Since we decided to induce early... we knew that we would need to plan a memorial service for our daughter. I do believe that having to plan everything and wanting to make it as beautiful and as perfect as I possibly could, helped me make it through the 3 weeks between finding out that our little girl wouldn't make it to live in this world and meeting her for the first time.
I wish I had someone or something to blame for what was happening to me...but I couldn't and I didn't. Anencephaly has no known cause...it happens randomly! The only thing that they know that can possibly prevent it (lower the risk by 60%) is a high dose of folic acid. I wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant, my tubes were supposed to be blocked....so why would I take folic acid daily? Even if I thought I could get pregnant, I had never heard of anencephaly...and no doctor had ever told me that I should be on folic acid prior to conception to help prevent neural tube defects. I've known many women to get pregnant in my 33 years of life...none of them ever took folic acid...they all had healthy babies, so why wouldn't I. God was the only place I could turn for help!
I have had a close relationship with God for several years so he was the one I turned to. I don't know why he chose Brinley, I don't know what I was supposed to learn but I do know God's plan isn't flawed. I know that God doesn't sit in Heaven waiting to play cruel jokes on people....he didn't try to hurt me or Brinley. I've known some people who lost a loved one and they blame God, but I didn't. Not saying that I'm better than those people because I don't know why I didn't, maybe it was because I knew being angry wouldn't help me at all. Maybe it was because I knew my little girl would be in Heaven....waiting for me to get there and being angry with God wouldn't get me any closer to my little girl. The Bible tells us that we'll have trials, tribulations & sorrows, it also says that He will not give us more than we can handle...no where in the Bible does it say that we are going to like what we have to go through on the earth (in my own paraphrase of the Bible...it says that this life will SUCK), but it does promise us that it will be worth everything we endure.
I had to go into the doctor on November 14th to start the process. Although we know what we were facing, we still wanted to have another ultrasound just to be for sure that there were no changes in Brinley's condition. I know that God has the ability to heal, he preforms miracles everyday....it has happened before...it could happen again...Right?!? Well, although I guess I knew deep down that my baby girl was to sick, I had to see for myself...one more time. Through the ultrasound, we were able to watch her move around...but the ultrasound tech informed us that she had other "complications". She (the ultrasound tech) wasn't able to get a view of Brinley's right arm and her left wrist/hand didn't seem "normal". She did inform us that Brinley hadn't grown any at all in the last 3 weeks and that she had already turned to make her way down the birth canal. She was ready to be born even before they had given me the medicine to make her ready. My little girl was a fighter....she had made it longer than they thought she would but she was growing tired.
We went into the hospital the following morning, although I was an emotional mess on the inside, I knew in my heart that we were doing the right thing. During my stay in the hospital, I had all of those closest to me there. I had the monitors on so that I could hear Brinley's heart beating, I didn't want to go to sleep because I didn't want to miss a beat of it. The chaplins at the hospital came it to ask us what our wishes were. After talking to them throughout the day, we decided to have her baptized at birth...not because we doubted that she would go to Heaven but so that we could rest knowing that we did everything that we could for her. After 28 hours of labor.... I gave birth to Brinley Faith Morgan!!! On November 16, 2011 at 12:01am our daughter was born asleep and she was just as beautiful as I had dreamed!! Now she wasn't "perfect" by society standards but she was perfectly ours and she was everything we had ever wanted.
We were able to spend several hours with her...We were able to take tons of pictures of her & with her (a professional photographer that was with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep also came to take a ton more pictures). We weren't rushed to say our good-byes, we were able to say the good-bye to our daughter as we wanted to and to take the time we needed......which was the absolute hardest thing I have ever had to do.
<3 Melissa <3
No comments:
Post a Comment