THE BEGINNING....When we found out our baby was sick.

We’ve been debating how best to introduce our blog. We feel that it’s important for everyone tounderstand the past, so that you can better understand the present.

The dilemma that we come across, though, is how much of the past do we explain. Well, we think we’ve come up with something that will work, so here goes.

We figure the best place to start is the day that we found out that Nathan was going to be sick:

On May 1, 2007, Bekah was scheduled for her monthly OB visit and the 20-week ultrasound. As I’m sure many of you can attest to, when it’s your first child, you mostly just want to know if you’re having a boy or a girl. That’s the BIG DEAL of the ultrasound…or so we thought!

After learning that our life would be blessed with a little boy, the sonographer (in the kindest way she knew how) informed us that according to what she was seeing on the ultrasound, some of the baby's organs were appearing to be out of place.

What does that mean? How do you respond to that? Why do I suddenly feel empty?

The sonographer then informed us that the doctor would explain more to us in just a few minutes. As we were being escorted from the ultrasound room to the doctor’s office, the sonographer quietly, but sincerely, said “I’m sorry.”

We sat anxiously, nervously, and emotionally in the doctor’s office, holding each others’ hands for support. The few minutes we waited seemed like forever until the doctor finally came in.

So what’s going on? How sick is our baby? What do we do now? And a thousand other thoughts run through your head. You want to ask them all, but you don’t know where to start. You want to focus on every word the doctor is going to say, but your head is so full and swimming that it’s hard to focus on anything.

The doctor informed us that our son had what is called a Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH). However, due to the restrictions of their ultrasound equipment, they were unable to determine the severity of the hernia. The severity of the CDH would go a long way in determining the odds of our son’s surviving at birth.

WHACK! Punch in the head. Kick in the stomach. A little of both.

In less than 30 minutes, the joy of finding out that we were going to have a son was dashed with the news that our little boy was going to be sick. Just how sick, we didn’t know yet. But when we woke up that morning the farthest thing from either of our minds was our son’s mortality. And now here it was trying to beat down our door. And there was no where to hide.

So what happens next?