So time is flying and my newborn baby has quickly morphed into a three month old!!! Boyyyy has it been a journey. This "fourth trimester" has looked absolutely nothing like it did for my baby girl, and I must say it's been more emotionally challenging (see: many momma tears...) for a lot of reasons... most of which were health reasons that were completely out of my control.
To recap, mainly so I don't forget...
Trey was born 9lbs 10oz, lost a whole pound (sad) within two days of being born due to tongue tie/nursing issues... was 8lbs 9oz at 3 days old. I didn't think I was going to be able to nurse him because he wasn't sucking properly!! :( So after excruciating pain and a very hard decision to stop nursing, I exclusively pumped for the first month of his life until our insurance kicked in that helped cover his lip/tongue tie laser surgery... which was an emotionally difficult decision to make in itself.
Prayers and tears.
THEN.
After a month of having very strange wheezing-like breathing noises while he ate, which we later learned was a noise called "Stridor," we received news from the ENT that he was diagnosed with something called Laryncomalagia... aka he had a floppy larynx/breathing defect that some newborns have "and should grow out of by 18 months old." I was instructed to closely monitor his breathing and report back if he ever had blue spells (skin turned blue around his mouth), white face/lips/hands/feet, or any other sign of breathing difficulty. The diagnosis was supposed to be worse between 3-4 months before it got better, so he said to keep a close eye.
A week passed and he was good... still with stridor, but otherwise normal. Then... I noticed the first blue spell. And then the next and the next. Then I woke up to the sound of my baby boy gasping for air/choking for air in his sleep, a few times every night. It was torturous to hear.
I emailed the Dr. who said he was very concerned and instructed me to come in right away. During the appointment the ENT decided he wanted to get the cardiologist involved. Which, also sucks to hear.
So decisions were made and tests were started and we blue spells were still happening and one very scary passing out/couldn't wake up episode happened on a Tuesday afternoon and I hated pretty much every second of it.
I was terrified of letting him sleep... naps or otherwise. I was terrified of SIDS, of him just stopping breathing in the middle of the night. I was terrified of him losing oxygen to his brain for too long and having brain damage. ALLLLL the things. All the things. The deepest feeling I felt: terror. It was a crappy few weeks.
So he wore an EKG monitor on his back for a week (which made car-seat rides mega fun!) in order to record his heart rhythms and see if there were any irregularities. He got that removed and swapped it out for an O2 monitor. On the first day of wearing his O2 monitor, it dipped to 72 while he was perfectly still sleeping during a nap, and we were instructed to take him immediately to the ER.
Prayers and tears.
Smack dab in the middle of all this craziness... God was up to something. Our new church home has been in a sermon series called "Facing the Giants: Stories of real people overcoming real obstacles."
It's about facing the giants in our lives (eg: a tough situation, a bad relationship, a difficult temptation or struggle, ourselves and our fears, etc.) and what to do with them.
Throughout the majority of the series (that had been going on for even before Trey was born), I felt like there wasn't one blatantly obvious "giant" that I was facing in my life. We heard testimonies of people who were going through the RINGER and who were really impacted by this series... but I remember just feeling like it wasn't necessarily "the series for me."
All great info, fantastic reminders, beautiful truth... stuff that I'm sure I'd need to go back and tap into some day..... a day far, far away... but no giants were needing to be slain. At least not at that point. Stainbacks are good.
Then crap hit the fan. With Doctors visits and Hospital visits and ER visits and zero answers.
The Stainbacks were no longer good.
Suddenly. quite literally out of nowhere, I was faced with this huge ugly unexpected giant, and it clouded my view. It taunted me relentlessly. It fed my fears through playing the "worst case what-if" scenarios in my imagination. My thoughts felt out of control, my emotions felt out of control and my fears felt out of control
I prayed through tears almost before every nap/bed time, asking the Lord to sustain His breath while he slept.
I prayed through tears while he was awake and had another blue spell, praying for wholeness and health in his body and brain.
I prayed through tears while he nursed and made the wheezing sound, asking for God to heal his airway.
I prayed through tears every time we drove in the car and he slept in the carseat, that the angle of his cute chubby neck wouldn't make it more difficult for him to breathe.
I prayed through tears that his heart wasn't working too hard during his crying episodes where his chest and lungs had visible retraction.
I'm sure many many others can relate on an even more extreme level (to which, my heart entirely goes out to you!)... that it's one thing for something crappy to happen to YOU, but when it happens to your kid... its literally the worst. A new level of helpless. A new level of heartache. And this was new ground for me, a new situation to maneuver and I was terrified. This giant was all I saw... thought about... researched... look at.
It was in my way- in my face- and totally blocked my view of the SON.
But, He wasn't far away. He never is.
On October 21st, smack dab in the middle of the giant view... we got to dedicate Trey to Jesus. The Son. Dedicating our son to His son.
It was awesome for so many reasons... it's so awesome to be able to dedicate our children to the Lord. To be able to INTENTIONALLY stand up before your church family and say, "we intend, as parents, to raise our child to know and trust Jesus. We will intentionally speak about the Lord to them. We will teach them the ways of God. We won't just accidentally raise them, but we make it our mission to dedicate this child to God and commit, for the rest of their days, to walk with God ourselves and lead them to do the same."
How cool is that? What an honor as parents. What a joy. I love this part and this very heavy responsibility of parenting. I love that God is co-laboring with us and actually INCLUDES us in HIS shaping and nurturing and growing and loving these kiddos. We're a part of the plan, a bigger part than we probably deserve... but He includes us nonetheless. To hugely impact another SOUL. Wow. What a privilege.
Another reason why it was so awesome to dedicate Trey was because we did it in our new church, with our new church Ohana. On this particular day, our pastor (who we love) preached an awesome sermon that hit my heart so unexpectedly. Looking back, it was perfectly timed and perfectly needed for where we were, what we had been through, and what we were going to go through just 4 days later with the ER visit. (God's timing is always perfect!)
To summarize, he discussed the importance of worshipping, and most importantly the importance of worshipping before, during, and after the battle. Of course I've heard this before... I'm a worship leader, have grown up in churches that love to worship God and have been captured by all things having to do with worship. It's important to me. And I've heard this before. I've heard the story of the worshippers leading the troops into battle... blasting their sound, and the Lord using that to defeat the enemy.
Worship is a tool. Worship is a weapon. Worship reminds us of who we are and who HE is.
And no matter what, I will always choose to worship in the face of the giant. I will proclaim truth, and I will fight for truth for my kids. Yielding my weapon that is a melody in the face of fear or uncertainty. Thank You Jesus for leaving us with this hope we have in You.
