Chapter 12: Is She Pregnant?
The Transfer happened on a Saturday.
We had to wait at least 10 days until we could test Aly to see if she was pregnant.
We asked if there was any way we could get in first thing for the pregnancy test and the Tennessee clinic graciously obliged.
We entered the clinic that morning in high hopes that we would get a positive pregnancy. Since the meds Aly were on could through off the traditional “pee-stick” pregnancy test (giving a false-positive) she had to get her blood drawn for the more certain reading.
We arrived just before 8:30 AM and Aly was called almost immediately. We both got up and walked toward the room where she would get blood drawn.
Our hearts were beating out of our chests we were so nervous.
Aly sat in the chair next to a friendly phlebotomist who would become one of Aly’s favorite people she worked with through this whole process.
The whole blood draw took only about 5 minutes and just like that we were done.
We checked out with the lady at the front desk and she said they would call us when they got results.
"Honey, I kind of thought that we would find out immediately" I said to Aly as we walked out of the building.
"Yeah, so did I. I guess it’s just more waiting until this afternoon." She replied.
We tried to get our minds off things by going out for breakfast and then hanging out at my office while I tried to get some work done. It was a long day. Eventually Aly decided to go home and try to take a nap to make the time go by quicker and I decided to stay at work.
Since we were considered patients in the NJ clinic and just working with the TN clinic on an out-patient basis, NJ was supposed to let us know the results.
In working with RMA we would discover that we rarely received any calls or emails before 3pm.
2PM came and went and Aly was sick of waiting so she called TN to ask them for results. I won’t say who she spoke to, since they probably weren’t supposed to release the results, but the person on the other end of the line told her something like this:
"Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but according to your HCG levels you are pregnant."
It goes without saying that Beautiful Al was ecstatic.
She called me and told me the good news.
Her HCG levels were very high, and we knew that sometimes that can mean twins. The following week was full of dreams and conversations about how much our life would change with twins.
Twins were what we wanted.
Twins meant we wouldn't have to go through this again.
More importantly twins meant both frozen babies had survived.
My mother has a history of coming up with “pre-gender” names for her grandkids. Prior to the ultrasound when my sister would find out whether she was having a boy or a girl my mom came up with the name “Reepacheep” for her pre-born baby, my niece. Reepacheep is the energetic warrior mouse from the Chronicles of Narnia.
This is usually so we can all have a specific name to pray for and so we don’t just refer to the baby as, well… “The Baby”. I thought this was a uniquely Granna trait until our next door neighbors told us they came up with “Baby Blueberry” before they knew whether they were having a boy or a girl.
My mother called us that week and asked what we thought about the name “Piper”.
She came up with Piper for Aly”s love of music and also after one of my favorite Pastors who I listen to named “John Piper”.
Granna was having trouble coming up with another musically oriented name, so we thought about it and decided “Prelude” worked perfectly. Prelude is sort of an introduction to the main musical piece.
Piper seemed like a masculine name and Prelude sounded somewhat feminine.
We prayed for Piper and Prelude every day.
Before meals we would ask God to bless the food to Aly, Piper, and Prelude.
We prayed that God would continue to knit together Piper and Prelude inside Aly’s womb.
We let ourselves imagine that Piper was a boy and Prelude was a girl and how perfect that would be.
We followed every recommendation that RMA and our local fertility clinic gave.
Aly took every medicine exactly as prescribed.
She ate healthy, didn’t strain herself, got plenty of sleep, and spent lots of time relaxing.
There couldn’t have been a better patient.
The following week we had our first ultrasound with the Tennessee Clinic.
We told our Sunday School class about the appointment and had even more people praying for us. There were lots of prayers that week.
Thankfully the TN clinic once again gave us the 8:30 AM time slot for the ultrasound.
We arrived excited and nervous.
Aly was especially nervous because she wasn’t feeling any morning sickness yet and her body wasn’t feeling any different than it did before pregnancy.
We got called early and went into the ultrasound room and nervously waited for the Doctor to come in.
After about 5 minutes he came in, followed by two nurses.
We had done our research online and knew that in this ultrasound we would only see the “sacks” that Piper and Prelude were inside and they would still be too small to be seen on the screen.
They performed the ultrasound and the Doctor found one of the sacks relatively quickly.
"Congratulations." He said, "We can see the sack well. Let’s see if we can find another one."
After a few minutes of looking around he removed the ultrasound device and said the one sack looked great and congratulated us again.
As the nurses left they also smiled and said congratulations on their way out.
Every one was out of the room except Aly and me.
I spoke immediately and was short with my answer:
"Let's talk about it outside."
I didn’t want either of us to come out of the room with tears and I knew if either of us said anything more we would cry.
Aly silently picked up her belongings and looked up at me with those big beautiful eyes that asked me a million questions without saying a word as we both exited the room.
I sat immediately to the outside of the room while Aly went to see her buddy, Peggy the phlebotomist for another blood draw.
I over heard the conversation.
"How’d it go?" Peggy asked.
Aly responded, “We really wanted twins and they could only see one sack inside. Does that really mean there’s no way we could possibly have another in there?”
Peggy answered, “No Honey. I’m sorry but that pretty much means there’s only one.”
After her blood draw Aly and I checked out at the front desk and walked out to our car and just sat there in the parking lot for a couple minutes.
"I’m not really sure what to say. I don’t know what God is doing."
"I thought we were meant to have two. Everything seemed to point to that." As Aly spoke a couple of tears came down her freckled cheeks.
We rode back to our house.
I thought about our families. Each of our mothers would be wondering by now why that hadn’t heard from us on how the appointment went.
The last appointment where we found out Aly was officially pregnant we texted them before we even left the Doctor’s Office.
I knew they would begin to suspect that something was wrong with Piper and Prelude.
We called my mother first. Aly didn’t say anything. She was too upset to speak. I held back the tears as I told my mother that unfortunately one of the babies didn’t make it. My voice was broken.
At that point I didn’t know which one.
Was it Piper or Prelude that we would never meet this side of eternity?
Would it be Piper or Prelude who would live with us in our new home, in our new city, for the next 18 years.
I wasn’t sure at the time.
We spoke briefly to my mother and she tried to comfort us and said that one of the babies was with Jesus right now and she knew she had a grandchild in heaven.
We called Aly’s mother next. Aly could only get out “Hello…” before she couldn’t speak due to the tears so I told her mother about how unfortunately one of the babies didn’t survive, but thankfully the other one seemed to be doing well.
Her mother said she was worried something was wrong before we even called.
After the phone calls we just sat next to each other on the couch. Not really saying much. I said a few times, “Honey, God is sovereign. This is devastating but God is sovereign.”
I don’t think it helped her much. It didn’t help me at all.
We decided that Piper would be our baby in heaven, whom we would refer to as “he”. Although Prelude’s name would change once we knew whether we were having a boy or girl, we decided that Piper would forever be “Piper”.
We decided to give ourselves 24 hours to grieve and then tomorrow at this time we would rejoice that Prelude was doing so well.
We would not stop being sad about the fact that we wouldn’t meet Piper in 9 months.
But we would try to stop grieving.
We wouldn't stop thinking about Piper. Every day I think about him.
But we would stop grieving.
Something else happened to me for the first time.
I realized that I had grandparents in heaven, friends in heaven, and now a child in heaven, and for the first time I really felt like I had one foot in either side of eternity as I actually longed to see those people again.
I felt the power of Paul’s words “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). I missed family, friends, and now my child. All of whom I knew I wouldn’t be able to see again this side of eternity. I’m not saying I wanted to die or was even close to suicidal or anything like that.
I guess the closest thing I can compare it to is looking forward with great anticipation a long vacation where I will see old friends but knowing before I leave there’s still a lot I have to accomplish here.
We found out later that my sister’s daughter, our 3 year old niece named Evie, asked my sister that morning before our appointment, “How is Prelude doing?”. My sister found that odd as the last couple of weeks she had always asked about Prelude and Piper.
Today she was only concerned with how Prelude was doing. Even before we knew that Piper was no longer with us.
By that afternoon none of us were concerned with how Piper was doing.
That night we thanked God that Piper was no longer numbered among the 600,000 nameless, tiny orphans indefinitely frozen waiting to continue life.
Piper was no longer a snowflake.
For his short time here on earth he got to be someone's Cousin.
While he was here Piper got to be loved.
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"I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”
- King David, who after 7 days days of hard prayer and fasting discovered that his young son had succumbed to illness and died.
