Doubly Blessed

Again this morning I am searching my journal and recording God's answers to so many prayers. I guess I'll have to pull out journals for the past year or so because the prayers go back that far at least.

And all those streams of prayer flowed into a river of it this week.  Anticipation has been building for months as we waited for our new twin grandsons to be born.  A double blessing in answer to more than a year of prayers.  Week by week I prayed for them to stay safe inside their mom--to grow and develop to full term babies. And I prayed for God's will for their delivery but told God my desire was to avoid a c-section and allow those babies to be born vaginally.

My daughter is an obstetrician and knows all that could go wrong in the process of pregnancy, labor and delivery. She prepared for everything and planned she would probably deliver premature babies. I continued to pray for healthy full-term boys and rejoiced as each week went by that moved her closer to her due date.

And, praise God, she made it to the date planned to induce her labor--just over 38 weeks.  Jim and I drove from Erie to Chicago on Sunday, greeted our daughter and her husband, and then settled into the hospital waiting room with her mother-in-law and father-in-law and our other daughter.

Then...we waited.

We were excited at 11:00 pm when she was 5 cm. dilated.  Now we knew those babies' birth dates would not be 10/21/18 but the doctor predicted they would come by "early morning" on 10/22/18.

Then...we waited.

At 2:00 am she was still 5 cm. then at 4:20 am we got a report she was 6 cm.

Then...we waited.

When she was still 6 cm. at 8:30 am I went to the beautiful hospital chapel (see picture above) to pray and I texted friends who are prayer warriors to pray with me.  By 9:30 she was still 6 cm. and they decided to wait just one more hour before doing a c-section.

Praise God...then there was progress.  By 10:30 am she was at 8.5 cm. (I mean, I'm not sure how you get it measured down to 8.5 cm. but it does sound more encouraging than 8 cm.)  And by 12:30pm she was getting ready to push.

Then...we waited.

Three hours of pushing later and at 3:15 pm they moved her to the operating room where the delivery would take place.  Twins are delivered in the operating room because of the risk of complications.

Then...we waited.

Finally...at 5:28 pm we got a text message with this picture and our joy broke out in the waiting room!

On the left is George Bradford who was born first at about 4:10 pm at 5 lb. 8oz. And on the right is Augustine Shaw who was born next at 7 lb. 1 oz.

It was more than two hours later before I could see my daughter in the recovery room and she recounted more of the story.  It seems that after 3 hours of pushing, George's heart rate decelerated so they needed to use the vacuum extractor to deliver him.

Then...Augustine's heart rate plummeted so he was delivered by emergency c-section. I think my daughter deserves Continuing Education credits for enduring such an array of pregnancy/delivery experiences.

Everyone is recovering now. (I mean, I think I'm almost recovered--lol)  Little George is still in the NICU because he wasn't able to keep his blood sugar level stable, but we hope he'll be out soon.

And so I sit and thumb through my journal and look at so many prayer requests that were answered--not exactly all in the way I'd hoped--but still answered fully and completely by our loving God.

Doubly blessed for sure.