Friday's visit

I woke up Friday with a lot less anxiety than I thought I would feel...I can only attribute that to the prayers being lifted up for us.  I figured I would wake up a nervous wreck, but that didn't happen. 

The original plan was for us to have an hour of genetic counseling and then go for our ultrasound.  We ended up getting a call on Thursday for the genetic counseling to be cancelled and moved to after the ultrasound, if necessary.  We arrived at the diagnostic center at 10:30 (James and I met mama and Lisa there) and only had a short wait (yay).  Our ultrasound nurse was very nice and explained everything that she was doing as she was doing it.  The ultrasound took a while because it's so in depth...I can't think of anything that she didn't look at - hands, feet, bones, bladder, brain, fluid, ovaries (crazy to think that God gives females these organs even at 20 weeks old...praying for her future children)- everything going on in there.  Of course, she couldn't tell us anything so she left to let the doc review everything.

As soon as the doctor came in, her first words were "your baby is beautiful" and I just cried with relief.  Here's the deal - other than her small head, everything about the baby is perfect - brain is developing, organs are normal, measurements are on track.  So the small head concern would be microcephaly - which is a scary, rare disorder that I've read way too much about this week.  The doctor explained to me that microcephaly is diagnosed as a head circumference 3 standard deviations away from the mean.  Yeah that's way over my head...no pun intended.  The end result is that while our baby's head is small, it does not fit those criteria and she is confident that she will be born with a small head, but nothing wrong with her.  She used the word "normal", and then stressed that normal isn't a word that she uses very often.  I will have to have another ultrasound in the 3rd trimester as a follow up.

I am so thankful to God for this reassuring appointment.  I try to be pretty open and honest, so I'll admit that I'm still nervous inside.  I know myself well enough to not be surprised by the (crazy) thoughts that I've still got going on and the compelling urge to research other moms that have had similar experiences. I have another 4 months to figure out what God wants to teach me through this.  I'm sure that He wants to prune away some of this obsessive anxiety that I've always had - and I want Him to.  I know that it's normal for moms to worry...but I've always been the type of worrier that can't shut it off...I get consumed with worry over a particular thing for weeks on end and I can't make the thoughts stop.  So honestly, I pray that God would use these months to help me work through that.

And here's the thing - I've said that I want my baby to be perfect.  But it dawned on me today that no matter how she's developing, she IS perfect because God is making her...she's being knit together right now as I feel her kicking away and she's exactly what God wants her to be.  And I'm already honored to be her mommy...God chose ME to be THIS child's mommy.  It's a privilege and I'll spend the next four months with a focus on taking care of myself and of her and growing closer to the Lord...with maybe a little more research thrown in :-)