Our miracle baby boy

When I was 4 months pregnant, my blood test indicated that our baby boy had a 1:66 chance of having Down Syndrome. Though it is only a screening test and not 100% accurate, we were still taken aback by the result considering that the average risk statistic for my age was about 1:600. My doctor was naturally very concerned and advised that we do an amniocentesis (a diagnostic test) to find out for sure. With the knowledge would come the inevitable decision of whether to continue or terminate the pregnancy. Anxiety overtook us the Saturday that we received this news (you know it's bad when you just had your blood taken on Friday and your doctor rings on Saturday morning) so we scheduled our amnio for the following Tuesday.

I don't remember much of that weekend except both of us were so overwhelmed that we hugged together and wept. And especially so after we found out that the risk of miscarriage while having an amnio done was the same as our baby having Downs. Being first time parents, we were at a total loss of what to do and could only pray. We spoke to close friends who prayed with us and for us and finally we decided that it was far worse for us to lose our baby boy, our blessing from above. If God so chose that our little one would have special needs, He must have a purpose for this and He would help us through it. We decided to trust God and cancel the amniocentesis.

On Monday before we could ring the clinic to cancel the procedure, we received a call from them instead asking if we'd forgotten our appointment that day to have the amnio done. Turns out there was a mix-up and the laboratory had mistaken our appointment for Monday instead of Tuesday! That was the affirmation we needed! Even though we had made our minds up, it took a long time for me to really come to peace with it cos there would always be a nagging thought at the back of my head going, "What if...?" But God is gracious! Through the next few months He constantly assured me that everything was in His hands and I was eventually able to let go and rejoice as my due date drew nearer.

And of course there was my clumsy fall on rainy Christmas Eve followed by the unfortunate car accident 3 days before the end of 2008, so yep it's a miracle our Nathan made it at all! He is a real toughie! To top it off, there was no sign of labour for a long long long long time. Our sweet pro-natural doctor was willing to let us wait it out since I had no health problems but I was getting increasingly stressed as I did not want to have labour induced. I kept asking God, "When??'" But He had already heard our prayers. Exactly 1 week past my due date on the day I had my gynae's appointment, my mucous plug came out in the morning and as I reached the doctor's clinic, my waterbag burst. Very messy indeed! As I was only 1.5cm dilated then, he said labour might still take a while to begin so I would probably have to go to the hospital the same day to induce labour in case of infection.

We decided to go home first cos we had been praying for labour to start naturally and a clear sign of when to go into hospital.We didn't have to wait long! By the time we got home, contractions began and by 3pm they were lasting 1min long at 4min apart. When we got to the hospital at 3.30pm, I was 4cm dilated. The nurse said I had gone in too early and would be there a long time but we knew otherwise. Within 4 hours I was fully dilated and pushing! Pushing did take a long time though cos I was so exhausted they had to give me milo to sip in between contractions!

On Feb 20, after much tears and joy, our bundle of joy finally arrived at the very timely hour of 21:21. He is a real darling and even though sometimes it's so hard to deal with the crying (i'm still fairly clueless!) and breastfeeding (not as easy as it sounds), everyday I thank God that Nathan is here with me, healthy and well. I would have given up anything just for him to be safe. And maybe that's what being a mommy is all about.

Hello baby boy, we're so glad you're finally here with us :)