Читать книгу Breaking Through the Clouds - Dannie Gregg - Страница 5

When Jordan and I were married in March, 2009, I was already blessed to be a mother to my stepson, Cason. I truly loved Cason and we developed a relationship that was unique. Our relationship began like you could imagine. At first, Cason was very protective of his dad. If I ever sat next to Jordan, Cason would come push me away and sit in my spot. He never really said anything about it, but you could always tell that he needed time to get to know me. He needed time to see if I was good for his daddy.

In an effort to begin to build a better relationship with Cason, we began to set aside time each day for just the two of us. Every afternoon, Cason and I would play while Jordan cooked dinner. It wasn’t long until Cason would choose to sit with me instead of Jordan. On Saturdays, Cason started to go to work with me and be my little helper. After about a year of working on this relationship, during bath time one night, Cason called out, “Mom!!” I looked at Jordan, stunned because he had never called me mom before. He had always called me Dannie. So after the initial shock, I got up and went in the bathroom where he was.

“Why did you call me Mom?” I asked.

Cason said, “Because I wanted to. Don’t you want me to call you Mom?”

I said, “If that is what you want to call me then I’d be happy for you to call me Mom.”

Growing with Cason was hard, but it was a necessary part of making a family. Jordan and I knew that we wanted more children, so we had to start that process by building a solid foundation for additional kids. We didn’t know the Lord yet, but we knew that the three of us would have to be a solid group of people so that we could encounter whatever came our way next.

We wanted a large family, so we were excited to start having more kids as soon as we could. Seeing that my relationship with Cason was growing, we wanted to take the opportunity to begin building on the family we had.

However, when I went to the doctor for my yearly checkup, my doctor explained to me that I had a condition called anovulation. He told me that it wasn’t severe and that my life was not in any kind of danger as a result of it, but my chances of getting pregnant were reduced because the ovulation process was necessary for me to get pregnant.

I could feel the sting of doubt start to creep into my heart. I couldn’t imagine my life without children of my own and the thought of that cut me deeply. I had wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember.

I wanted to be the kind of mother my mother was to me. I wanted to invest in my own children with the same kind of passion my mother had for us. I wanted to give of myself so that they could have more and hopefully achieve more than I could ever imagine.

So, when I found out that I might not be able to have babies, my heart sank. I couldn’t believe that I just got married and I had to tell my new husband that I might not be able to have kids.

Not yet believing in Jesus at that time, I didn’t know what to do. I sat in my sorrows and just wished for a better outcome. I had no one to turn to. I wanted to change what was going on, but I didn’t know how. All I could do was hope, but hope in what?

My doctor put me on birth control to get my body to ovulate. It’s funny, as I look back, the way for me to get pregnant was to get on a pill that made it impossible to get pregnant. Nevertheless, I went ahead and did it.

I followed that regimen day after day, and day after day, I just had to trust that the doctor wouldn’t steer me wrong. The process did not comfort me and I still felt very alone throughout the months. I began to hope that if and when I got pregnant, the child I had could be enough to fill the void in my heart.

After three months of birth control, my body started to ovulate normally. The doctors decided to take me off of birth control and start Clomid. Clomid is a medication that helps to ramp up the fertility process in women who have trouble getting pregnant. The doctors seemed so excited that my body had reacted so quickly to the whole process, that I had no doubt that we were only days away from announcing to our families that we were going to have a child.

But twenty-seven days later, I still wasn’t pregnant. Depression was immediate, but I didn’t let it stop me. I worked hard to not let the sadness take over and got myself geared up for round two of Clomid.

“Maybe there was still some of the birth control in my system,” I thought. “I hope that this next go-around would be the one that gets it done.” I could feel myself get excited again.

The days seemed to drag on, but twenty-nine days later, I still wasn’t pregnant. I called the doctor to let him know that I wasn’t pregnant. He informed me that I could only do six rounds of Clomid and if I still wasn’t pregnant, we would have to try something different. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.

What was I going to do? Who could I turn to?

The thought of an end date on this medication was almost more than I could bear. What would we do then? If my body couldn’t get pregnant to begin with, if regulating my cycle didn’t help, and if Clomid didn’t help, what would we do? I couldn’t stand the thought that this wouldn’t work. I had to stay focused. Keeping my eyes focused on the process was hard because the medicine wasn’t helping. The process wasn’t working.

All this time went by and Jordan, the strong, quiet type, was as supportive as he could be, but the fact was, there was little he could do to help. He never really came out and said it, but there seemed to be a calm assurance that, with enough time, the process would work, and we would have a child, but the fact that neither of us knew the Lord, the hope that he shared was just as weak as mine.

I could feel my discouragement and depression start to drive a wedge in between us. I noticed that we talked less and fought more. I heard myself become angry at little things and would speak so harshly to Jordan. I really became harsh and cold to everyone during those months, but Jordan was steady. Seeing him so focused helped me not to give up.

Round three.

After almost seven months of treatment and medication, I finally became pregnant. I could hardly wait to tell everyone the great news of our new baby. Jordan and I were overjoyed at the thought of having a baby together.

I enjoyed every bit of being pregnant. I worked so hard to become pregnant; I wasn’t going to let any part of it be negative. I tried to take every piece of advice I ever got and make it work for my baby. I had nausea for about two weeks, but quickly learned that as long as I snacked on something, I was fine. Plus, I was able to convince Jordan that I needed whatever food I craved because I was eating for two.

With each sonogram, I grew more and more in love with the baby growing inside of me and at twenty weeks, we discovered we were having a boy!

One day while I was working, I felt something crawl across the inside of my stomach. Having seen the movie Aliens, my immediate thought was terrifying, but after a few more flutters, I realized it was my baby moving. I can’t even describe the awe of that moment. As the months passed, when I felt my baby move, I would stop and just soak in every moment. I would let people feel if they were around when he moved.

At the time, I worked a full-time job at a chiropractic office. I was the Assistant Manager and handled all the insurance billing. The job I was asked to do, along with the environment that surrounded me, wore on me every day.

My boss had a feeling that I would want to quit after having the baby, so she became even more difficult to work with. Negativity and stress began to grow within me, and every passing day, my work and my ability to be at that particular job became increasingly difficult.

Stress and anger at work continued to build to the point that we could no longer ignore what was going on. At 30 weeks, my blood pressure began to rise to a point that was not safe for my baby or for me. My doctor made it clear that I was going to have to stop cleaning the house, doing laundry, and most importantly I was going to have to quit my job.

All I could think was, “OH, NO! I can’t be put on bed rest. I don’t know if my boss will approve. She will be even more upset with me.”

Jordan knew my fears of not being able to work, so he escorted me to the office to inform them of my doctor’s decision. As I bawled like a baby, out of fear and worry of what they would say, I told my boss that I had to be put on bed rest.

My manager was stunned.

“Today? Right now? You can’t finish the week? When will you be back? What am I supposed to do while you’re gone? Well, I guess if that’s what your doctors says, go home, but you will have to use this time off as your vacation time and you will not be paid for your six week maternity leave.”

I didn’t know what to say or think. I was glad that I didn’t have to go back to work for a while, but the way that I was treated, even in that moment, made it difficult to relax. I struggled to be okay with being at home instead of working, but I continued to tell myself that it was good to be able to rest and help my baby grow strong in a much safer environment.

The first day or two of lying around was great. Although I was getting lots of rest, it drove me crazy how dirty the house was and I wasn’t getting to clean it. The stress seemed to build as my work would call me to ask questions.

“Where’s this?”

“Why is that done like that?”

“What does this mean?“

Half the time the answer was simple and it seemed like they were just calling for the sake of bugging me. It got to the point that I didn’t just hate when the phone rang; I even began to fear it.

I was bed-ridden in every sense of the term. I wasn’t allowed to do for myself and I was constantly being told to relax. How was I supposed to relax? I was working just as hard laying there as I was before.

Soon, I was hospitalized for the night, because of all the “rest” I was getting. The doctors monitored the baby and everything seemed fine, so I was told to go back to my doctor the following week.

At my 35-week checkup, my blood pressure was 200/100 and I was sent straight to the hospital for a procedure that would test my amniotic fluid to determine if the baby would be able to survive on his own. Something inside the amniotic fluid allows the doctors to know if the baby’s lungs have developed to the point that he is able to breathe on his own.

Just the thought of having to go through another test made me stress even more, which wasn’t good for my blood pressure or the baby.

What if I couldn’t support him and his lungs aren’t developed? What then? Doubt, fear, and worry do not come close to describing how anxious I felt in those moments.

After being admitted to the hospital, three or four nurses and a doctor walked into my room and began to explain the procedure to me. A needle as long as my arm would be inserted into my bulging stomach, while a nurse used an ultrasound machine to guide the doctor to my uterus without injuring me or the baby.

Easy, right?

What they failed to explain was how they expected me to just lay there and let this happen, or how they could keep my baby from flopping his way right into this giant needle, or how painful it was to have a needle poked into my pregnant belly!

All I could really do was hang on tightly to Jordan’s hand and watch the monitor.

Jordan, on the other hand, was calm. He stood next to the bed holding my hand. He spoke very little and was gentle as usual. His calm demeanor was always such an encouragement to me. Some people may have found his unflappability to be unnerving, but I found that it calmed me. When beepers and buzzers and monitors and doctors couldn’t seem to get quiet for even a few seconds, Jordan was always calm; he would just hold my hand and smile.

After collecting a sample, they slowly removed the needle. I’m not sure which hurt more, needle going in or out, but if they had taken any longer to get that thing out of me, I would have punched someone.

The physical pain began to subside, but the worry remained constant. The beep of the monitors and the periodical tightening of the blood pressure machine were constant reminders of how slowly time was passing. Every minute seemed like an eternity and few words were spoken because everything we had to say to each other rang hollow and dull.

After a few hours, my doctor came in with the results from the test. My baby’s lungs were mature enough that he could survive on his own. It was best for baby and me if I went ahead and delivered.

I was terrified! I was not ready to have this baby! I didn’t even have his nursery ready yet; I didn’t even have our hospital bag ready… nothing!

The whole time the doctor was out, I just knew that he would come in to say that the baby wasn’t ready so I would just go home for another week. I kept thinking that I didn’t even feel like I had high blood pressure. I felt fine. I wasn’t ready to deliver.

However, the doctor returned and let me know that it would be in the best interest of my baby and me that we deliver as soon as we could. We would make whatever arrangements we could in the next few hours, but this baby was coming whether we liked it or not.

The plan was set to deliver the next day. I would be induced at 6:00 a.m.

The next morning on February 13, 2010, everything went as planned. At 9:00 a.m., my doctor broke my water, and at 12:39 p.m., I delivered Colt Wesden Gregg. He weighed six pounds and nine ounces and was 19.5 inches long. He was the most beautiful thing I could have ever imagined. It took all I had to let someone else hold him. I never wanted to let him go. We had worked so hard to bring him into the world; I wanted to hold him forever.

I quit my stressful job to stay at home with Colt and the lack of stress helped us to become pregnant again. Six months after having Colt, we became pregnant. There were a couple of times we would get a scare about the progress of the pregnancy, but when I went in for an ultrasound, everything was fine.

We rode this rollercoaster of fear and relief over and over. The second child is said to be easier to have, but in reality, it was all the same. These two pregnancies were so similar that it was scary. The best part was that I didn’t have to go to work in that office anymore.

Jordan would keep Colt while I went to all my doctor appointments, so he and Jordan grew very close. Colt loved riding on the tractor, or even working on the pump truck. He would just ride along in the car seat and stare at his daddy. Every afternoon Jordan would come home and spend time with Colt and Cason while I cooked dinner.

It’s funny how our roles reversed by this time, but I can look back on it and know that it was the time we spent together that helped us build such loving relationships. I loved watching him play with his boys. I could tell that he was the kind of father that my boys needed and I was sure that this next child would love his daddy just as much as these two did.

On June 2, 2011, we were blessed again with another little boy, Cotton Lee Gregg. I had been able to go full term with no major complications, and our family seemed complete.

I was on cloud nine, having my boys and getting to be a stay-at-home mother too. Having children fifteen months apart is hard. They were like twins, but they were always just out of sync. Colt and Cotton were constantly at different stages in life. I was trying to potty train Colt and Cotton was into everything. I ran around like crazy trying to keep up with them, but we had a great time. We played and laughed and loved the time we had together.

As they grew, I couldn’t help but sit and stare at Colt and Cotton. They were like two peas in a pod. They became best friends. Colt and Cotton did everything together, while Cason, our oldest, was at school. Always laughing and playing, they got into everything. Once Cotton learned to crawl, he would follow Colt everywhere. Cotton loved when Colt played peek-a-boo with him. It was easy to see that these two would have a special kind of friendship.

Running through the house and around a laundry basket was their favorite pastime. It didn’t seem to matter what the game was, they loved to play it together. They loved to giggle and make silly games out of everything they saw. As a mother, there is nothing more beautiful than the sound of your kids having a good time. I tried to cherish each moment we had, because one day those moments would be gone.