Miracle Boy

Introducing the newest member of our family....



I've decided to nickname him "Miracle Boy", because I'm trusting that the Lord is going to do a miracle for this boy. For us.

If you are not familiar with why we might be in need of a miracle, the short story is that I've lost 3 baby boys in 2nd trimester miscarriages. We first lost Samuel at nearly 20 weeks. We do not know exactly when he passed away in the womb. He had not developed much beyond 16 weeks. Either his growth has drastically slowed or had stopped in between my monthly appointments. We lost Isaiah at about 16 weeks. Then Joshua. He was perfect, healthy, and fine at his 14 week appointment. At 15 weeks I went in to see that his heart was just barely beating. He passed away sometime that same day.

We are SO TOTALLY THRILLED about having another baby boy, but obviously it's a wee bit scary.

My amazing, wonderful doctor has tested me for everything under the sun, and yet the "why" behind these miscarriages has remained a mystery. I've also seen several different specialists. The major common denominator is that the miscarriages have all occurred with male babies. It appears as though me and the babies are completely healthy. In between these miscarriages I've had healthy girls. The theory for the past couple of years has been that maybe something occurred in my first pregnancy with Luke that led me to develop some type antibody against male babies. This also led us to believe that it "may" be impossible for me to carry other healthy male babies. This is just the theory. Medically we've not been able to prove it.

Last week, I saw another specialist, a perinatologist (basically a high risk OB), who offered a new theory. It's a long story, but while he agrees that the theory mentioned above it possible, he had a theory of his own. His theory offers more hope for the possibly of having another male baby which was encouraging.

Medically speaking we can continue to dig for the answers, to try to find out "why", but it's seems pretty definite that we've ruled out any possible treatment options. That has been my biggest question. Is there anything more we can do?!! The answer to my desperate questions is "No". We've prayed hard, had blood drawn countless times for various tests and labs, spent hours maybe days doing research, sought counsel, and seen multiple specialists to answer that question. What we've concluded is that as of right now there is no medical intervention available. As far as we know right now, modern medicine can't fix this...whatever this is. There's nothing else we can do, but PRAY. Ultimately it's all up to the Lord...isn't everything always that way anyway?!! So for now, we wait. We watch. And we pray. We pray hard that this baby defines the odds. We pray that This baby, Jude Mathes Minor, will be ours to hold in our arms, not just our hearts. And we trust. We trust that the same God that is holding our entire universe is also holding our hands and our baby.

I'm being monitored very, very carefully. The many reason for the carefully monitoring is that there may come a point where something changes and some medical intervention may be in order. If that should happen, we will do the same thing we are doing now...just pray through it.

I will try to go back and share some of the other details about appointments, specialist, and how we've arrived at our decisions if time ever permits.

For now, please pray with us. We KNOW that there is power in prayer!! For the most part, we are calm and at peace. I do have moments when I feel completely overwhelmed with fear, but those are few and I'm usually able to calm down when I meditate on God's Word and His promises.

Here's a video of the BIG REVEAL. We had a small party to reveal the gender and name to the kiddos. Papa and Nana Mathes and the Tunstill family was with us. Too bad that all of our family and friends could not be there for this big event. It was so very fun!!!