Day 2: God, Help - by Derrick

We decide it is best for me to go back to work today. We do not know what the future will look like, and I should save as many off days as possible.

Throughout the day, a million thoughts race through my head. I look up random diseases and issues our baby may have on the Internet. No one has said clearly that our baby will die, but no one has said that our baby will live, either. Not everything is fatal according to the Internet, maybe there is still hope. Work is a helpful distraction; I hope Janette is okay at home alone with the boys today.

I am thankful that Janette and I have the same convictions, attitudes, and thoughts on everything going on. I am thankful we have and will have each other; I could never imagine going through something like this alone.

We did not have to discuss or say very much to each other last night. We both assumed that on Tuesday, the doctor would tell us that our baby would not be born alive. The doctor would probably encourage us to abort the "fetus", and we would have to prepare to be insistent on keeping our baby to term.

Everything we have been planning and preparing for the baby is no longer important. The cleaning of our house, rearranging of furniture, training the boys to sleep in the same room together, gathering back newborn items from friends, our last family vacation as a family of 4, our babymoon. We have a whole list that can wait. Few things seem important to us anymore, we try to spend extra energy with the boys tonight but we both just want to sit in silence and crawl into bed.

Janette's Labor and Delivery nurse mom also comes to the same conclusion as us: our baby is going to die, though she doesn’t want to say it either. Janette tells some of our friends. I don’t think most people understand what is going to happen until we clearly say our baby is going to die.

I hope we are wrong.

God, help my baby.

God, help me to lead my family. I don’t know what to do.

Psalm 139 

"O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

    you discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down

    and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

You hem me in, behind and before,

    and lay your hand upon me.

…..

For you formed my inward parts;

    you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

    my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

    when I was being made in secret,

    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

    in your book were written, every one of them,

    the days that were formed for me,

    when as yet there was none of them"