Petrified

I will begin this post by saying, in advance, everything is OK. No problems. I'm fine, Robyn's fine, little dude is fine.

At this point in the pregnancy (24 weeks out of 40), she should be feeling the baby moving all the time. Certainly if an hour or two passes without movement it is not a huge deal, as the little fella does rest throughout the day. But if more than a couple hours goes by, it's time to play the baby equivalent of the summertime pool game, Marco Polo: Robyn is supposed to eat and drink something and possibly even push on her belly to try to stimulate some movement- "MARCO!" Then Toby should, at some point, stir, move around, maybe give her a nice karate chop to the gut- "POLO!"

We had a little scare last night. A panicked Robyn woke me up crying--she hadn't fallen asleep yet. Through tears, she told me she hadn't felt the baby since Sunday night. She has a ridiculously accurate sense of intuition, if said sense exists. So I called the prego doctor's overnight emergency line and told the woman on phone duty what was up. She said she would page the doctor and that he would call me very soon. He called back within 10 minutes... I was suprised to hear the doctor quickly say "you need to take her to the hospital to see if they can find the baby's heartbeat." Not a good thing to hear after the crying intuitive wife wakes me up in the middle of the night. Off to the hospital we went.

Once we got to the hospital, we went up to "The Mom Center". The woman at check-in required us to fill out some paperwork and show proof of insurance. Robyn was given a wristband with her name and SSN on it. She had to answer questions like "If necessary, do you give permission for us to give you blood?" I was thinking come on, people, why is all this needed? We're just here to see if we can find the kid's heartbeat... what's all this talk about blood transfusions? Then came the paralyzing realization that these were required standard procedures in case they do not find a heartbeat and have to do a C-section or, worse yet, a D&C. (If you don't know what this is, you don't want to know.) Many big books would be required to accurately capture all the thoughts that were running through my head.

Every time we've been to the doctor, Toby's heartbeat has been immediately audible. This morning, it was not. As if we weren't going insane enough already, little dude decided to play even more mindgames. Eventually, the technician found the heartbeat. What a sigh of relief. At this point, Robyn's tears began to subside, my blood pressure returned to normal. A half hour later, we were back at home.

We have no promises of our next breath--or in this case, my son's life. We are fragile beings. Through our sin, pain and death were born into this world. Because of our sin, people die--both the guilty and the "innocent". (I place the word in italics because we have all gone astray, no one is truly innocent.) I would place Toby in that "innocent" category, but sadly, babies sometimes die. We know too many folks who have already gone through this, including Robyn's parents and other couples at church. It doesn't seem fair. Yet, how fortunate are we that God has given any of us life? That He protects us from disaster as often as He does?

One of the students killed in the Columbine shootings in 1999 was an "innocent" high school girl who was asked by one of the shooters if she was a Christian. As the story goes, with a cocked shotgun in front of her, she didn't hesitate--she responded 'yes, I believe in God'--and was promptly shot and killed. Michael W Smith in reflection wrote these lyrics about the event:

"It was a test we would all hope to pass, But none of us would want to take."

Last night (aka this morning) I was faced with a test I had tried to prepare myself for but hoped to never take. I think it's an inevitable fear when with a pregnant wife. What do I do if my child doesn't live? What do I tell my wife? How do I comfort her? I was very pleased with my own response: in the 10 minutes between talking to the woman on the emergency line and the doctor calling me back, I prayed to the Healer and worshipped the Name above all Names who is worthy of all praise.

I feel like I passed a test today.