Chapter 7 "Due Date Come & Gone"

I can see how the day your baby was supposed to do can be so hard. For me, I have been trying to look at it like, Hey, I got to spend 9 extra weeks with my sweet baby girl! And surprisingly, it was a special day. I told her again about my labor, how powerful her story will be, how big she has gotten…but now reality has overtaken me.

So now we are at 10 weeks. This has to be the most draining week of my life. I finally feel the weariness of not knowing why Parker isn’t getting stronger. It’s like one morning she is alert and breathing good, then by night she had 3 bad spells and everyone is trying to convince us she is going to be OK and this is common. Common?

Well it doesn’t seem common anymore. She is supposed to be home by her due date. They tell you when anyone asks, “They usually go home around their due date” And now they are starting to throw in there “ But every baby is different”. There has been babies coming and going out of here WEEKS before their due date. That seems common!  And yes, I know we can’t compare, but seriously, we have no end in sight. They still are trying to say she has just severe apnea prematurity. But why is it so severe? Why does she need to get bagged? Why does she look at you one second so intently and then shut down the next?

She just seems so weak sometimes. We don’t want to go there but we are starting to wonder if she does have a serious problem. Some kind of disease or muscle weakness. And if that is the sovereign plan of the Lord, I just wish He would reveal it to us. I wish we could have some answers. Just tell us you have 3, 3 weeks, even 3 months here, but the she’ll be home and you’ll learn how work with her disease or syndrome.

 Whatever it is, however long we have left in the walls of the NICU, we just want to know what to expect. Our heart is telling us she is going to be OK but it doesn’t make it any easier. We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas and now New Years away from her. With family, but without our family. There has been a constant ache in my heart since November 17, like something is missing. And even when I am with her, the ache still burrows deep within my bones. Because this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. It’s not how any first-time mom who has spent her entire childhood playing dolls, her later years babysitting every kid she could because she truly loved children, expected motherhood, let alone her motherhood, to be.

I keep thinking… I’ll take a colicky Parker that cried all day, a Parker who never who wanted to sleep at night, any kind of complaint mothers have happen to Parker, if it meant having her out of the NICU and at home, healthy.

I start to ponder again why this happened to us? Why can’t be getting better? Why did she have to come early in the first place?

……….And I remember that she is not ours, she is the Lords’. And He chose us to use us for His glory.

So I keep praying and then I think, well even if she has some kind of chronic or fatal disease, what says the Lord’s sovereign plan isn’t to cure it and have us to never know why she stayed in the NICU past her due date??? We may never know. And so we keep reading truth to ourselves through His Word feeding His power to our souls, like pain meds for our never subsiding, deep ache.

I’ll never forget this pain on week 10. It’s almost unbearable. It’s been building and building, like a splinter getting deeper and deeper, or a hang nail you pulled farther and farther down making in sting the more you pull but you just want it out! I have cried every time I walked into the NICU this week. I accept the pity looks from everyone instead of trying to be a light. I have called friend and broken down sharing the rawest part of me. And I have let my thoughts go everywhere to somehow blaming this on me.

But now it’s time to go and take my “pain meds” and get deep in His word again. And one day I’ll look back on this week 10 and remember His grace. One day.