I am linking up with Lil Kid Things in posting a week of Thanksgiving posts. For today, I want to write about our miracle.
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a mother. I remember playing with baby dolls and being their mommy. I still instantly gravitate to babies and am more than willing to take on the burden *wink wink* of holding a baby so their mommy can have a break.
Russ and I started trying to have a baby fairly soon after we married. We had dreams of a large family, 4 children. If you read my post yesterday, you know about the health issues I deal with. Just before our first anniversary, we lost our first child, Jordan Taylor, to miscarriage. Devastated doesn't begin to describe how we felt. Out of our loss, we founded and led an online website that offered support to women and families who had lost a child to miscarriage.
A little over four months later, we found out we were pregnant again. This is where the miracle began. It was a difficult pregnancy. At one point, we thought I was miscarrying again. We worked at a children's home and one of the kids punched me in the stomach. Another scary time. We left the children's home and awaited the birth of our miracle. I started having significant contractions, yet every time we went to the doctor or hospital, they said the baby wasn't dropping and I wasn't progressing. If I only had known then what I know now, I would have insisted on intervention, but I was a very young 21 and just didn't know. We went through this for three long weeks, going to the hospital, being monitored and told I was having significant contractions, but not progressing. Finally my doctor said he would try to induce labor (as if what I was going through wasn't already labor). I went into the hospital and even with the doctor's intervention, still did not progress. Then, the baby's heart rate started dropping significantly. I was rushed into an emergency c-section. A few hours later, my doctor came to talk to me and explain what had happened. Our baby's umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. Those three long weeks, every time she tried to drop so she could be born, her umbilical cord was jerking her back up. My doctor said if we had continued and tried to have her vaginally, she would have died. God's hand was on our precious girl. We named her Damaris Mikaelia. She weighed in at 7 pounds, 8 ounces and was 18 1/2 inches long. We took her home after a couple of days and then ended up back in the NICU a few days later because she was very sick. Thankfully, the interventions by the NICU staff helped her and she was able to come back home a few days later.
Sadly, a couple of years after Damaris was born, we had another miscarriage and lost little Micah Jayden. About 3 years later, we had our third miscarriage and precious Noah Avrey was born into heaven. In the midst of all this, we also had three failed adoptions. Our dreams of a large family did not come to fruition as we had imagined. Three of our four babies were born into heaven before we could even hold them. Last year, our dreams of having anymore birth children was brought to an end because of health complications and a necessary surgery. Will we pursue adoption again? I don't know. Not right now. We'll have to pray about it and see where God leads us.
But back to our miracle. She is now 12 years old going on 30. :) I am so privileged to get to spend so much time with Damaris because I homeschool her. She is so much like me in that she loves to read, she loves to do computer stuff, she loves to knit, and she and I have similar tastes in tv and movies. She is also such a huge help to me. She realizes that Mamma is sick and will go out of her way to do things for me, refilling my water glass, making my coffee, running small errands, etc.
She is a true blessing and I cannot imagine my life without her. I love you Damaris! You are our miracle! I am so thankful for you!
Amen!
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