Reaching My Full Potential and How You Can TooSample

The Doctor’s Office 

My wife, Patty, and I had our first child in 1989, a beautiful baby girl named Jacky. Her birth weight was just shy of nine pounds, which meant she practically hit the ground running and hasn’t slowed down since. So, we had experienced this joyous anticipation before. Now it was ten years later, and after two miscarriages and serious concern that we might be unable to bring a brother or sister into the world for Jacky, Patty was once again pregnant. 

It was spring 1999, and Patty and I were sitting in the doctor’s office in Westminster, Maryland, waiting for her ultrasound appointment. Patty had been through pregnancy before and was bolder than I was when it came to really digging in and asking doctors the hard questions, so she could have handled the visit on her own and shared all she learned with me that night. But I wanted to be there. We had spent ten long years trying to have a second child, and I wanted to be by her side. It was a good thing too.

Patty was in her second trimester, which is an especially exciting time because the embryo has begun to look like a real person with arms and legs and even little facial features. We both were excited when her turn came to see the doctor, and she went into the procedure room to be prepped by the technician. The procedure is typically carried out by a technician who uses a sonogram to record images of the child, which the doctor later evaluates before meeting with the expectant parents.

The tech moved the transducer around Patty’s belly while she looked up at a monitor at all the weird images that flitted in and out of the screen until he got an image of the child. And there he was—that was going to be our son. Patty and I smiled and snuck a look over at the tech as he closely examined images of the brain, heart, and spine. After a moment, he made hard copies of the images and excused himself without saying much. Patty said she felt a little awkward, and a little bit of concern crept into her mind at the technician’s whispers in an adjacent room as she waited for the doctor to come in.

When the doctor entered the room after what seemed an unusually long time, he chatted generally about how Patty was feeling and went on to explain that he had discovered some white spots on the baby’s heart. It is common knowledge that women in their late thirties, as Patty was, have a higher chance of having a child with Down syndrome or some genetic challenge. White spots were an early indication that something was wrong with the baby’s development. The doctor recommended additional testing to be sure. We asked, “What will the additional testing tell us? Is there a risk in doing the tests?” He answered that the tests would identify the presence of any chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down syndrome. He added that, yes, there was a small risk—the baby could be hurt or even killed—in performing amniocentesis, a process in which the doctor draws amniotic fluid from the mom and baby by using a long, hollow needle stuck through the mom’s abdomen and into the uterus. Miscarriage was also a possible result of the procedure.

Patty and I had arrived at the appointment full of the hope and happiness of expectant parents, and now we were left feeling anxious and even a little frightened for the future.

I felt sad and then angry at the doctor who knew so little about Patty and me that he simply assumed we would undergo further testing. If he had known a little bit more about where we were coming from, he might not have been so quick to recommend testing. He might have understood why we felt insulted by his strong insinuation that we might decide to terminate Patty’s pregnancy if we did find something wrong. He might have realized that we saw the baby as God’s gift to us after having gone through ten years when Patty was unable to carry a baby full term. He might have appreciated the fact that finding out our baby would be a special child only served to make Patty, a protective mama bear, bond with her child even more.

The nine months of Patty’s second pregnancy were busy ones full of changes for our family. But there was one thing we knew for sure: there would be no testing, and we were going to have this second child. The only question that remained was whether the doctor’s concerns would show up when our child was born.

Respond

Describe an unexpected gift with challenges from God in your life. What did God show you through that experience?

Prayer

Father, thank you for all the gifts you have given me—especially the challenging ones. Today may I share Your greatest gift, Jesus, with someone.