prayers for baby ewan

If you can't tell by the splashes of blue here now, James and I learned least week that we're having a baby boy. We were delighted to see the pictures of him dancing, waving, kicking, and moving all over the ultrasound. The technician had a hard time getting pictures at times, he was moving so much!!

We already had a name picked out: Ewan Eliezer. Our child has a name. Ewan is the Scottish/Gaelic form of "John" (for the apostle, our favorite personage of the New Testament, Christ excepted), and Eliezer is after Abraham's servant (mentioned by name in Genesis 15, and doing selfless and amazing things for his master Abraham in Genesis 24).

But there was also some less delightful news.

There may be something wrong with little Ewan's heart. The diagnosis is not definite at this point, so we've been scheduled for some additional testing, intended to give the doctors a clearer picture of what might be going on. It's entirely possible that everything is okay (Ewan's daddy's heart is unlike the hearts doctors are used to seeing) and that they just couldn't see well enough, or it is possible that there may be an actual defect. With this, we've also been introduced to the possibility of a chromosomal abnormality, such as Down's syndrome or something similar.

As you might imagine, the past week hasn't been easy. The tears I've cried and the grief I've expressed has come from places deeper than I knew existed, and hurt more than I knew was possible. The news stunned us; this was not what we were expecting with our ultrasound, nor (obviously) was it what we were hoping to hear. We didn't sleep well or at all in the first days after the news, and when I did, I had horrific and violent dreams. Over the course of the past week or so I've felt saddened, angry, guilty, disconnected, and completely robbed of my joy.

Though we are both in a better place now, the coming days and weeks will determine much in terms of the course of our care and where we deliver. Even before I was pregnant, I had my heart set on receiving my prenatal care exclusively from midwives and delivering in a birth center or at home. We love our midwives, and couldn't be happier about the care we've received. But if little Ewan needs to be born where the best medical care is immediately available to him, our plans will have to change. Much will have to change.

All this remains to be seen. Please be praying for the three of us -- though we are certainly hoping and praying for a whole and properly-functioning heart, any other diagnosis will not cause us to love or cherish Ewan any less. This next test is coming up this coming Tuesday (June 1) at 3 pm (Pacific Time).

Thank you for holding us up. The prayers of the saints are really what have held us up and kept us sane during the past week, and what will hold us up in the days and weeks to come.