How the miracle began

March 23rd, 2007 is the day I found out I was pregnant. It was a Wednesday, and I stopped and bought a pregnancy test on my way to work. I had a private bathroom off my office and as soon as I peed on the little stick it was as positive as could be. We had been trying to have a baby. Delaney was four and a half, and I felt my career was stable and our family was very ready for an addition. Two days later I began running a fever and had horrible flu symptoms. I was a very busy lady and this illness took me completely down. I was hosting a birthday party for a friend at a wine bar in DC and was also supposed to attend an important open house that Saturday. The next week I was to leave for a week long work trip to Phoenix. By Sunday I began to bleed and after calling my OB knew I needed to stay completely in bed until the next morning when he could see me in his office. Dan took me and they did an ultrasound to find a very large subchorionic bleed threatening the sac. They told me my chances of miscarrying were about 80%. I went home and crawled in bed and cried my eyes out. I canceled my Arizona trip and stayed in bed but by Wednesday was barely spotting so I tried to go into work. As I walked up the stairs to my office I began to gush blood, and so Dan took me directly to my OB's office. The ultrasound showed what I had feared. The sac was gone. I had miscarried. He wanted me to go over to the hospital and have a DNC. I refused. I was too distraught. I told him I needed to go home and rest. He reluctantly gave me a prescription for methergen to try to get me to pass any other tissue left and sent me home. That afternoon I did pass a very large clot of something. I felt like it was the baby. So I took the next few days off work, grieving and trying to pull myself together. I told Dan I didn't want to try to have children anymore. We had our Laney. I couldn't do this. I would focus on my career and be thankful for what we had. Monday morning I went to my OB's office on my way in to work for a quick ultrasound to make sure I had nothing left inside that would cause an infection. I climbed upon the table, and she stuck the wand inside me. As loud as could be we heard it--the thumping of a tiny heart. I screamed "WHAT IS THAT?" and she got tears in her eyes and said softly, "You still have a baby inside you. It's a miracle." From that moment on I became one of the most remarkable pregnancy stories in their office. I still had a very large bleed and they reminded me my chances of losing the baby were still great but there had been no more baby just 5 days ago and here it was. (They explained I possibly had twins and lost one and the bleeding was so great they just missed the other baby.)

This is the beginning of Danica's amazing story. As I sit here in the hospital watching her sleep after almost eight hours of thrashing and screaming last night I have been crying and praying and remembering she is here by God's design. I don't completely know what I believe about miracles. I grew up thinking they were something we wouldn't really experience in this day and age because God doesn't choose to work that way anymore. I know now they are more common than we acknowledge. Just because we don't always have the eyes to see or the heart to give the glory doesn't mean they aren't here. The verse I claimed during my pregnancy was from Job 42:5 "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You."

The miracle continues in a coming post . . .