Two of my friends Nkiru and Omar, who lived in the United States, had just had babies. They had both had twins. Super excited for them I whipped out my card and bought gifts online to be delivered to the babies. Nothing lavish, just toys I knew would make the babies happy before they dissembled/chewed up the parts days later 🙂

Later that month also, after I ran it by my husband, I took my pay check and sowed a seed in my local assembly where I worshiped. I didn’t speak with any other person about this; I didn’t need anyone to know what I was sowing for. As I dropped it, I worshiped. I told God ‘this isn’t even half as much as what the doctor’s bill is for a procedure I’m not sure will put my babies on my lap so I’m giving it to you. This is my connection… You give millions of women babies for free, so I’m not going to be an exception. I trust you I won’t have to pay for mine and so I connect with my own babies with this seed’

I knew that an IVF or any other medical procedure to assist conception was a gift; Medical science was there to help women like me who could not conceive naturally; the doctors weren’t evil, they were simply doing their job. I also knew that the formation of a baby in a woman’s womb is a big miracle in itself whatever the process involved. A successful IVF or IUI was a miracle still and to be honest if I had sensed for one minute that an IVF was the way my babies were to come, I’d have gone ahead with the procedure. But I didn’t, because I knew God wanted me to just calm down and let Him do His thing. I knew that the only thing I was to do at this point was be calm and wait for His next instruction.
‘Be still…’

So I sowed my seed and prayed. I had to still my spirit. It wasn’t an easy process but thank God for the Word. I started eating it like bread. At work I’d keep my headsets plugged in as I went about my business, the 10 minutes’ drive to work were like 10 precious hours; I’d worship, Id speak the word, I’d speak in tongues as I drove. My husband drew up specific confessions from the Word of God concerning fruitfulness, I declared them, and we declared them together. We didn’t let up. Every morning after we prayed, we’d speak those words over my body, over our home. We would thank God for our heritage of children. I dropped the seed in May 2011; June went by. But on 11th July 2011, I realized I had missed my period! Wow! I was too excited! The day I found out I could hardly keep my feet on the floor. Beyond the Home Pregnancy Test (HPT) I wanted to get my blood tested. I went to the hospital and there via a blood test, the doctors confirmed again that I was pregnant! Yay!

I had to make a long distance two week trip for work and after the doctor cleared me to go, I went.  He asked me to come back after my trip by which time the baby would be big enough to be seen at a scan.
2 weeks later at the scan the radiographer told me words no expecting mother (especially one who’s waited so long) wants to hear; “my baby had stopped growing”. Before I even set out for the trip, at 6 weeks the baby, my first baby ever to be conceived in my womb, had stopped growing!
He advised us to wait and see if it was temporary. He said he had seen things like that before and weeks later the baby turned out to be growing proper. About a month later we went back. There had been no improvement. I wasn’t pleased but I giggled like a little child as the doctor told me he was going to have to carry out a D & C on me to evacuate the products of conception.

My husband and I smiled at each other, the doctor was puzzled. He was used to seeing inconsolable mums but there I was, smiling. I smiled, my husband smiled. We were happy; God had proved to us that we could actually have babies naturally. So we figured that if it could happen once, oh then it was definitely going to happen again!
On September 12th, 2011 at 12.21pm, as I lay in bed and waited for the pill the doctor had inserted to “dissolve”/detach from my uterine wall the precious baby I had waited so long for, I made this entry in my secret diary on my iPhone:
“Lord, you know I’d rather not be going through this but from the depths of my heart I worship you because ALL things are working together for my good Lord, even this! Thank you for the great plans you have oh Lord, thank you…”

(Tears fill my eyes right now as I reminisce… But then I digress…)

In the evening, I went in for the procedure. I felt so embarrassed at the theater. Back and forth the doctor and the matron “scolded” me albeit playfully. They wondered why I fidgeted so much. Hadn’t I had a D&C carried out on me before? They made it sound like a D&C for a young woman was a normal occurrence like menstruating! They actually expected that I had done it several times before. Ha! Anyway after the procedure, I healed fast. Then I patiently waited for my period to come since the doctor had told us we could go ahead and try for another baby soon as I saw my period. 

About a month later on a Friday evening I started spotting. I was elated, my period was starting. Another baby was in sight. By the following Sunday morning as we prepared for church I felt like an open tap. Blood was literally gushing out of me. If I as much as cleared my throat, I’d feel the blood gushing out (TMI sorry) and then there were the grape like clots. I kept soaking up and changing sanitary towels. This wasn’t normal. Somehow I still made it to church. By evening the flow had reduced to spots. Two days later I went to the hospital. The doctor insisted that I couldn’t be pregnant. It must be my period. But he ran a pregnancy test, and it was positive! I wasn’t sure what to think. I had gone alone to the hospital thinking it was just a routine visit. But when he started to say that based on the grape-like clots I told them I had seen, he suspected a molar pregnancy, I telephoned my husband to please meet me at the hospital.

The doctor told us that he wanted to admit me immediately and perform another D&C. This time one more thorough than the last where I would be under general anesthesia for the duration of the procedure. He wanted to carry out the procedure the next morning and send the specimen for histology. He said a confirmed molar pregnancy meant two things; if it was benign, we would wait for at least 6 months before we could as much as start trying for another baby but if it was malignant, we would have to wait about a year till my system was confirmed clean of the ‘tumors’. I was in a blur. This time I wasn’t smiling. But I wasn’t prepared for the admission just yet. I had only driven out for lunch from work and he wanted to admit me, just like that. I asked for the night to prepare myself psychologically, emotionally and then spiritually.

He tried to insist I come in immediately but I wasn’t having it. It was a Tuesday and I hoped to go in for communion service, draw strength from God, and make sense of it all before putting myself under any doctor’s scalpel. That evening in church, I wept. It seemed too much for me. One whole year? Before we could even try? This was October 2011, so I was going to have to wait till October 2012 before I could even think of trying for my own babies! I cried before God. My husband who was seated beside me tried to reach out to me but I was inconsolable. This seemed too much.

The next morning I had a couple of visitors. One of them was Uche again. We talked generally and she teased me lightly, ‘Hmmm after keeping yourself as a single lady like a joke you are going to have two abortions?’ We mused about it, but I knew it wasn’t funny. What she said was true. After she left, I was finally alone in the house, alone with my thoughts, alone with God. I slotted in an old Panam Percy Paul CD I had heard my husband’s driver play some weeks before. It had brought back high school memories and I had bought it off him while he played it in the car. I left it playing in the background as I tried to find refreshing in the secret place. I prayed in the spirit, trying to get to that place in my spirit where I was calm, calm enough to understand why, calm enough to get the specific Rhema for my specific situation. Suddenly I started weeping. It seemed all the pent up emotions and finally found expression. As I groaned and prayed, I heard myself saying, “Lord I am so sorry…” I didn’t get it but I trusted the Holy Spirit praying through me… Finally the words came out of my mouth, “Lord, I am so sorry for losing what you gave me…” 

As those words came out, I knew. I wept even more; I just knew in my spirit that it wasn’t right! The challenge wasn’t with God, He had done ALL he needed to do for me to live a victorious life years ago, He had given me all I needed; what business did I have losing my baby(ies). Not just once, but twice?! I wasn’t throwing a pity party or a blame party, I was simply acknowledging that with God, this was avoidable. I remembered a message I had listened to and I asked myself, “Why in the world did Jesus come?” If He came that I would still be going through these messes in my life then He hadn’t done a complete job. But I knew His job was complete; when He said “it is finished,” it was indeed finished.

(To be continued…)

(first published by Ulu https://spiceymorsels.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/there-were-still-two/)