Miracle Story #15 (Part 1 of 3)

“To be honest, sometimes you think you’ll never forget what something felt like when you’re in the middle of it, but as time passes, it’s interesting how God has walked you through it. How He’s healed your life.

It’s a long ago story, considering my son will be seventeen in January.

I guess I remember from the time I was little, my mom always says this, that any time in school when you had to talk about what you wanted to be when you grow up, I always wanted to be a mom. Probably my biggest dream in my whole life, since I can ever remember, was that I wanted to be a mom.

My mom is amazing and I just wanted to be like her. And I wanted to be with my kids. I wanted to do all the fun stuff. I love family. I love what it means. And from being in God’s family, down to each person having a family, and I know it’s not something to take for granted.

You know, there are all kinds of families now. Single families and families who have lost loved ones, just all of those things.

I just remember from that time.

Ironically, my husband and I started dating when I was fourteen years old, and he was sixteen. Even in high school, I remember thinking that God brought him to me at the perfect time. And I know that’s a weird thing to say when you’re that young.

My sister had cancer and we had alcoholism in our family. There was just so much going on in our family. And I remember just distinctly, when Chris was my boyfriend, just the peace that I had when I was with him.

We dated all through high school, college, got married in 1997. And shortly after that, because we had dated for seven years, I was like, “Oh I’m so ready.”

I was like, 'We’ve already dated for all this time.' We didn’t need to go explore stuff because we had already been together since we were babies. (laughs) I remember thinking I was so excited.

My sister, having had cancer, they always told her that she might struggle to have babies because she was young, and that could affect her. And so for whatever reason, that had always been a fear for her, in my head.

But I never thought it would be me.

We started trying. And trying. And trying. And they said it could take up to a year. And here I had all these friends just popping up pregnant after thinking about it.

And I kept thinking, ‘It’s God’s timing.’ I was very patient, very calm about that.

For about a year.

And then, when you start thinking something could be wrong, I think probably the deepest fear set in. Almost even depression, like, ‘No way. How could God have put it in me to be a mom since I can ever remember, writing it on my papers as what I wanted to do when I grew up, and end up in this place?’

You start questioning things.

And so we started all the infertility questions, testing. ‘Could something be wrong with me? Could something be wrong with him?’

And at the time, they came back and said I had endometriosis, which I knew. I had painful, painful cycles, things like that. So that made sense to me, that I would have that. I guess intuitively I knew.

So I started having some surgeries to clear that out. Kept trying, kept trying to have a baby. And we were without luck.

There were certain fertility things, we chose for our family, that would never happen. So if that was where we ended up, then God had a different plan.

So I started on all kinds of medications and things to shut down my hormone system to hopefully help the endometriosis so that when I went off, I could have surgery again. And then maybe I’d have this little window to get pregnant.

And low and behold, my doctor said she wasn’t positive I would ever be able to have a baby.

So we started looking into adoption.

At that point, it was probably a year and a half of trying. So we ended up filling out paperwork and started to learn about what it would look like to adopt. We just wanted to have a child. We wanted a family no matter what God had for that.

Whatever that looked like was fine.

I desperately wanted to be pregnant. I’d see pregnant women and just want to feel what that would feel like, to have a baby inside of me. What it would feel like to have that change. What it would feel like to throw up. (laughs)

As silly as it was, I never blamed anyone for being miserable or complaining about it. I wanted to be miserable. I was like, ‘I’ll take it. I want it. I’ll throw up for 9 months. I don’t care.’

I just wanted to experience it.

Anyway, I resolved myself to if that wasn’t it, that wasn’t it.

But then we got matched with a mom. She was sixteen. We went to visit her. She was in a different state. And then we got to go back when she had the baby.

And so our first son was born in April.

And so we went to the hospital. I got to be in the room, which was an extra treat, and we took him home.

This was on a Thursday and in that state you had to wait 72 hours, and so that fell on a Saturday. Well, attorneys and courts aren’t open on Saturdays and so Monday morning, we went in to sign the papers.

And she changed her mind.

So we had taken care of this little baby, our baby, for five days. And we went in there and had to give him back.

It was probably one of the most painful things I’ve walked through. And for minutes during that time I sat there questioning.

‘That’s the most unfair thing you could have done to me. Why? Why would you walk me through this? I want to be a mom and I feel like you handed me a baby, and now I have to hand him back.’

So that was painful.

He wasn’t there at the courthouse. We had left him with some people while we went to the court. She gave us a few hours. She was sixteen years old. And I knew that.

One of the miracles I would say in that, was that God gave us so much grace in that moment.

Like I sat there sobbing, but I looked at her and I said, “I don’t know if I could have ever done that. I can’t blame you. You had no idea what it would look like to deliver a child. And I’ve never delivered a child, so I don’t know what that feels like. And to know what you were giving up before you did it, you didn’t know. And neither did I. The only thing that we ask of you is that you will love him and teach him about the Lord.”

So we had a few hours with him.

We ended up giving her everything we had. Because it really wasn’t her plan. I don’t think she methodically ever intended that. I never felt like that.

And she had nothing.

So we gave her our car seat, clothing, bottles, formula. I mean she had nothing. And we went to the store and got a Bible, and we wrote in it.

We gave him a letter that just said, "We will probably never see you again on this side of heaven but God-willing, she teaches you about Him. And one day we’ll understand what this is about."

Walking away from that, we had spent every dime we had. We had nothing. We couldn’t adopt again. You know, people just don’t give you your money back. And I just didn’t know.

And so all the way home, I went through all the stages of grief, which I’m a psychology/social work major, so as I’m walking through them, I’m telling on myself. (laughs)

“Well just so you know, I’m in the stage of anger right now, okay Chris?!” Like, “I am not in denial, I am in anger. So let me go.”

And eighteen hours home, with certain remnants of what it would have looked like to have a baby with us, I yelled at God in the car. I’m sure people driving by probably thought, ‘That woman is psychotic.’

I cried.

I went through every stage. But God gave us that eighteen hours so that I could get through it.

Because I walked into my house with a baby’s room, and no baby. No money. And no hope.

And I just thought, ‘Whoa. Wicked. How could we be doing this?’

Well the only thing I didn’t say is, the day she told us she was keeping him, I started my cycle.

I was not prepared. (laughs) Hadn’t happened in months. I had to buy new clothing and everything, at the store. I was like, ‘Oh, oh my gosh. I didn’t bring any of that.’

Anyway, at the moment, that meant nothing to me. You know what I mean? Like, nothing.

So we got home. I just shut the door to the baby’s room. I wasn’t ready to deal with that. I didn’t want to walk in there.

I called my doctor. She was aware of our adoption and I basically told her what had happened.

And she was like, “I am so sorry.”

I told her also that I had started my cycle. She told me that it was probably going to take us two or three months to get everything ready, the surgery, etc.

Miracle number two…I was pregnant. That month. I was pregnant with my first son, that we have today.

If I can, not to confuse you, but fast forward. Two years ago, as in 2014, I met his mom. On this side of heaven. And I know that God works miracles every day.

Come to find out, she never had another child. She had cancer. Had to have a radical hysterectomy. And was never able to have a child, after him.

I, on the other hand, had two children, and had adopted again, which healed me in so many ways I didn’t even know I needed healing from.

She walked me through the days after we left, and what it meant to her to have that grace. And how that showed her a love from God that she had never seen before.

And if that is why we did it…

I knew He had a plan. I just thought it would be that I would have a baby, not that we’d have to walk that out, you know? But if it meant it drew her closer to God…

She never had another child that she got to experience raising a child with. And it amazes me that I ended up having children.

And then on this side of heaven, we got to do that.

She said, “I never thought I’d ever get to tell you that I was sorry. I never thought I’d ever get to talk to you again. But you’ll never know the impact that you and Chris had on my life. At the time I was sixteen.”

So that was the most healing thing to me.

And a miracle to me.

And to her.

And that whole situation.

So I was pregnant with Carter. And the most funny part about it was that I was late, I knew the date, but my doctor had told me it could take three months to even get right side up with all the hormones and not to even consider it happening for a while. And we weren’t.

But the morning that I knew it was the day I should start, and I had always been pretty regular, I told Chris. And he was like, “No. You know it’s not. You’re not pregnant. Don’t freak out.”

And I was like, “Okay.”

But in the back of my mind I was hoping that I was anyway, even though my cycle was messed up.

So a couple of days went by and it was a weekend, and in all of my years of infertility, I never have taken a test when I wasn’t pregnant. Because I just never wanted to be disappointed in seeing one line and just spending money on a test and being disappointed.

So I got up that morning and I just couldn’t stand it. So I took a test, and I was pregnant. And I was sitting in the bathroom and I was like, ‘He told me not to even take a test and told me not to get excited, how am I going to tell him?’

So I wake him up with a pee stick in his face. “Oh my gosh!!” I was like, freaking out. (laughs)

He was like, “DON’T get excited! What if it’s a false reading? Because you don’t know what’s going on with your hormones.”

I never thought of that. So that was a Saturday and on Monday morning I called my doctor. And she was like, “Let’s get a blood test.”

I was definitely pregnant. I got the lab results back. I called the school where Chris worked and he was like, “Oh my gosh! I don’t even know what to do right now.”

And he said, “Well don’t tell anyone. What if something happens?”

By the time he drove home, thirty minutes from his job, he’d already told everybody at his work. (laughs) And I hadn’t even told my mom yet because he said not to tell anyone.

He just got so excited about it.

I was very high risk, because of all my problems. Everything was going great. We actually told everybody at about twelve weeks in, because everything should have been perfect.

And at fifteen weeks, I hemorrhage.

So at fifteen weeks, I mean bad. Like, ‘I don’t think there’s a chance I could ever hold onto this baby because it’s that bad.’

We spent an hour, my boss and I, trying to find my husband. He was gone golfing and didn’t have his phone on him. Back then it wasn’t like today, where everybody holds on to their phone at all times.

But we finally found him.

I had a doctor that was an hour away, because of being so high-risk, and so I went in. And I had something that was a giant blood clot that was in between the baby's sack and the outer sack of the uterus.

And my doctor basically said to me, “You just need to go home and pray. There’s nothing we can do. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

And there he was on the ultrasound, this tiny little thing. I could see him bouncing up and down like a trampoline on this little blood clot.

So I went home and I was on strict bed rest, up only fifteen minutes a day. Only up to eat, potty, and take a shower. I had a total of fifteen minutes. And so you get real good at a lot of things. (laughs)

And I just would pray, every day.

And then, during that time, talk about God testing you. We’re poor. I’m on bed rest. Who knows if I’m going to lose my job. We just spent all this money on a failed adoption. And now I have problems…

The attorney called me from the adoption, on both sides, and there was somebody else too. And all three of them… refunded our money. Miraculous.

I hadn’t asked them. They just all free-will called and said, “You know what, you’ve been on our minds so much. And we feel so bad about this. We know you’re young and you want a baby.”

And they all refunded our money.

So we virtually lost two trips there. That was it. You know what I mean?

So that was a relief.

But then, while I was still on bed rest, our air conditioner went out. And it was the dead of summer. We didn’t have the money to repair it, so my stepdad brought this window air conditioner and put it in the window of the living room. And that way we had it. And then our TV went out.

And so God was just getting my attention.

I had friends who would send me books. And there is a book that’s all about miracles, something about ‘Angels Among Us’, or ‘Where Angels Walk.’ One of those two. And I laid there, and I read those books.

And I prayed and prayed for my son.

I said, “Please. I can’t do it again. I’ve lost a baby already, in my opinion, that was in my arms. And I’m begging you for his life. I will never ask you for another child. I just want this one.”

As the weeks went on, I bled the entire nine months. When most people are excited about not having the cycle, I had a continuous, every-single-day-of-my-life cycle, for nine months.

It got less and less over time. I had to be on partial bed rest the rest of my pregnancy, but here’s this little baby that just was resilient.

So at thirty-seven weeks I deliver this child. Nine and a half pounds at thirty-seven weeks.

It took me a long time to actually have him, but I did it. (laughs)

And it was just such a moment of just…even birth is a miracle. I watched a miracle happen. And then I got to experience one.

So here’s my sweet little miracle baby, Carter.

And by the time he was six weeks old, he was vomiting profusely. He just had all these problems. He’d go two weeks without having a bowel movement, and I just knew something was wrong.

Our local doctor in our tiny little town was like, “You’re just a new mom. He’s colicky. You’re just worried.”

And I was like, “No, I really feel like something is wrong with my child.”

So I decided I wasn’t okay with that. I just moved on to the next doctor in a different town. And then a bigger town, and a bigger town.

So he was admitted at three months into Children’s Mercy. They thought that he had failure to thrive, and that there was nothing they could do. And that he would probably pass away.

And so there we were again.

I was like, ‘Every trial in my life keeps surrounding wanting a child and to be a mom.’

So they did every test known to man. Cystic fibrosis test three or four times. They kept thinking he had that. Every test I didn’t even know was possible. And they finally come back with that he had a milk allergy that was so strong, and I was breast feeding, that even me he was allergic to. And if I didn’t have dairy, it didn’t matter. He was allergic to milk protein.

So he had to go on this very expensive formula that we had to order from a specific company. He was in the hospital five times before he turned a year old. He had a NG feeding tube, through his nose.

And we battled for his life. For a year.

And when he turned one, he went into the hospital. We had moved to Wichita and it was the last time. When he was four, he had to go in for a little study. He’s had allergies and asthma, but he’s almost seventeen today, and he’s healthy as a horse.

And perfect.”

To be continued…January 16th. Part 1 of 3.

© 2016-2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.

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My name is Laci, and I live in Kansas.

In the midst of years of infertility and adoption, I AM Miracle Story #15.

#miracle #miracles #miraclestory #onemillionmiracles #divineintervention #god #butGod #storytellers #documentary #faith #prayer #Jesus #infertility #adoption