Please meet our newest family addition......Brendan Isaiah!
Our God is an AMAZING God. He never ceases to surprise us. For example, just a night or two after we flew out of our bush village and got settled in Kenai, on the road system, for our month of doctor's check-ups before my delivery, I was having trouble sleeping. I was in a lot of pain and curled up on the floor at the foot of our bed as Bob woke up to hear me cry out a prayer to God to "Please, get this baby out of me soon." Eventually, my pain eased up a bit and I was able to get back to sleep. Let me remind you that was one month before my due date on September 23rd.Well, a day or two passed and on Sunday night we flew to Homer with some friends for dinner. I began experiencing some pain that afternoon and evening but wasn't really sure if it was labor or not as I had never been through this before. It turns out, it WAS the beginning stages of labor. By Monday morning, I called my mid-wife and she told me to get to Anchorage and not to "dilly-dally" around. We rushed around and debated on what form of transportation to take as the weather was not too great for us to fly and I didn't want to get stuck in the mountain pass with no medical facilities or, even a gas station around for that matter, and have our baby in the car! Thankfully, God opened the clouds up just for a short enough window for Bob to fly us up to Anchorage. We couldn't have asked for better timing.
By the time we landed in Anchorage, it was raining and our window had closed. We were thankful to be in the city with top notch health care. We went to see my mid-wife and she conducted an exam and told us I would have to deliver at the hospital because I was at 36 weeks (4 weeks early). She allowed Bob and I to go to a restaurant to get something to eat before we started the process to check in at the hospital, so we left to go eat. While at the restaurant, I started hemorrhaging. I wasn't sure what was normal and what wasn't so we went back to the mid-wife. She checked me again and immediately sent us to the hospital. In the meantime, the bleeding was getting worse and worse. The blood just kept coming and wouldn't stop. It was scary and it hurt a lot.
As you can imagine, after several exams, the doctor (whom I just met that day b/c I had been working with a midwife all along) informed me I needed to have an emergency C-Section. He said I had an "abruption" where my placenta was pulling away from my uterus and causing the bleeding.
During the C-Section, both Bob and I could hear the doctor's making comments like, "Oh no." "Oh my." and so on. Bob said he could see them making a lot of eye contact with each other like there was an issue but he didn't know what was happening. It turns out, my umbilical cord was completely unraveled. It had been formed like this from the beginning. It is a rare condition call "Vasa Previa." Basically, all umbilical cords are made of three tubular membranes or strands that are woven together and wrapped in an outer tube - kind of like a sausage casing. Mine was in three separate sections. It never caused a problem during my pregnancy and was not detectable during any of my check-ups. In fact, it is never detectable until birth. The scary thing was if they had ruptured or got a puncture or anything during pregnancy or labor, then both our baby and I would've had only 6 minutes before we bled to death! YIKES! Sooooo, we are extremely thankful that God protected us and probably knew about our situation and kept both Brendan and me safe.
Below, is a example of a "normal" umbilical cord and placenta. We found this image on the internet. We wanted to compare images to see the differences.
The next picture is my umbilical cord - completely unraveled.
Finally, the last picture, is my unraveled umbilical cord attached to my placenta that broke away from my uterus too early.
SOOOOOO, the lesson we learned here was:
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR!!
God does have mysterious ways of working and sometimes he even has a sense of humor. Thankfully, he knew and understood our situation and was able to (in the words of my earlier prayer) "Get this baby out of me soon!" Isn't it really neat how He works in our lives?
Thank You Dear Lord!!!!!
