“How old is she?”
It’s the natural question mothers of infants field every day.
It’s the question mothers of preemies just don’t quite know how to answer.
Tirzah Mae is 2 weeks and 3 days old – if you’re dating from when she left my womb.
But she’s just 34 weeks and 4 days old – if you’re counting gestational age. Which means she should still be in my womb – should still have another six weeks in my womb.
For me, this is the hardest part of being the mother of a preemie.
Tirzah Mae should still be in my womb. I should be protecting her, sustaining her, giving her oxygen and nutrition and warmth. Instead, she lies in an isolette away from me. My body couldn’t protect her, couldn’t sustain her, couldn’t give her what she needed. My body failed her.
I know there wasn’t anything I did to cause the severe pre-eclampsia, wasn’t anything I could have done to have held it off longer than we did. We already managed to keep her in the womb 8 days longer than when we first acknowledged the problem as severe. I, the midwife, the doctors did all we could. My body just shut down that last day and she had to be delivered.
But that doesn’t stop the profound sense of loss and helplessness. I lost two months of pregnancy – Tirzah Mae lost two months of my protection. Now being told my belly’s so small and I look so good for a woman who’s just had a baby takes on a new sting. Now should be a time of glorying in my baby bump, not of rapidly returning to my prepregnancy state. As my little girl thrashes about on her isolette when a new nurse doesn’t know to swaddle her, I try to soothe with my voice from a distance while I scrub in the requisite 3 minutes. She should still be in my womb, nestled tightly to keep her from worrying at her limbs being all stretched out. She should be hearing my voice, my heartbeat, my bowel sounds and breathing all the time, calming her. Instead, she settles for a voice across the room, echoing oddly inside her isolette, telling her that it’s okay, mama’s here.
People have told me, from early pregnancy, that parenting is an exercise in trusting God. I acknowledged that, even as I researched all the right things to do to prepare for conception, to reduce risk of pregnancy complications, to set my child up for the best of health. I had it researched, had the plan worked up, and scrupulously followed the plan – and I had complications nonetheless.
In the earliest days after Tirzah Mae’s birth, when I was struggling most with the sense that I had failed her, the chorus to an old hymn resounded in my head:
“He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
That shadows a dry thirsty land.
He hideth my life in the depths of His love
And covers me there with His hand”
I looked at the Scripture the hymn points to – Exodus 33 – where Moses requests to see God’s glory and God declares that no man can see Him and live. But God arranges a way – He hides Moses in the cleft of a rock; He covers Moses with His hand; He makes His glory pass by. Moses sees God’s backside and LIVES, hidden by God’s own hand.
And God opened my eyes to His character, to how this story foreshadows the cross. Our biggest danger, Tirzah Mae’s biggest danger is not the harsh world outside her mother’s womb. Her biggest danger is to be consumed by the wrath of God. Yet God made a way to protect her – God offers to protect her in the cleft of a rock while He pours out His wrath on His right hand, His only Son.
If God is willing to go to such lengths to hide me, to hide my Tirzah Mae from His wrath – how can He not guard and sustain her in the little dangers of life as a preemie?
As I mourn my inability to protect Tirzah Mae, God reminds me that He is her protector.
And as I mourn my inability to sustain Tirzah Mae, He takes me again and again to the Scriptures that assert that He is the sustainer of all life.
“In Him we live and move and have our being.”
~Acts 17:28
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
~Colossians 1:16
The truth of God’s character comforts my heart and I raise my Tirzah Mae up to God. As much as I love her, He loves her more. As much as I am limited in my ability to protect and sustain her, He is limitless. He is her protector and sustainer. As much as I can be an agent by which He guards her, I shall be – but ultimately, I must surrender her to Him again and again.
She is so beautiful! Thank you for sharing her with us.
You’re learning what every parent has to learn: we are never enough. I am thankful that God knows what He’s doing with each of our lives, each of our days. He knows what He’s doing with sweet little Tirzah Mae. He is enough…. You brought her to Him as He planned. You did good, mama.
What a sweetheart.
Your last paragraph is something we as parents have to remind ourselves over and over. Thankfully we get to be His instruments in the lives of our children in many respects, but ultimately it is all in His hands. And, as you said, it is such a balm to know that He loves our children even more than we do and He has the wisdom to guide in their lives and all the resources needed to care for them.
This time in the NICU can seem like such a long haul, and I think it can take a toll on a mom – not only emotionally, but after childbirth is the time you’d normally be in your jammies at home recovering. It can be such an up and down journey, with progress hopefully most of the time, but the occasional discouraging setback. Praying for you all.
A PICTURE! SHE IS SO ADORABLE!!!!! How tiny and precious and beautiful!!! You look so very happy.
This is the second post I’ve read today about how God gives children and protects and sustains both them and us on our individual journeys. Well said, my friend. Well said.
(P.S. In case I didn’t mention this, she is beyond adorably cute.)