How are we coping?

Many people have wondered how we are coping through this crisis.  The first, most obvious thing to mention, is our faith in God and His perfect plan for us.  We named our firstborn son after one of our favorite Bible verses, Jeremiah 29:11:

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

I could go into many other encouraging passages from the Bible that we have been clinging to, and I will in future posts.  People have been great to share their favorite scriptures or other sources of inspiration.  If you so desire, please leave a comment with your favorites! 

For me, the biggest way to cope has been reaching out to others.  Just hearing from people has been such a positive thing for me.  And when it's encouraging words or assurance that they are praying for us, it really makes me feel uplifted.  I am constantly on the phone chatting, or texting, or on my computer checking email or Facebook (and I guarantee I'll be repeatedly checking for comments on my blogs now, too).  And now that I'm on bed rest, it's all guilt free!  Several of my girlfriends have told me they would just LOVE to be on bed rest for two days.  Yep, ladies, that's right...I'm living the dream!  :)  It's all how you spin it, right? 

While I feel the need to be even more connected to others, focusing on my touchy/feely side, James has been on every medical website researching everything ever written on all of our medical issues.  As a man and loving husband and father, he wants to fix things, and it's hard for him to not be able to do anything to make it better.  So, he spends all his spare time arming himself with all the information and research he can find (and then drilling the poor doctors with probing questions he comes up with at each appointment).  He sees things in "black and white," so the whole "grayness" of OB things, and the inability to predict the progression of the issue, is hard to deal with.  It's not like orthopedics where you can just go in and fix the problem with a scalpel and a drill and see immediate results.  :)  I'm happy to have him be the medical advocate in the family.  At first, I tried to engage my doctor brain and research things, too, but then my mommy brain woke me up with nightmares and freaked me out, so now I just avoid doing the research and let James give me the highlights he finds.

Jeremiah is handling all of this very well.  For the most part, he knows to go to Mom for cuddling and reading time, to Grandma when he has "oosh" in his diaper, to Dad for rough housing, and to anyone who's closest to the kitchen for "eat!" which seems to be all day long.  He got to play with his best friend, cousin Jack, three days in a row last week (see the picture, above, of the boys shoveling snow), and he's getting more one on one time with all of his grandparents than he has in a long time, so he's loving life.  Over the past couple of weeks, he just started having mini temper tantrums for the first time, so maybe it's his way of acting out because he knows something is wrong. But then again, he will turn two in 3 weeks, so that may have something to do with it.  Occasionally, it is heartbreaking when he pulls on my arm and says, "Mama, UP! UP!" but he's easily distractable.  He enjoys his captive audience. I just lay there and watch him play with his toys.  I'm getting a whole new appreciation of how fun trucks can be through a little boy's eyes.  I realize there will likely come a time when he won't want to play with me, so I'm basking in it while it lasts.