Hope Made Real

Over the last few weeks I have had MANY people pester me about not posting a new post about the baby, so for those of you that have been on my case---this is for you!

So you are probably wondering why it has taken so long to write this post. There are several answers to that question. For one thing I have had what you might call a text book pregnancy thus far. You see, when you read books or web pages about pregnancy they give you a sort of checklist of what you might expect while you are expecting. Here's a peek at my checklist thus far: Nausea - check, Vomiting - quadruple check, Sore breasts - check, Exhaustion - check, Headaches - check. The Nausea started a few days before we found out we were pregnant, and was quickly followed by vomiting. My vomiting trigger? Brushing my teeth! For the last 7+ weeks I've been having to brush my teeth seated in front of the toilet. Not fun or sanitary. Thankfully I have been nausea and vomit free for the last 4 days! This is the best I've felt since finding out that I've been pregnant.

The other reason I've not posted is that this whole pregnancy thing has seemed rather surreal to me. If I'm totally honest with myself I have to admit that I was just waiting to find out that this whole thing was a dream. There was part of me that didn't want to write about everything for fear of it all going away. After all that God has done for me, how can I still be so selfish? I should be resting in Him, not settling in fear.

Today things just kind of clicked into place for me. I had an ultrasound and instead of seeing an amorphous blob, I saw a miracle. This was actually our 3rd ultrasound. Our first was at week 7 I think. At that time the baby was so tiny it was just a little blip on the screen. Our second ultrasound happened at week 10 when we were unable to hear the heartbeat over my belly. In that ultrasound all I saw was a silhouette of a baby but today (week 13) I got to see God's miracle for me, today I saw my baby. I saw on the screen in the ultrasound room a tiny face, arms and legs moving, a heart beating, a mouth suckling and an adorable body moving to and fro. I was overwhelmed, tears streamed down my face as I realized all that the Lord has done in my life, and all that He is doing in my body. The Lord is so good, so kind, so faithful even in spite of my unbelieving heart. And so in a display of God's goodness I would love to introduce you to "Baby Kavanaugh"




(If you are having trouble seeing the baby in this picture, the baby's head is on the right hand side of the screen. The two bright white parallel lines at the bottom of the head are the upper and lower jaw bones)