He Hears Your Cries

Our Women's Bible Study discussed how helpful it is to remind ourselves of what God has done in our lives to remember his faithfulness to us and his love for us.  I have found this to be so helpful in my walk with Christ.  In college my roommate and I had a poster on the back of our door that we wrote answers to prayer on throughout the year to remind us of His faithfulness during a crazy time in our lives (I was student teaching with a not so hot mentor teacher and she was in her first year teaching).  I began this blog with the same idea, to remember all that God has done in our life. 

Today I'm getting ready to walk out of the hospital after about 2 and a half days of sitting here holding my little boy.  Monday night Timothy felt hot so I checked his temperature and it was 100.6 under the arm so I knew it was probably higher than what it was reading.  I called our pediatrician's office and they said to bring him into the emergency room.  My prayer the entire drive was protection for Timothy, one because taking him to a hospital freaks me out but also because I knew that kids under 2 months shouldn't have fevers.  Dr. Valente was wonderful.  He was gentle and patient when explaining the tests that needed to be done and the reasons why.  He tried hard not to alarm me while being honest...although the thought of a spinal tap on my 7 week old was alarming.  Every possible test was done to rule anything else out before doing a spinal tap and then he called our normal pediatrician, Dr. Plotnick, and she reassured me that it had to be done.  As a side note, she was on vacation and I'm sure we woke her up or at least messed up her relaxing morning!  By far she's the best doctor I've met and is worth the 35-40 min drive to get to her!  We survived this ordeal and then it was time to sit and wait for the results, however, because Timothy was obviously not looking well we had to stay instead of go home and wait.

It turned out that there were some white blood cells in the spinal fluid so we ended up in the hospital until all the cultures came back 48 hours later.  While I can't say I love being in the hospital, I appreciated the excellent level of care we've received at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.  Every nurse we've had was kind and worked with our schedules, such as working to pair taking vitals with either giving antibiotics or nursing so we're not constantly waking him.  I don't know that I've ever heard "can I get you anything" more frequently than over the past two days (except for after giving birth at Special Beginnings Birth Center).  The nurses and doctors have taken the time to answer my questions and did not make me feel dumb for asking them. 

I also was looking at the hospital from the standpoint of being there with a diabetic (if Marian ever has to come) and I appreciated that the meals come with a list of the carbohydrates behind each menu item and on the menu the carbohydrate amounts are listed behind it.  Plenty of healthy options are available. 

I will say this hospital stay has also been far different from the one we had 10 months ago with Marian.  I pretty much spent the past two days holding my little baby.  Once the iv was in there were not more shots, no entertaining a 3 year old in limited space, no having an incredible amount of information shoved at you while you're still processing the fact that your daughter's life and your own will NEVER be the same.  Just peacefully sitting in a quiet room holding my baby boy.  I'm grateful for the peace only God could give.  This peace allowed me to be grateful instead of frantic; to enjoy instead of fret. 

God was faithful in hearing my prayer and those of our friends and family.  He protected Timothy, our little boy had wonderful care and viral meningitis was a much better diagnosis than bacterial meningitis.  He was comfortable because his Mommy was able to stay with him thanks to family and friends that chipped in to meet Mark and the girls needs while I was away.  If we had a poster in our house with reminders of God's answers to prayer this week we'd have many things to write.

¹⁸ Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

¹⁹ People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. ²⁰ Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. ²¹ Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Isaiah 30:18-20  (NIV)

 

(Timothy has been out of the hospital a week already, but I wrote this while I was there it just took me a while to edit this post)

It's a....

Mark and I can't ever wait to tell anyone that we're pregnant.  It's almost amusing.  With all our kids we've told everyone we know within a week or two (sometimes days of finding out).  Our current pregnancy took us a bit longer to announce than the others because we found out the evening after we arrived home from the hospital with Marian's diabetes diagonsis. 

As a side note, this wasn't exactly a "surprise" baby but it wasn't expected.  In the hospital I was about 95% sure I was pregnant but I thought telling Mark while we were also soaking in all the information they throw at you in a 48 hour time block of diabetic care training might be a bit much so I waited a whole day.  This baby caused a lot of laugther between the two of us out of both joy and total disbelief that God saw fit to give us a diabetic 3 year old and a pregnancy at the same time.  It's odd joy amid sorrow.  We had wanted to get pregnant in November or December, but I can promise you that we would NOT have tried to get pregnant that soon after Marian's diagonsis.  God seems to have different plans.  Which I'm grateful for!  It's been a blessing to get to think about another baby.

Our last two pregancies we've let them be surprises until they were born.  I LOVE doing!  It's so fun to give birth and all of sudden find out.  But we decided for various reasons to find out, if possible, during our ultrasound for this pregnancy.  The baby was more than cooperative.

To celebrate with our family we had a cake cutting at Sofia's 2nd birthday party.  It was such a fun way of telling everyone, including our girls.  Here's the cake:

IT'S A BOY!!!

The girls are still saying its a girl.  I think for Marian its denial and for Sofia its doing whatever Marian does because there is nothing cooler than your big sister. 

We are very excited and looking forward to this baby's arrival in early July.