Our Miracle

I have always loved children and for as long as I can remember I couldn't wait to be a mother!  On March 10, 2001 David and I were married and in the fall of 2003 we decided it was time to start a family.  The Lord had other plans...he didn't think it was time for us to start our family yet.  I can't even begin to explain how hard it is to want a child so badly and then being told that you may not have one.  So we tried clomid and then femara to attempt to conceive a child.  After seeing a specialist for infertility we attempted our first AI treatment in the fall of 2005 with negative results.  The sadness and despair I felt during those years was awful but I kept telling myself that the Lord knew the right decision.  I ended up having an emergency gall bladder surgery in December 2005 and we decided to wait for our second AI until after I had recovered.

One weekend in February 2006 I got very sick and I had the strangest feeling that I was pregnant.  I can't even begin to tell you how much money we had spent on pregnancy tests during those years but this was a different feeling than I had ever had.  That Monday I woke up and there it was...a very light positive.  I can remember all the GREAT ideas I had come up with for telling David when we finally got pregnant.  Well.......when you have been trying for 2 years and you FINALLY see a positive those thoughts go out the window!  I walked into the kitchen that morning before work holding the pregnancy test with tears in my eyes and a look of astonishment on my face.  By that evening it had been confirmed by the doctors that I was indeed pregnant.

Over the next 9 months I was told that our sweet baby girl was as healthy as could be, even though I ended up dealing with high blood pressure which resulted in me going on bed rest at 36 weeks and having Gracyn at 38 weeks.  During those 38 weeks I gained 100 pounds which still amazes me!!!  Of course during my epidural they had to take a break to get a longer needle due to the amount of fluid!  Check out my poor feet:


On October 30, 2006 I went to the doctor to check my blood pressure and due to the fact that it was not going down I was told to be back at 5:30 the next morning to have a c-section.  Yep....October 31, 2006 I would be giving birth to our beautiful girl

Gracyn Bernice was born at 8:09 am weighing 7lbs 9oz.


When Gracyn was born I will never forget David coming up to me and asking me what a cleft palate was.  A cleft palate????   Yes...our beautiful daughter was born with an isolated cleft palate which is visable in the above picture. As you can see she was not born with a cleft lip, only a cleft palate. Gracyn was born on Tuesday October 31st and stayed in the NICU until the following Saturday when she was allowed to be placed in a room with me. 

If you don't know much about a cleft palate don't worry...I didn't either and I am a pediatric Speech Language Pathologist.  But I was very blessed to be working at UMC at the time and had a great friend/co worker who specialized in cleft palate speech.  I can't begin to tell you the helplessness I felt the first few days after birth.  My blood pressure would not go down even after birth so I had to stay in the bed the first day and unable to visit the NICU and when I was finally able to visit I couldn't stay long due to complications I was having.

We were blessed to have a wonderful speech path named Mary Lou who helped us tremendously with feeding.  Due to the cleft palate Gracyn had trouble eating and we had to go through many different types of bottles to find the correct one that would work for Gracyn.  Mary Lou didn't give up, she kept trying even to the point that she would go home after work to let out her dogs and then come back to work with Gracyn and her feeding some more.  We call her our angel and we are so blessed that she was placed in our lives. 

On Monday November 6th after a LOT of begging and crying on my part (I wanted to go home!) we were finally released to go home.  Gracyn had to wear a monitor the first year of her life due to oxygen issues and of course we had some crazy feeding issues we had to deal with but I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

I am so blessed that my grandmother was able to meet Gracyn.  Unfortunately Bebe left this earth when Gracyn was only 4 months old but I am so happy that Bebe and Gracyn got a chance to meet.  This was taken the day before Bebe passed away:


In June 2007 Gracyn had her cleft palate surgery and of course it didn't go the way it should!  The one night in PICU turned into 3 in PICU but the Lord was watching over our little miracle and the surgery was a success.






So...Gracyn is definitely our miracle in more ways than one.  I could not imagine my life without her and as I watch her grow into the almost 5 year old that she is now I am constantly amazed by how much she went through her first year of life.  When you look at Gracyn you would never know what her first year of life consisted of.  She is the light of my life!