First, a mom whom I had seen throughout her entire pregnancy and planned on assisting with her birth very unexpectedly lost her baby.  Then, a family friend lost his five month old baby.  And, to top it off, two other long time patients had miscarriages- one of whom was expecting twins.

Two funerals in one week can certainly make anyone yearn for the next week to start quickly; to say the past few days have been hard is an understatement.  Plus, I think you take everything a little bit harder when you are a sleep-deprived, hormonal, nursing mom.

I don’t share all of this with you to ask for your notes of sympathy or prayers for me because I had a rough week.  I just wanted to share this to point out some very important lessons I feel I have learned while watching these families gracefully walk through their tragedies.  Man, I hope if I had to experience the same grief that I could handle my situation with the grace that these families did!  I have cuddled with Harper longer this week, cherished the mundane moments and held him a little tighter than normal.  Watching other people loose their children really humbles you as you hold yours.  I told the Lord each morning that I trust His Sovereignty and know He has a plan, even if we don’t always understand it.

In our culture, something I see on a daily basis, is that we are so busy and we really fail to realize how blessed we truly are and cherish every moment.  This is especially true during the life stages of pregnancy and infancy.  How many moms come in savoring every day of pregnancy, especially at the end?  Hardly any!  More often than not, in the last trimester of pregnancy, I am encouraging moms that they will have their babies soon.  They are begging me to use any tricks I have to help them have their babies sooner than later.  They tell their growing babies, “It’s time for you to be evicted!  Mommy wants her body back.  I am so tired of being kicked in the ribs and having to go to the bathroom all the time.  I am so ready to have this baby!”  And what about new moms?  Yes, they appreciate their babies and talk about how cute they are.  But, I know I am just as guilty as anybody, there are also the constant complaints about sleep deprivation and having to feed around the clock and never getting a break.

Well I have a whole new perspective after the past few days.  Unexpected, horrible events have a way of stopping you dead in your tracks and really making you look at life with a whole new perspective.  You know what?  Those parents who lost their babies would kill to live out the worst days of pregnancy and miss out on all those hours of sleep to hold their babies.  I should be so ashamed that I have complained at all, I am so blessed, and I don’t deserve any of it!  If I am blessed to experience the nausea of a pregnancy again, hopefully because of these precious families letting me watch them deal with their tragedies with such poise and grace and being able to learn so much from them, I won’t complain about how I feel.  Instead, I hope I will look at it from the perspective of how blessed I am to carry life.

What a wonderful thing that our bodies are made to force us to rest when we are growing a baby, that they won’t allow us to eat things or breathe in air that would harm our growing child.  When I get to the stage where my joints ache from carrying all that weight, hopefully I won’t moan about it.  Instead, I will hopefully be so grateful to have made it to that point in pregnancy; and, I will cherish every second I have knowing exactly where my baby is and feeling his/her every move.  Right now when Harper is still wanting to wake up constantly, and he wants to nurse after only having gone an hour since the last feeding, I am trying to take my negative thoughts captive.  In this season of Thanksgiving, I have learned a really hard lesson about truly, truly being so very thankful.  What a new, hard perspective to attain!  I hope I can pass this lesson on to other families because we are so blessed…  Beyond measure!  Hold your family extra tight, cherish life!!