A couple of weeks ago my life was thrown into complete disarray as my wife and I discovered that we are expecting our first child. As far as disarray goes, this is the good kind. Nevertheless time has moved at a different speed than before and my weeks have run together. It doesn’t help that we’re experiencing a miserable heat wave or the fact that we have had guests most of last week and will again this week. And none of them are baby related – they were planning on coming before we learned about the baby.
Aside from being excited I’ve had a few other thoughts on the pregnancy so far. My first is that I have no clue how other women do it. My wife has the luxury of staying home and she has been tired and miserable off and on. She’s coped alright but I can’t even imagine her getting up and being at a regular job at 8 and coming home at 5.
Another thing that has struck me is how many doctor’s appointments there have been. We’ve had three appointments in the first two weeks and have to go back this week because because the baby isn’t quite as old as they thought and they want to be able to hear the heartbeat this week. Not too long ago there weren’t any of these appointments. While I’ll do anything to make sure that I have a healthy baby, it’s not like these appointments have done anything to improve its health and none have been checks because something seems wrong. They are just routine and if something should happen to be wrong, there’s nothing they can do about it at this stage anyway. I have health insurance and maternity coverage and I already feel like I’m being nickeled and dimed to death. My first appointment cost $25 out of pocket, I’ll probably pay at least that much for the second appointment and the third I already paid a $40 copay for two minutes of the doctor’s time to tell us that the baby isn’t as old as they expected and we’ll have to come back next week. And that doesn’t include the cost of what the insurance won’t pay for the ultrasound – or the second one we’ll get this week. I knew having a baby was an expensive process but I thought that most of that would begin at the delivery and the costs going forward, not right now.
Most importantly though, I touched by the wonder of God’s creation. When we discovered we were pregnant I immediately thought of Psalm 139:13 – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” I plan on putting this on the wall of our nusery. Last week I saw a tiny little speck on the ultrasound, no bigger than a grain of rice. By this week that tiny little speck is supposed to have a discernable heartbeat. I can’t tell you how amazed I am by this. I can’t fathom something so small having a heartbeat and I can’t fathom the fact that one moment its heart will just begin to beat. Even though it is what happens in every living creature there doesn’t seem to be anything natural about this to me. There is no way that anyone can convince me that this is the result of a random process and it all just fell together. Only God can do something like this and only He can give life and start a heartbeat in a being so tiny that only recently have we even been able to detect its presence. I find myself amazed and in awe of God the further we go into this process.