A proud father

Don't feel like a trend is starting, but I am having diarrhea of the mind (my wife will love reading that) and I figure it is better to write and share my thoughts as opposed to letting them slip away into the unknown regions of my mind where these thoughts will only be found if a therapist uses her special powers of looking into my soul to pry them out.  I cannot help but think as I stare out my window and listen to music (Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack) how lucky I am to have had such an amazing daughter. 

How is it that these special children are able to reach so many different people in a way that could possibly never happen if they were "normal"?  I laugh at the word normal because even though I may seem normal, I couldn't be further from it!  I have read so many blogs about parents who are going through some of the same struggles that I have and their stories have done nothing but minister to my heart as I deal with my issues of pain.  I know so many people have come to know my daughter in a way that is truly amazing, and I have God to praise for that.  I love Whitney so much and I still feel the hole in my life with each waking moment, but I just don't know how else to say it other than I am a proud father of the most amazing daughter ever. 

Our Story

First of all, thank-you for stopping by our blog.  We don’t know what has brought you here, but we are so glad that you’ve stumbled upon our little spot on the web.  Feel free to poke around, look at pictures and read through old posts.  We’d love to hear from you, too so leave a comment if you feel like it.  Through sharing our story, it is our hope and prayer that somehow, our experiences will speak to your heart as much as they have been molding and shaping our hearts along this journey.

  

So where do we start our story?  Boy meets girl?  That’s a good start, but I’ll keep this part brief... Boy meets girl at Bible college... They fall in love, get married, travel the world together, go into ministry, then finally settle down and decide to start a family.  So that’s the gist of how our love story began, but of course there is so much more to it than that.  What’s a good story without some trials, triumphs, challenges and hope?

     

Nice to Meet You

Introductions are good... I’m Sheyenne and I’ve been married to Sean for almost 6 years.  Sean is a local outreach/missions pastor and I work for a non-profit pregnancy care center.  After we’d been married 2 years or so, we decided it was time to start a family.  However, after 3 years of trying to get pregnant, scores of testing, a diagnosis of ‘unexplained infertility’ and some low-level fertility treatments, we decided to start an adoption.  We stopped the fertility meds, and with a great deal of excitement, sent in our application to adopt a baby boy from Ethiopia.  That was the first week of July, 2009.  July 31, on a wishful whim (more so than a realistic hunch) I took a home pregnancy test.  Much to my absolute amazement, it was positive!  For the first time in my life, I saw TWO pink lines!!  We put the adoption on hold for the time being (the program we were adopting through didn't allow simultaneous pregnancy and adoptions) and excited began dreaming and praying for this miracle of a life growing inside of me.

Two Pink Lines!
It was clear from the very beginning that this little life beginning inside of me was all God’s doing.  It was as if God wanted us to know all along that this baby was not conceived by any of our real efforts... Not the medicines, not the testing, not the doctors and certainly not our timing.  (Sidenote: Now that we are at a new chapter in this journey, we have seen God’s timing in so many ways.  But that’s for a completely different post.  I’ll link to it here when I finally write it, so stay tuned.)

Everything was going well in the first trimester of my pregnancy.  I only had a tiny bit of nausea, no puking and for the most part, I felt great!  By my 4th month, I barely had any baby bump showing.  I thought it was just because I have a small build.  From the very beginning, I had an uneasiness about my pregnancy.  I attributed it to the difficulty we’d had getting pregnant, and first-time-mom nerves.  But on the day we went for our “half-way there” ultrasound (I was almost 19 weeks), that feeling got stronger.  Before Sean and I left our car to go into the doctor’s office, I look at him and said, “No matter what happens, we are in this together, right?”  He hugged me, told me I was silly and reassured me he'd be by my side every step of the way.  We prayed then went in to find out the sex of our baby.

Its a Girl!

 Since I work at a pregnancy center, I have the privilege of seeing many ultrasounds.  I can pretty much tell “girl parts” from “boy parts” at first glance.  When the sonographer moved her wand over my still-small belly, I saw the three little tell-tale lines... A girl!  Sean said he knew from the beginning that it was a girl and to be honest, I think we were both slightly disappointed.  (I had thought all along that it was a boy.)  But as the sonographer continued to check out our baby girl, we began to fall in love with her.  While I was watching our baby on the big screen in front of me, I noticed some of the measurements that the sonographer was getting... Her head seemed to measure correctly with where I should be, but her tummy was measuring very small... Several weeks behind.  When the sonographer was taking a close look at her heart, I could see three bright spots that I knew I hadn’t seen before on any 'healthy baby' ultrasounds.  I wasn’t really sure what that all meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.

Something Is Wrong

After the sonographer had thoroughly checked and measured our baby, she told us she needed to go talk to the doctor and she had us wait in the waiting room.  I knew that wasn’t good.  We’d seen several couples go in before us for ultrasounds... They got to just leave when they were done, smiling as they exited while looking at the black and white pictures of their little baby beans.   When we finally got to talk to our doctor, he said there were some ‘soft markers’ that concerned him.  It could mean some kind of genetic problem, but most likely it was nothing.  He just wanted us to go to the Children’s Hospital to have it checked out by a more sophisticated ultrasound machine.  Our joy of finding out the gender had been quickly dampened by the fear of the unknowns and what was to come.  Our doctor told us we needed to get in for that appointment as quickly as possible because we were running out of time.  “Running out of time?  For what?” I thought.  He explained that we only had a limited amount of time left terminate our pregnancy, if something was wrong.  WHAT?!  Was he out of his mind?  Just half an hour earlier, I saw my baby girl’s beating heart on a huge TV screen.  ‘Terminate’ our pregnancy?  Get rid of our baby girl?!  I couldn’t believe what he was saying.  

Sean and I decided to go ahead and go out to eat like we had planned.  (We’d said earlier if it was a girl, we’d go to Olive Garden.  If it was a boy, we’d go to a seafood restaurant in town.)  We ate a great dinner at Olive Garden, celebrated the fact that we now had a daughter, and tried to not worry about what could go wrong.  We chose her name-- Whitney Jill-- and prayed and cried out to God to heal our daughter.  This is pretty much where our story picks up with Sean’s first post HERE.  

In case you don’t have endless hours to read through all our old posts (:-) I’ll catch you up to where we are now... After nearly a month of testing (and being advised multiple, multiple times to 'terminate' our baby), we found out through an amniocentesis that our worst fears were coming true... Our baby had a fatal condition called Triploidy .  She could die any day.  Most babies with triploidy don't make it past 8 weeks' gestation.  It was a miracle our baby had made it to 22 weeks.  We struggled.  We grieved.  We prayed.  We sought God.  But when it all came down to it, we knew that Whitney was God’s from the very beginning, and we chose (against the advice of our doctors) to continue to carry Whitney until God took her home.  We would not choose to stop her heart... That precious heart we saw beating on the screen.  God had blessed us with her little life for some reason, and we determined to honor both God and our daughter by continuing to carry her in love.

Whitney was born into heaven on February 11, 2010 at 12:58 p.m.  She was 13.6 ounces and 26 centimeters (about 10.5 inches) long.  She was perfectly formed.  Beautiful.  

I would be lying if I told you this journey was easy.  I would be lying if I said that I was strong every day.  Multiple times throughout our pregnancy, I needed my husband, family and friends to remind me of God's goodness.  But God is good.  And His loving compassion is written all over the pages of our story.  I hope and pray that you can see it as you read our hearts. This blog shares our honest struggles with life, God and losing our daughter.  It also shares the precious, priceless hope we have in Christ and the promise we are clinging to-- that we will one day hold our daughter in our arms again... And she will be perfect.  Whole.  A new creation.    

Here are some highlights from recent posts:

The Beginning 

The Amnio Appointment 

Ultrasound Pictures!! 

The Diagnosis 

Maternity Pictures

Third Trimester! 

He Sings Over Me (God's Loving Care)

Day Before Delivery 

Whitney's Birth Story

So that's our story.  Like I said before, we'd love to hear from you... what brought you to our website, where you're from, who you are, etc.  But most of all, we hope that the short life of our daughter has some kind of impact on those around us.  She forever changed our lives and the way we view so many things.  We are parents of a baby who never breathed in our arms, but who also never knew anything but perfect love.  We were so blessed to be able to carry her in that love her entire life, and we rest in the knowledge that her life was not in vain.  God is continually using Whitney to shape and mold us into the people He wants us to be.  

First thoughts since Whitney's birth

Ok, here we go...I have been wanting to write for some time now and not even sure on what, but simply to write and share some of my thoughts and emotions from the past few weeks.  It is amazing how quickly everything can change.  I remember packing before a trip 2 weeks ago thinking about how much time we still had with Whitney and even joking in my head how I wished she would come during March Madness so that I could watch some good basketball with her.  I remember coming home and watching the Super Bowl with some friends and thinking nothing really because in my mind we still had 10 more weeks with our baby. 

Well, all that changed and the reality of life came flooding into prospective yet again when we went to the hospital to find that our baby girl's heart was no longer beating.  I wish I had some divine moment then, but I did not.  I just did everything I could to be "strong" and not cry in front of the nurse.  When the nurse could not find Whitney's heart beat I felt betrayed.  It was bad enough knowing that we would not get to see our daughter grow up, but now to not even hold her alive was too much.  What happened to the hope that we were holding on to?  Why could we not even catch a break in that moment and was I asking too much?  It is easy to give an over-spiritualized answer to my questions.  In the end I am fine with not knowing why, if there even is a why, and simply that God loves me and my daughter is with Him.  Well, even after writing that my heart still hurts and the pain hasn't gone away so I guess those weren't the magical words to take away the pain, dang it!

I guess I never thought this was real.  I remember Sheyenne telling me that we were pregnant and the tears of joy that were shed as we rejoiced together and I remember the doctor telling us something is wrong with our baby and the tears of sorrow as we cried uncontrollably together, but there were many moments when these emotions felt so alien and everything felt so unreal.  Even when we went to the hospital on Thursday morning there was still a part of my mind that believed this was all one horrible dream and that soon I would awake from it.  Well, the last part was true and I quickly woke up from my dream world when my wife began feeling the contractions that came one after another as the domino's started to fall. 

I remember after Whitney was born and even after I was able to cut her cord that reality crashed down all around me.  The nurse gave her to Sheyenne and everyone left the room and Sheyenne asked if I wanted to hold my daughter.  I said yes and instantly when that little precious body entered my hands I lost all control of my emotions, the ones that I had tried so hard to keep in the past 24 hours.  Everything that felt like it was not real went away when I finally held my child in my hands and I knew in that lifeless body were also the many dreams that I had when we first found out we were expecting.  I am sorry to be cold, but this is the first time that I have tried to think through my emotions at that moment.  I lost it, I could not even begin to regain any type of composure and I am grateful that no nurse came in because I might be locked up in a crazy house.  I was crying tears of sorrow that have never been felt before as I saw the life that I helped create was in my hands. 

She was beautiful though.  Nothing can compare in the beauty that I saw as I looked at my child, my precious little daughter.  She had my wife's face and it was stunning.  I wrote this in her memorial letter and shared it with my family, but I do think God spared me the pain of having to watch her be taken by another man who could never love her as much as her daddy could.  I am a dad, I am a dad, I am a dad!  This is my pain now.  Am I a father?  Can I be a father when my daughter is in heaven?  My brain is telling me yes right now but I have a hard time getting the message to my heart, because we know if our heart does not believe it then it cannot be true.  I am a dad, and even though I do not get the perks of fatherhood like seeing my girl smile, her running into my lap, or a tax write off; I know I am still a father.  I am still a father.

I wonder what God sees when we are first born.  I don't even want to get theological but I wonder what feelings of love spring up from his heart every time a new born is welcomed into this world.  I wonder what the welcome is like into heaven.  Is it like coming off the airplane to Hawaii and everyone gets flowers around their neck or is like a military welcome at the airport with signs and cheering and hugs and kisses?  I know as a parent I wish I could have welcomed my little girl into heaven but I will settle for the first time I get to see her she will be alive and perfect.  I cannot fathom heaven and I know that our broken views of what it will be like are nothing in light of what heaven will truly be.  I have some images in my mind, and for now that will do.

I praise God for music and being able to redeem all music for his glory.  Many songs have touched my heart and maybe I will share some of those later, but now I want to share some lines from a song by Incubus.  The chorus goes like this:

Love hurts but sometimes its a good hurt, and it feels like I'm alive
Love sings when it transcends the bad things 
Have a heart and try me cause without love I won't survive

It would have been easy to abort and not even think twice about our baby because we knew the pain that would follow.  It would be easy to forget about her and push away anything that reminds us about her to not feel our loss again.  The problem with that is we love Whitney, and with that love I embrace the pain because it reminds me that she is real and that this was not all a bad dream but that it was my dream come true because I am the father of the most beautiful daughter that is running around with Jesus wherever that may be.  I love my girl and I cannot begin to tell you how much I love my wife and how amazing she is.  That is enough for now, and I cannot tell you all who have followed our journey how much you mean to us and how your support has encouraged us through our dark days.  Your prayers have all been felt and answered.

Tiny Feet

There is no footprint so small that it cannot leave an imprint on the world.

 

We have so much that we want to share, but words are hard to come by these days.  Please know that we are so thankful for all of your prayers and messages and love.  We have gotten every note and comment and treasure each and every one of them.  We are thankful for your prayers, as they are carrying us through these days.  Hang with us... I promise to write about her birth and the just the beauty of it all.  It truly was perfect in every way.  Our hearts are heavy and sad, but trying desperately to cling to the hope of holding our Whitney again.  Some hours are easier than others, but most are hard.  Whitney was perfect in every way... we saw so much of both Sean and I in her.  Life truly is a miracle.  Ok, more later.  Love you all. 

Tomorrow We Meet Our Angel

Tomorrow we will meet our angel, but today she has already met Jesus.  

I stayed home from work yesterday because a nasty cold was kicking my butt.  I had contractions on and off all day, but starting about 2 o'clock this morning, they became consitent... about every 5 minutes.  I called my dr. first thing this morning and they told me to go to Labor & Delivery.  Sure enough, I was having contractions.  The nurse couldn't find Whitney's heartbeat with the doppler so they ordered an ultrasound.  Sure enough, the ultrasound showed a still baby.  No heart beat.  

So our plan is to go back in tomorrow and induce stronger labor, if it doesn't pick up on its own in the mean time.  My mom gets in tonight from Egypt along with my sister from Phoenix.  (They're flying in on the same flight!)  I am hoping for one peaceful evening at home with them before the craziness begins tomorrow at 7 a.m.  I know mom is going to be so tired.  :-(  Pray for her strength and health after the long flight over from Egypt.  My dad and in-laws will also be coming in this weekend.  I am so thankful for the family that we have rallying around us.  I'm not very good at asking for help or just letting people love me... I like to be doing things for them too.  So this is going to be a challenge in many more ways than just one.

I am going to work on memorizing some focus verses tonight for my labor and delivery.  They say with first time moms (I'm a mom!) it can take a long time.  And since I haven't slept in over a day and a half, I'm thinking its going to feel extra long.  Please pray for Sean, for strength to get through this... he carries so much of my weight and I couldn't have asked God for a better life partner to walk through this chapter of life with.  As I type he is on the phone making arrangements with the funeral home in the midst of cleaning and doing last minute laundry.  He's my hero.  

So tomorrow we meet our angel.  When we started this journey, we didn't know how it would end.  Now, its clear that this journey will never truly be over, for I think I'll always be learning and growing and changing from this.  But another missing piece of the puzzle is coming together.  I had hoped to meet our daughter alive, but that's not the way it will go this time.  But I am finding all my strength and peace and, yes, even joy in the knowing that she is with Jesus.  And some day we will hold her in our arms and she will be more alive and well than ever.  I also find great comfort in knowing that she has several loved ones waiting for her in heaven... first and foremost, her Grandma Jill as well as Uncle Bill.  Take good care of her until we can all be reunited.  No more tears.  No sadness.  No pain.  Just joy.  And praise.  And most of all, Jesus.  

PS= Can I add that I'm still really, really scared?  Cuz I am.  

Checking Things Off...

Yesterday's doctor visit went well.  Except for the part where the nurse told me I didn't even look pregnant.  How could I be 30 weeks?  Well lady, my baby is sick. Bah!  Heard a quiet heartbeat and will hopefully get an ultrasound sometime in the next week or two, in order to check Whitney's growth (or lack thereof).  

Today pretty much sucked.  But we got a couple of things done that we really needed to.  This morning, we met with the perinatal hospice, Angel Babies.  They lady we met with was super helpful.  She's going to hook us up with a L&D nurse at our hospital who will give us one-on-one birth coaching (good thing, since I've never been through this whole labor and delivery/contractions/giving birth thing) and will be able to show us around the hospital ahead of time.  She gave us the names of a couple funeral homes... and can I just tell you that my husband is my hero.  He's going to do all the calling around to the different funeral places to find the best price for us.  Apparently, they can vary greatly from one place to another.  He's so good to me.  Angel Babies is also going to get us in touch with a photographer who will do some picutres for us at Whitney's birth.  We'll get to meet her ahead of time, too which will be good.  

One thing that the lady at Angel Babies suggested is that we make good memories with Whitney now.  I guess I've kinda thought about that before and have sort of been doing that, but I haven't been really intentional in making those memories and documenting them.  So Sean and I are going to be more deliberate with the time we have with her and making it special.  For instance, Whitney LOVES Indian food.  Surprising, right?  Even when I'm not pregnant, it usually gives me heartburn and other unpleasantries (sorry, TMI... but really, who among us is immune to Indian food?) but the other night we went to our usual Indian spot, Tandoori Nights, and I ate so much!  But not only did I eat so much, it tasted better than EVER and I had no problems with it at all... not even the slightest heartburn.  So baby likes that for sure!  I can't wait for my mom to get her next week so we can make some more memories together.  

After that meeting, we went to lunch then headed over to the hospital to pre-register.  Ugh.  So many questions and reminders that there is something wrong with our baby.  Signing a car seat waiver.  Yes, I know I have to have a car seat to take the baby home in.  Oh, how I pray I will need a car seat.  But I know that I most likely won't.  Our backseat will be empty on the drive home.  Signing waivers for my baby.  Sign your name, and where it asks for "relation to patient" print "mother."  Yes, I am a mother.  A mother without her child.  Question: Is this your first?  Yes.  Question: Do you know what you're having?  No.  (I lied.  Couldn't hold back the tears anymore and just wasn't interested in having that conversation.)  *sigh*  So a couple things down, but so many more to go.  I am thankful that we have this time to prepare for everything but it just gets tiresome.  

I'm settling in for a hopefully relaxing weekend with my kitties.  Catch up on some DVR and finish off that Cherry cobbler I made last night.  Yum.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

29 Weeks and Counting

 I can't believe I am in the end stretch of my pregnancy... I'll be 30 weeks on Friday!  January went by way too fast.  I kind of had a little breakdown on the 31st, when I realized just how crazy fast another 4 weeks went by.  We're getting to the point where we are having to make decisions that we've been putting off for a while... two sets of birth plans (one for if Whitney's heart is still beating when I'm ready to deliver, and one for if it is not), directions for comfort care if Whitney is born alive (please, God!) and a host of other things that are not so fun.  I'd rather be decorating a nursery.  We are meeting with a social worker from Angel Babies hospice on Friday.  While I am not exactly looking forward to this meeting, I do think she will be able to answer a LOT of questions that we have.  I am so thankful for the supportive agencies that we have found.  

As you can see from the pictures, Whitney is growing!  Praise God!  But because she has no amniotic fluid, I don't think she's able to move much anymore.  I have gone days without feeling a real 'kick'... only little flutters every now and then.  Needless to say, it makes me worried. I rented a heartbeat monitor online this weekend and will hopefully get it soon... But again, like so much of life, I have no real say in anything!  I just have to keep trusting that God's timing in bringing Whitney into the world will be perfect.  But I'm just not ready to lose her yet. 

I go to the dr. again on Thursday.  We haven't been able to get in for another ultrasound to check her growth.  However, our dear friends, Megan and Jimmy gave us a gift certificate for a 3-D ultrasound of Whitney!  I am so excited to do that!  Thanks so much friends!  We are going to schedule it when we go to the dr. this week!  Oh!  And other exciting news... my mom is coming to visit next week!!  Yes, next week!  She wanted to come spend some time with me and Whitney while I am still pregnant.  And of course, Sean too.  :-)  I can't wait for her to come!  I am so thankful my dad offered to fly her back here... its no easy trip from Cairo to Fresno!  I am really looking forward to her visit.  

Other than that, I've just been trying to get our house in shape for the family we will have coming in the next few months.  As spread out as our families are, we are so blessed to have them planning to come and be with us after Whitney's birth.  

Love you all, and thanks for your prayers.  I keep thinking of the words in the song "I Will Carry You"... 

"I've shown her photographs of time beginning,
Walked her through the parted seas
Angel lullabies, no more teary eyes,
WHO COULD LOVE HER LIKE ME?"