Where to begin? Well, how about the beginning? The dates don’t make sense. Really if the due date that the fancy measuring devices came up with are to be believed, Nina was either conceived while Grandma Sue was in town (not bloody likely!) or while Melissa was still on birth control.

And then there was the half-time show. June 27th, in the middle of the night, Melissa sounded panicked in another room of her sister’s house and my gut dropped out from under me. I don’t need to get into detail here, but there was a convincing argument that we had lost our little baby girl, and I think the idea of this tore into Melissa and I both. I think I aged about 10 years in one night, and Melissa probably went through something similar, at least on the inside. The doctor we saw in the ER didn’t really even give our little girl a 50% chance — even when the ultrasound showed a fetus literally waving hello. I was so scared that she was waving good-bye, I didn’t even feel like I could tell anybody. I read up on what had happened and was heartened to hear that some people had gotten through this just fine. We prayed. Family and friends prayed.

But when we drove home shortly thereafter, a nurse gave us some bad news. The pregnancy hormone in Melissa system, which should have gone up had instead dropped to levels that caused the nurse to simply give up and say, “I’m sorry.” Again Melissa and I hung our heads and hearts low — we’re not the kind to be reactive to opinions, but medical professionals were telling us we weren’t going to make it, and it was hard not to believe them. We prayed. Family and friends prayed.

(There’s a lot more to the story, but to save the blog page from being too long, I’ve “split” the page… just click here for more –> ) Read more