Chapter 3: I Lay Me Down and Slept and Awakened, for the Lord Sustained Me

DISCLAIMER:  This post contains some pretty gnarly pictures of my tummy scar.  If it's difficult for you to see or if you will not be able to have a conversation with me after I return home without thinking of my gnarly scar, please don't continue scrolling down. 

It was the second day after our surgery that the realization hit me- I didn’t need surgery. There was nothing wrong with me.   I had walked into the hospital on February 3^rd as a completely healthy, pregnant mama.  Yet two days after my surgery, I had a 13 inch incision down my belly, they were thrilled beyond reasonableness that I could sit on the edge of my bed and I couldn’t lift myself up from a laying position with the help of Matthew, a nurse, or my mom.  Most disturbing and upsetting of all, I’d had to take a sponge bath.  Sick out. 

Going back a few days, we called to accept our surgery on Wednesday, the 28^th of January.  At that time, I assumed I’d be back home in Oklahoma to be on bed rest after three weeks of recovery in Nashville and that, at some point in the pregnancy, we’d travel back to deliver our baby at Vanderbilt.  However, the Friday before Matthew and I were supposed to leave for Nashville, I was already scurrying around my house like a crazy lady- I’d had my last day at my office the day before, leaving the best job I’ve ever had, made up of the best people I’ve ever known, knowing that I’d not be able to return after all of this to the same job under the same conditions.  As I ran around like a crazy lady on Friday, knowing it was the last couple of days for me to be an able-bodied mother for several months- I got a call.  Not from a doctor, but from a social worker saying she was calling to see if we needed her to secure us an apartment for the 3 months that I’d be living in Nashville.  3 months?!  After we unraveled all of the information, it had been decided that given the distance we lived from Nashville, the availability of resources to us in the event of an emergency and a slew of other factors, they could only allow us to have surgery if I agreed to stay and live in Nashville until delivery. 

The idea that I had cried and cried only days before over leaving my children for 3 weeks seemed completely insignificant compared to the prospect of 3 months.  What mother does that?  Who leaves their babies for 3 months?  And what about all of the logistics?  Where would I live?  Who would live with me?  Who would take care of our kids while Matthew worked?  All of these questions would have quickly made up our minds with a resounding no for surgery only days before, but at this point, we were committed.  We had it in our hearts and minds that we were giving this surgery to Poppy.  

God worked it out.  Within an hour, Matthew’s mom had committed to leaving her life in Santa Fe- leaving behind all of her hobbies, new husband, new home, everything to come sit with me for 3 months.  My mom generously offered to watch our kids every night that Matthew was at the fire station- every third night. The pace at which people moved to make our lives work in this was really astounding. 

On Saturday we spent our “last day” as a family of 4 under “real-ish” conditions.  I got to cook a meal for my family- we made a family favorite- french toast.   I could pick up my kids for the last time and I actively played with them for the last time until after our baby was born.  We went to the Children's Learning Museum in north Tulsa- I went through the packing tape tunnel more times than I can count and each time remember thinking what a gift it was to be able to do. 

Matthew and I got on a plane on Sunday, January 31^st- I said good bye to my house, my home, my whole family at the airport…knowing when I returned it would be at least three months later and I’d come home with a baby in my arms.  Only a month prior, there is no way that even a fraction of this scenario could have possibly been on our radars. 

So the day of surgery came- kind of a blur- the range of fears in my head went from the fear of getting an epidural (in previous pregnancies, I chose to ensure a total of 27 ½ hours of labor as opposed to being stuck in the spine by one little needle- terrifying) to coming out of surgery without my baby.  In some ways, the insignificant worries were better to focus on so that we didn’t have think about the magnitude of what was really out there.  I just kept telling myself that all I had to do was get to the hospital, get an IV and lay down for a nap- I didn’t have to worry about putting myself to sleep, or keeping myself alive, or the fact that they’d take my uterus outside of my body and rest it on my lap or whether or not they’d be able to keep my baby alive or if the repair on her back would be done properly. “Be still and know that I am God” has never had a more clear meaning.  And sleep I did- apparently this surgery has the same amount of anesthesia as they give a transplant patient- one of the greatest amounts of any surgery.  Matthew and other family members, both those at the hospital and those waiting by their phones at home, had the harder part- to wait the 2 ½ to 3 hours for us to come back.  My mom said that after I was taken out of the room, Matthew stood in the space where my bed had been wheeled away from for the whole several hours that I was in surgery, not sitting down- just waiting for his wife and his baby to come back to him. 

The first thing I remember after coming out of surgery was Matthew standing by my head repeating everything the doctors had told him- the repair had been done “brilliantly” they “had high hopes for this baby”. Most of all, I heard was that our baby was still there. She was alive.  God had brought us both through surgery.  I just remember feeling the sides of my tummy, knowing that she was still there.  I think I said about a million times “I’m still pregnant, I’m still pregnant.”  Our little girl was still there.  Poppy had handled everything like the fierce little lady that she is and she was still alive.  We still got to have our little girl. 

Far less profoundly due to my post-anesthesia state, and thanks to my mother who sat quietly in the corner, writing down everything that was said, I apparently also asked the world renowned Anesthesiologist that had taken care of me during surgery if he had seen my boobs- yes, I asked this right in front of my mother and husband- and also asked if someone from Duck Dynasty was in the room.  I also promised that we’d take Poppy to Disney World- I don’t intend to go back on that one. 

And so after two days or so, I realized- I didn’t need surgery.  There had been nothing wrong with me.  This was all done for this tiny little baby, probably weighing less than 2 lbs.  By all selfish standards, she has never done anything for me.  Some people might treat our story as a testament to the sanctity of life and it CERTAINLY is- they gave my baby anesthesia, she responded to pain and had to recover from a surgery, more than 20 medical professionals scrubbed into a surgery to take care of her- not me. I was fine, so for sure, those are all testaments to how precious life is and that the life they were improving the quality of had already begun.  But the bigger take away that was left on my heart was a picture of salvation.  When we were helpless, Christ came to earth to endure scars and undergo completely unnecessary things so that WE could have life.  When I think of the love that I have for Poppy and I haven’t even seen her, I haven’t heard her cry, I don’t know if she’s a good sleeper or has brown hair or has a cute personality or if she’ll, in fact, have chubby cheeks, but I know that Matthew and I love her enough that we’d restructure our lives for three months, watch our loved ones restructure theirs, even allow myself to leave my other children for a time and take such dramatic medical measures.

I am NOT trying to compare myself to Jesus Christ- I really hope this post isn’t taken that way.  I don’t see myself as heroic because of this process and I know that ANY parent placed in this same situation would make the same choices we have, and if they wouldn’t it would be for completely unselfish and legitimate reasons.  The love between a parent and a child so profoundly displays the love that God has for us.  I could never have fathomed how much my heart could love until I met my son, and I experienced that same love again when I met my daughter.  I guess laying in a bed post-surgery, seeing a scar that feels ugly and irreversible and seeing the measures so many others, along with Matthew and I, were willing to take, helps me see and appreciate the love that Jesus has for me more profoundly. 

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how Jesus could love us or we feel like we’ve heard it our whole lives and it’s sometimes a little bit cliché.  But it meant something new and different for me to experience that level of sacrifice for my baby and know that it doesn’t even scratch surface for the sacrifice that I know has been made for me.

And completely unlike salvation, I know that who Poppy is and who she will become will be far greater than someone else’s scars- she has her own scars and has had to exhibit her own strength to survive.  I hope that someday my scars and the scars that our family all bare from this process will tell her that we loved her before we ever knew her, that she has amazing worth that goes beyond reasonable measures, and that God was faithful to bring her through so much before she even took a breath in this world.  I hope that it will give her confidence and that it will also draw her to the God who created her and loved her even more than we can imagine- but that we can imagine even more closely than we used to be able.