William Michael Pyron Monday May 21, 2007
2:47pm
7lbs 13oz 19 1/4 in.
I wanted to take the time to post memories from almost 3 years ago!! (How has it possibly been almost 3 years???!!) After surviving 2 miscarriages and learning to trust God in wholy new ways we learned we were expecting for the third time. I was scared to be excited, considering our past, but truth is....I WAS EXCITED!! I tried to convince myself the first pregnancy had been "meant to be" because I had gotten pregnant dispite birth control. The second pregnancy was "meant to be" because that baby was due on our anniversary. If you haven't guessed, my version of "meant to be" at that time was...all was going to be perfect with the result of a perfect baby after 9 perfect months. I know, I know.... After the first miscarriage, I felt very literally shattered, my faith, my heart, my very soul. I felt betrayed and confused and...bruised. When I got pregnant again right away, dispite birth control again, I just knew this was my reward. Compensation if you will for the precious baby I had loved to the depth of my heart and then lost. This miscarriage came almost right away. I was at home praying and was convicted that my attitude was that this was "my" child. MINE. With tears I began to pray that God would change my heart and help me to give this most precious child over to him. Within an hour or so of this, the pains started. This time I am ashamed to say, I was not just hurt, I was ANGRY! Why, when I had done exactly as God commands and layed my life, and my childs life in His hands, did He immediately take that life?? I know this sounds crazy. I give it to you Lord, but don't really take it. This was a HARD lesson to learn. Months of prayers and TONS of tears later and I am still a work in progress. I can say without a doubt that I do not take our little angel blessings for granted. They are God's, freely given. Little treasures who belong to Him. How in the world can we possibly ever be worthy of such a gift? The answer...I'm not, but despite this, our God loves us so much, He blesses us anyway. Hence...we were pregnant again! I took a pregnancy test in the bathroom at work, and with shaking hands read the two little lines that would forever change our lives. Its amazing how those two little lines can mean so much! I got home from work before Jarod, so I ran to the store and bought a teddy bear, and a bib that said "I Love Daddy!". Even though it was early, and even though I half expected this pregnancy to end in failure yet again, I kept thinking...but if not, I don't want the story of how I told Daddy they were coming to be anything but JOYOUS! So...when Jarod came in the door I met him with a teddy bear wearing the "I Love Daddy" bib, a positive pregnancy test tied to it's neck and a balloon that said "Welcome Baby". Do you know what his response was?? ..................Wait for it............he says, with this confused look on his face..."It's not my birthday???". If this were not histerical I might have been disappointed, but instead I started cracking up and said "Look closer, dear!". The beginning of the pregnancy was rough. I was spotting ALOT. There was more than one time that I was convinced we were about to suffer miscarriage number 3, but our God had other plans. I remember riding in the car during one of these times and "The Voice of Truth" song came on by Casting Crowns. This song talks of listening to the voice of truth and believing in Him that He will carry out His perfect will in your life. I had to pull the car over I was bawling so hard. Where was my faith?? I repented and I will never forget the peace that came over me. I knew in that moment that everything would be perfect. Not necessarily my version of perfect, but even better, God's version. After the spotting stopped, in part to my amazing OB (God truly blessed me with that doctor!), we got to go find out what we were having. And no, for those that are far more patient than I, I did NOT want to wait. I prefer this particular surprise as soon as I can find out. :) Jarod and I both had to work the morning of the sonogram although I doubt any REAL work was accomplished. Much as I hate to admit it, I was terrified (little faith again!). What if something was wrong?? What if there was no baby there at all??? What if, what if, what if......??? I was also worried about what the sex of the baby might be. Now, this is not what it may seem. We already had names picked for either sex. (William Michael-"Will" for a boy, and Bethany Grace for a girl) But...if you could have seen the longing in Jarod's face for a baby girl amidst all the boys in his family, you would understand. The doc thought the first miscarried baby was a girl after biopsies. Probably partially for this reason, Jarod REALLY wanted a girl, and I consequently REALLY wanted to give him one. Our parents also wanted a girl because there are none on either side for years! All this created...pressure!! I prayed all the way to the sonogram that I just wanted God's will for us and that He might bring all our families to love this child no matter the sex, because I did. I remember saying, "God, your will, I just want your will!" over and over. Turns out I should have been praying that God would lighten Jarods foot on the gas peddle while he was on his way to meet me at the sonogram. Maybe I should have been praying for the cop to have compassion for an extremely nervous, first time Daddy-to-be on his way to find out the gender of his unborn baby. But I did not pray that, and the cop was not compassionate. Jarod ended up with a speeding ticket. :) I might have(ok, probably would have) under any other circumstances been upset, but at the time, I was just grateful he made it in time. When we found out it was a little boy, we were shocked. We both walked out of the office in silent awe. There is NOTHING like seeing your unborn baby being formed by God's hands while still in the womb. Jarod had to go back to work, (I don't know how he got anything done) so I was alone on the drive home. That's when it hit me. How amazing it is when God answers your prayer verbatim and you didn't even realize for what you were asking. I was indeed having "God's Will." He was creating in me His perfect Will for us. How beautiful is our God. Jarod, our parents, grandparents, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, no one was disappointed as I feared. It was as if they too understood that this was God's perfect little Will for us and this child would be beyond anything we could have dreamed. From this same miraculous sonogram, shattering news came. Will was diagnosed with severe hydronephrosis. This is basically where there is a blockage in the ureter(tube that leads from the kidney) and it causes the collecting duct inside the kidney to be enlarged. Will's was more than 3 times the normal size. The doctor we followed up with said he should not have even survived. Talk about scary!! We were terrified, to think that this child who we had come to love so completely might be taken away was horrifying. Everything we could find out about hydronephrosis was scary. They told us he would have to have surgery within 24 hrs of birth (scary!!), and prognosis from there could be anything from shunts in his back to drain the kidney, to eventual kidney failure and the need to be on the kidney transplant list. I finally understood about being a parent. I understood the need to take away your childs pain and have it on yourself. Why couldn't it be me instead??!! For the next 4 months of the pregnancy we bounced between sonos every 1-2 weeks, to pediatric urologists, to high risk pregnancy doctors, all of them warning us, they may need to take him out at any time. We made it to 39 weeks and that Saturday night I started contracting. When the contractions were 5 mins. apart for more than an hour we decided to head to the hospital. Our parents met us there amid much excitement, including my mom leaving a friend's daughter's wedding early, only to find out that I was not changing so they were going to send me home. :( All day Sunday I contracted off and on. My mom and Grams took us out to eat for what my mom lovingly and teasingly referred to as "our last supper", meaning the last supper we would have without our sweet Will here. Sunday night May 20th, 2007 I had my first HARD contraction at 11:29. I got up to try and clock them and let Jarod get a little more rest. By 3am I was on my knees with my head in the recliner breathing through the contractions. That is how Jarod found me. While scolding me for not waking him sooner he started throwing stuff into a bag and saying "I don't care what you say, we are leaving now!" :) I love Daddies when Momma is in labor!! Cuteness at it's peak!! We called my mom and she said she was headed our direction. The plan had been for her to follow us to the hospital since she lives so close, and no matter how old you get, when you are in that much pain a part of you always still wants Mommy! Jarod got tired of waiting(he was still in panic mode!) so we started towards my moms house(just to be moving I guess). When we saw her car, Jarod did a u-turn out of Fast and Furious and we were speeding towards the hospital going around 90. Good thing it was 3 am and so there was no traffic. When we got to the hospital, Jarod jumped from the car and ran into the hospital while I was still waddling my way to the door. I had just gotten into the breezeway when another HARD contraction hit and I had to stop to breathe through it. Jarod, obviously very aggrievated with what seemed to him as doddling in a very inopportune time, came back around the corner, huffs and said "Aren't you coming??!!" LOL! I love that man more than life itself, and I assure you he is probably one of the most caring males on the planet, but the man does not handle medical emergencies in his family well! We finally got to the Labor and Delivery floor and were excited when they checked me and said I was already dialated a little past a 7!!!! Once they got me settled then I just had to wait for the only man who's name I didn't even know, but LOVED. The epidural man. To this day I do not know his name, nor could I give you even the most basic of descriptions of him. All I know is that man brought with him the GOOD STUFF, and delivered it with such expertise that I was singing his praises for the next hours while the monitors told of ever increasing contractions. Contractions that I could no longer feel. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!! By 9:45am I was fully dialated and ready to start pushing. This is the point where fantasy land met reality. I, in my pre-labor dreaming thought that once you were read to push, it was a mere matter of moments til you met your little angel. As I said...reality entered. 5 hours, yes 5 hours of hard pushing later, Will made his screaming entrance into the world. His arm came out first with his head as if to cheer victory. There are moments in life you will NEVER forget. I will never forget giving birth. I will never forget the doctor yelling at the nurse "check his arm! can he move his arm??" I will never forget how it felt to have my heart pulled from my chest and then gently laid in my arms. I will never forget looking into those newborn eyes. Eyes that look like they have just seen heaven. Wise, beautiful, eternal eyes. I usually HATE Mondays! Mondays mean the weekend is over. Mondays mean less family time, back to work time, tired time. But this day, I loved Monday! Monday was the day my son was born, God's perfect Will. As if this miracle wasn't enough. As if the fact that God created life out of nothing was not enough, our miracle was perfect. In fact, after all the medical scares, our biggest worry was jaundice, and how best to clean stains out of Daddy's shirt when Will peed on him. At a follow up after testing with his urologist the doctor said " I have NEVER seen a child go from a situation as bad as his, to nothing at all. He is as perfect inside as he is on the outside!" God did not just get us through, or heal Will, He made it disappear completely! What a mighty and glorious God we serve!! Almost 3 years later we are not on a transplant waiting list, Will does not have multiple surgery scars, and he is not even on any kinds of meds. My little boy is perfect, he truly is God's perfect Will for me. It is a beautiful thing to be able to turn your prayers from the survival of your child to more eternal matters. I pray he loves God more than anything else, and that he is an example of what God can do to everyone he meets in the same way he has already been that very thing to his Mommy!
