women. But when I looked at Sky, smiling innocently at our reflection in the fitting room mirror, I held my tongue. She isn’t really talking beyond “mamma” and “daddy” yet, but I know she’s already listening. And I want to get in the habit now of emphasizing the things that matter, not what will fade away.