Another Round of Catch-Up

If anybody has a blog of their own (for personal purposes and without intentions of making an income), they know that new blog posts can only come once in a great while no matter what "blogging goals" they may have. Based on the fact that Kasey promised more blog posts in March, and it is now August... you could definitely call us the "casual bloggers" instead of "bloggers." I'm not sure exactly why new "bloggers" typically slow down after the first few months. Maybe it's because we have this idea of a blog that is going have tons of traffic, thousands of followers, and that companies like Netflix, Nike, or Samsung are going to e-mail us and ask to pay us for ad space on our blog. Fact is, I don't know the statistics, but that only happens to X% of bloggers. So, basically, what we're trying to get to is, we're not going to promise frequent blog posts, but we will promise meaningful ones when they do come.

Some of you have been pretty well-filled in on our life during the last few months (feel free to read on anyway if you'd like), but for the rest of you, it's time to play another round of catch-up.

While in California, Kasey was serving at a restaurant called Claim Jumper while I inspected iPhones during a huge "buy-back, then re-sell your old iPhones" project, for a company called Gazelle. The project lasted only a few months, sending home numerous employees to start the search all over again. I had just begun my semester at the community college and didn't put a whole lot of effort into finding a new job. We figured just grinding out the semester then looking for work would be better than trying to find a job to cater to my particular school schedule (after-all, this was a small, Lincoln, CA, not a normal busy, bustling college town). The semester was a success and brought my collegiate GPA from a 3.2 to a 3.8! Part-way through the semester, Kasey and I both got the impression that we weren't in the place we were supposed to be for the foreseeable future. It was a tough decision to make, but we knew that we were supposed to return to Utah, even though we had just a few months before, packed our stuff and hauled it all from Utah to California. It wasn't an easy decision to make, and it was an even harder undertaking to tell our family. They had sacrificed so much and had gone so far out of their way to make sure things worked out for us, it was not at all easy for any of us. Not only that, but we found out Kasey was pregnant, so we had dangled the dream of living so close to their first grandchild in their faces, then basically said, "sorry, we've gotta take that away and go back to (crappy) UT." Tears were definitely shed, and even more were shed than I'm sure any of the associated parties new about. It was a difficult time for a lot of people...

Aside from the fact that family, friends, and family-friends (ourselves included) were sad with the decision Kasey and I made to move back, our sweet baby boy was found to have been struggling with an issue called an "enlarged cisterna magna." The cisterna magna is a space in the back of our head, essentially between our skull and whats called the cerebellum. A "normal" cisterna magna, we were told, should measure at about 1cm. Boston's was measuring at 1.3cm. The doctor informed us that we should potentially prepare for "learning disabilities" and that we needed to keep an eye on it. Another Ultrasound 6 weeks later showed our baby's cisterna magna had grown even more from 1.3cm to 1.5cm! We were becoming more and more scared for our child. Every parent has this dream of the "perfect family," and our dream was turning into a nightmare. We were told by our doctor that our baby's head was growing at a faster rate than the rest of his body and if he stayed there too long, he couldn't be delivered normally because his head would be too big. They scheduled us to come back in 2 weeks and then we would have to start making decisions about when to deliver Boston, and how soon/pre-maturely he could be delivered, while still being as healthy and as developed as he could be. Too early and he wouldn't have been fully developed, leading to more complications, and too late his head wouldn't allow him to be delivered normally, on top of being proportionately askew in his head to body size ratio. We asked the doctors if this was something they saw often, or something that could get better. We were told, "at this point, we don't expect it to get better (having gotten .2cm worse in 6 weeks). You can probably expect learning disabilities, such as your child taking longer to learn things that children would normally learn at a certain age. At the next appointment, we can just hope that the cisterna magna is 1.5cm and not getting any worse."

We cried on the way home, scared and worried about the health of our baby. The "perfect family" dream was shattered and we started to prepare ourselves for whatever happened next, and whatever we needed to do as future parents. With the support from our parents and all of our family members from California all the way until Missouri, we decided to leave it in hands far more powerful than ours. We prayed hard during those two weeks, and everyone joined in fasting that God would take care of our baby. We returned for our scheduled ultra-sound, crossing our fingers that the measurement showed 1.5cm and not a pinch higher. The doctor checked all of the baby's organs, and limbs like normal, but we during this visit, we didn't care too much about that stuff. Kasey and I held hands looking only for the space in the back of our baby's head. The doctor checked, then walked out saying only, "i'll be right back." Another doctor came in and checked right where the previous had left off... the back of the baby's head. Nobody was saying anything, and we were becoming even more prepared for bad news. Shocked, and seemingly amazed, both doctors told us that not only did Boston's cicsterna magna not get worse, but that it got BETTER!! His cisterna magna was measuring .9/just below 1cm which was considered "normal." My face fell into my hand and tears fell from just about every eye in that room with us. We could not believe it! Our baby's cisterna magna had gone from bad to WORSE in a 6 WEEK period, then in just 2 WEEKS, it not only stayed the same, but got completely better! I've never believed in coincidence, and once again, this was no coincidence. God had heard all of our prayers, he was aware of our concerns, and he was aware of our child. I still to this day give thanks to our Father in Heaven for what he did! It couldn't have been done or made better any other way, than through Him.

Since that day, Kasey and I successfully made the move to UT. I started a new job, and our sweet baby Boston hasn't come yet, but the anticipated day of his arrival couldn't come any sooner... that day is tomorrow!! So soon we will be able to hold our loved child, and physically hold the blessing that God has permitted us. For a while there, we got to know our baby by seeing him in ultrasounds every few weeks. We have only seen him once since, in the last 3 months, and when he finally comes, we'll get to know him all over again in another round of catch-up.