First and foremost let me say, all things that are good and wonderful come from God. I am in awe of Him and the miracles He performs and today we get to be the recipients of His amazing works. In the book of Mark we are taught how the Pharisees and others watched Jesus perform miracles and they still wouldn't believe that he was the Messiah. They denied him his honor even when they had concrete proof right in front of their faces. They persecuted him and criticized his every move. However, that didn't stop Him from continuing his ministry. He kept performing miracles for those who believed and trusted in Him to reward their faith. He knew what that would do though, it would cost Him his life but he fulfilled God's plan anyway so that you and I could live and have everlasting life.

Now behold one of Jesus' miracles in modern day... Today I went to an appointment with my perinatal doctor. The purpose of this appointment was to get pictures for our Riley appointment with our cleft team on the 28th. I can happily say that we are able to cancel that appointment because our son's diagnoses as having a cleft has been retracted. Yes, our son has a misdiagnosed cleft palate and lip and he no longer is believed to have anything on his face or his palate affected by a cleft. The whole fact that we will not have to put our 10 week baby through any surgeries or that I will be able to nurse him like I have longed to since I found out I was pregnant is shocking enough. But then you put the story into perspective and you get to see God's amazing power to change "the ruling on the field" as our pastor at Grace Community calls it. Two ultrasound techs and three highly trained doctors who thought they had it right are now shaking their heads wondering what happened. I know there are several of you thinking there has to be a medical reason why this has happened and I could give you one but I can't explain why that many trained professionals could possibly get it wrong. This is simply and truly God showing off, remember all good things come from Him and Him alone. Simply in awe.

People hurt people, physically and emotionally. I have a hard time trusting people with my emotions since people hurt me all of the time, I'm quite sensitive to what people say and do. I'm not perfect so I know I have done the same. But this is an issue. We found out three days ago that our son was going to be born with a cleft palate and a cleft lip. I was sad about the palate because I knew breastfeeding was out of the question and I would have to pump, But, I started on feeding plans and research and found out that I didn't need to lose the bonding time with him. Even though he wouldn't really be able to latch and get much milk from me for nutrition, we could still have the nursing for comfort, for both of us.

So, all in all I was okay. BUT (big but) I wasn't ready to share this with the world yet. I didn't want pity and I didn't want minimizing from someone who hasn't gone through it. In the grand scheme of things, yes I know, it could be worse. He could have life threatening complications or his cleft could be bigger and more difficult. However, this is our baby and our journey. We will have to live with this every day. I don't want people to feel sorry for us either. As a mother that has gone through weird looks at our daughter and many questions I was afraid of getting my feelings hurt once again. As I am writing this post, I am wondering when I will actually post it.  Really what that means is I wonder when I will be able to trust you with everything that we are facing. Will you ask some weird question that leaves me feeling sorry for myself or my baby? Will you share a story of someone that you once knew who had their surgeries 20 years ago and say, "Their scar is barely recognizable." Or will you just say, "Oh, it's just cosmetic." By the way it's NOT just cosmetic. Having a cleft palate, children can face many surgeries, including issues with their hearing and speech. I don't want to tell you how to respond to me, I just want you to know my heart is heavy and what you say can effect me. When Summer's eczema was at it's worse things like, "Oh poor baby" or "I'm glad my child doesn't have that" were some of the most hurtful things people could have said to me and they said them often. I am naturally a defensive person so I had to pray daily that I wouldn't smack the bejeezies out of someone for their comments. The sad thing was that most generally it came from family. Not some stranger.

The glorious thing that I am being taught by God's grace is that I can trust Him to get me through anything. If I can trust in Him than I suppose I should give grace as well and trust in you. I think my biggest fear was I wouldn't hear, "Oh he's so cute!" when we finally posted a picture of him after birth, we would hear something along the lines of, "Oh, what is wrong with his lip?" I have to realize not everyone is going to read this post and I will probably still get those questions and I will probably still cringe and ask for Jesus to help me to respond in a loving way that doesn't show bitterness or anger. This has been a long 18 days trying to figure out how I would deal with telling people. Originally, I was going to wait until our Riley appointment but I am feeling a nudge from God to share sooner and when God speaks, I listen. There's a reason for this, he is an intentional God and makes no mistakes. So here I am, trusting Him to trust you. Please don't make me regret that... haha just kidding! :) Please feel free to comment below. We would love to hear words of encouragement and know people are praying for us! Although, we don't know the extent of Little Man's cleft and probably won't until birth, we still have lots of planning to do before he gets here! So we invite you to come on this journey WITH us!

I've documented some of the emotions of the process from the last 2 1/2 weeks and you can find them here It's A Boy... But, here Our Journey Begins and here Beautiful Faith + Peace. Those should catch you up to where we are at today.

I'm beginning this one with one of my favorite worship songs right now, "Beautiful Things".

All this pain
I wonder if I'll ever find my way?
I wonder if my life could really change at all?
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

If you haven't had the chance to listen to this song, I encourage you to do it. Right now it means more than what it use to but when I had some pretty dark moments and I let myself think that I would never be good enough for anyone and this song was a fresh of breath air. But now, it means that no matter what, my son will be beautiful because he is made in Jesus' image.

I was pretty lucky  to come to terms with the diagnosis early on. I prayed for the doctors to not find a cleft at all and if they did that it wouldn't be severe. The most amazing prayer ever made by me or any of our prayer warriors was that we would find peace. By the time I had rested my head on my pillow the night of the diagnosis I felt PEACE. I had faith in my God so deep that I knew he had this just as he has everything else. I knew he was going to use us to do something greater and our little man was a big part of that plan.

At the same time, I vowed to do something good, whether it was this blog or find some way to help mothers grieving some of the same things I was grieving at the moment. The biggest grievance was nursing. I didn't want to give that up. I had nursed my daughter until she was 4 months old and I was sad when I had to give that up because my work schedule was depleting my supply. I was so excited that God had provided me the opportunity to stay home with our new little one so I was making it a goal to get to 1 year exclusively breast feeding. Well, with a Cleft affected palate that dream went down the drain. But Faith is bringing me through. I am going to enjoy this pregnancy like normal, we will have a few extra appointments to attend to educate and prepare ourselves for the cleft itself but other than that I'm just going to complain about my back hurting, eat things that will ensure a few extra pounds of weight and love every movement inside of me.