Spiritual Battles

The days following my last post about Baby Melvin were the most powerful and spirit-filled days of my life. There is so much inspiration and detail in what my family experienced that I want to be sure and do it justice. I am currently writing out the story slowly so that I can capture all the richness and detail. It's so important to me that others can understand the depth of it all. I hope to post it soon.



Taking our old sign down!

In the meantime I wanted to post an update. We adopted Baby "Melvin", only through the grace and love of God. He is no longer an orphan. He is our son and has a brother and two sisters. I hope he is ready to be completely overwhelmed by love because his siblings are stoked for him to come home. They are already arguing over who gets to take care of him. It’s such a good problem for a former orphan to have!



I wish I could say that I’ve been giddy. On cloud nine. Unfortunately, that’s not completely the truth. We went to visit “Melvin” for the first time exactly one week ago. That night before I went to bed I took a small dose of medication that doctors have been trying to get me to take forever. I finally broke down and figured, hey, they’re doctors. Maybe I should take this. About two hours after I took the medicine my husband had to call 911. I was literally having a heart attack. My heart started beating rapidly and I couldn’t catch up with it. My chest burned, I was shaking, and extremely hot. I was lying on the floor in a fetal position when the EMTs got to our house. After a long night in the hospital, I was discharged with the orders of, “Don’t ever take that medication again”.  Don’t worry, I thought. That day I wrote up our later to share with everyone about adopting Melvin and Sunday we went to visit him again. When Monday came around God took us on an incredible journey. The whole thing was very emotional and nerve-racking and exciting all wrapped up together! But with each day I felt like the side effects of the medicine had not completely worn off. I had horrible chest pain, rapid heart rates, shortness of breathe…it just didn’t go away.



Wednesday night, after we knew “Melvin” was ours we went to the NICU to see him. My chest got so bad during this time that when we were done I went straight downstairs to the ER. Again, I was admitted and checked for everything under the sun. No blood clots, heart enzymes look good, I had an abnormal EKG but I’ve always had that. My heart beats to its own unique drum. I’ve been on that rodeo before years ago with a cardiologist. Ultimately I was discharged with the doctor shaking his head. No one knew what was wrong. I knew I wasn’t making it up and I had a family and new baby to get back to. It’s not as if I wanted to be taking time out to get my heart checked.



Thursday a nurse from our insurance company called to see how everything I went. I told her how discouraged I was. That I could hardly go up the stairs without my heart going bonkers and the chest pain was just constant. She gave a small sigh and told me a personal story of her own. That she had gone through a spell of anxiety attacks that were nothing like she thought an anxiety attack would be. I had to admit I always pictured someone bending over and breathing heavy, as if they had just won a race. However, what she described to me was exactly what I was feeling. She recommended therapy and maybe a mild sedative. I hung up with her and felt slightly relieved. Maybe I wasn’t dying after all! On the other hand, this was nothing like I had ever experienced. And it’s not as if I stifle my emotions. I wear everything out there on my sleeve for people to read and know. If there was a stressor happening I was sure I would know about it. I quietly noticed, however, that just thinking it was an anxiety attack made it a little better. This was simply ridiculous, how could this be? Usually when I am stressed out I can just relax and breathe it away. I’ve always been able to bring my own heart rate down. This sensation was somehow completely connected to my subconscious, in a place that I had absolutely no access to. I was not able to shut it off or even talk to it and say that everything was ok.



A follow up appointment to the doctor the day after resulted in a prescription for Xanax. That’s just what I need. More side-effects. I took it just in case things got really bad but my hope is to not utilize it. More important than the medicine, what I began to do was pay attention. I noticed that every time we talked about the baby my heart would do loops and I would feel a burning sensation in my gut. Off and on I felt like I would pass out and literally had to stop thinking or talking about him. Many times I mentioned to my husband, “I don’t think we should finish this adoption. Look at me!” I mentioned this to a friend and she instructed, “Tell Satan to leave you alone.” Wow. Seriously. When would the enemy be more active then when God had just performed a miracle the way that He had. I marvel at how many people were ministered to through this journey and I know God’s work could all be undone if I just don’t adopt Melvin. If I just walk away and say, ‘Sorry, just kidding, we don’t want him anymore. My heart can’t handle it.’ I know she’s right and we’ve begun praying over the spiritual battle raging in this house. As usual I seem to be the main target here and in certain moments I am more terrified than ever to move forward. I am actually thankful for the time that the NICU has given us for me to get my act together.



What I have noticed are the triggers. I’ve always been very sensitive to smells. A certain smell can throw me back into summer break after sixth grade watching the summer Olympics. Ninety-nine percent of the time I LOVE these moments. With just a whiff I can be apple-picking on a farm or on my first airplane ride. I’ve always been especially sensitive to the smell of my babies. That was one of my hesitations of adoption, which I actually wrote in a blog. I didn’t want someone else’s baby because they might smell different. It turns out that “Melvin” smells fantastic, just like a newborn. It also turns out, however, that the smell of a newborn no longer brings me back to my first three children and the wonderful memories that they bring. I can’t even say that it brings me back to Wyatt, but it must. I don’t pull up a visual or a memory, but rather a physical reaction. Every time we have gone to the NICU I notice a burning in my gut and a pounding in my chest that I cannot control. I can’t breathe it out or tell it to go away. We go. I smell. Instant reaction. Interestingly, I notice, as I change “Melvin’s” diaper, the smell of infant baby poop actually does resurface the old happy memories. I go right back to the old nurseries my kids had and the love I felt for their squooshy faces. I find this a poignant thing to notice since I don’t have a baby poop memory from Wyatt. I do have a newborn smell memory from him, though. There has to be a connection here.  



Included in this observation is simply noticing how much my senses are being bombarded. Just being in a NICU is overloading. The last time I was in one we were being given a tour to see where Wyatt would be staying. Then there are the monitors. The incessant monitors, always telling us if someone is breathing or not. I know that this is a good thing. Except for the fact that we spent three weeks hooked up to one, day and night, listening for Wyatt’s heart rate. Every time it dropped I would jump up, shift around, lie on my left side, grab an oxygen mask and listen for the rate to go back up. I listened to every beat of that boy’s heart until they took the monitor off to perform the cesarean. And then it never beat again.



So when we’re holding “Melvin” and his oxygen saturation alarm goes off I go into panic mode. It’s not that I take any physical action. However my insides escalate to the point where I feel sick. The nurses keep telling me to calm down, that it’s no big deal and that I need to stop staring at it when it goes off. The truth is that I’m not sure how to break a habit I didn’t even know I had. I didn’t know that a NICU would terrify me. I didn’t know that medical alarms will send me into a full room-spinning state of nausea. I am not sure why they even do. There are no conscious thoughts that happen, like, ‘Oh this is taking me back to Wyatt. I feel like we lost him all over again”. It really does all seem different and logically I know that everyone is safe. So why when I am kangaroo-rocking him does the room spin and I feel like I need to run to the bathroom so I can pass out on the floor?



My litte son

That moment actually brings me back to another time I have felt that way. I was a freshman in high school. Some of my friends were in a car accident. One of my friends died and the other was critically wounded. I rode to the funeral and then afterwards we went to the hospital to visit. I remember talking to my friend, Erin. Her jaw was wired shut and she had scars and stitches all over her face. I don’t remember much else except that when we got up to leave I got that feeling. The same feeling that I experience rocking “Melvin” in the NICU. I ran to a restroom and fainted on the floor. I woke up, clammy, pale and out of breath. I went home and slept for three days. I remember thinking that I must have come down with something. Now I am wondering if that wasn’t a germ at all. The two sensations are so similar…



I have to believe that it’s good to make these connections. I start to get emotional as the baby beside “Melvin” (Jadyn, the one who gave me closure with Wyatt) starts to set his alarms off. It must happen every five minutes that we are there, every single day. He continually stops breathing, isn’t getting enough oxygen or causing any number of his other alarms to go off. He is even hooked up to an extra machine where even more alarms can ring. Fear gripped my stomach today as I thought to myself, ‘We’re going to watch him die’. I’m not sure I could handle that.



I’m not sure why I can’t handle any of this and I’m extremely frustrated at it all. For me to now be in a “constant anxiety attack”, as it was so professionally put, seems silly after everything we’ve been through. Even more frustrating is not knowing what to do about it and knowing that little “Melvin” will be coming home soon. I’ve moved households ninety-thousand times, home schooled, lost a child, worked three jobs, and done Master’s degree work while doing all of that, and NOW I have an anxiety attack? I sit in the NICU trying to do some cognitive work on myself, like slowly breathing and saying, “This is not Wyatt. I am fine. “Melvin” is fine. These alarms are good” but it doesn’t seem to help. For me, that’s the most disturbing part. If I can’t talk myself down out of this, I don’t know how to access it. I don’t know how to make it better. I am terrified it will never go away.   



Somewhere inside I know that it will eventually work out. I’ll end up writing about it and hopefully it can be used to help someone, somewhere, even if it’s just one person. For everyone following this, I could sure use your prayers, for healing and help with the spiritual battle that I face.