An Update and Some Thoughts on Our Experience

I’m at home for the night. Kim’s sister got into town and they are staying at the hospital tonight. Today was much better than last night. I had a great chat with the doctor this morning. Aside from him declaring that Will is destined to be a Patriots fan, it was a great chat. The gist is the Will is still dealing with some jaundice. His bilirubin (call in the next 20 minutes and we’ll throw in 2^nd liver disorder for free) level is still high. The fifth day is typically the highpoint for these levels, so the doctor got proactive with the light therapy.

Unrelated to the jaundice is Will’s respiratory rate. This is the bigger issue. He’s still hovering around 90 breaths/minute. He needs to be below 70. Once he’s below 70 he can start feeding by bottle or breast. Will has to show that he can eat well before he can go home. This is what we are desperately waiting for. There are a few ancillary issues with the breathing. Will has a low-grade fever. This could be a result of the light therapy. It could be his body has yet to figure out how to regulate temperature. Or it could be an infection of some kind. If it is an infection, it could change the diagnosis vis-à-vis his breathing issues. Most likely the fever is nothing and the breathing will resolve itself in due time. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m not in control. The doctor keeps saying that Will is in control and he’ll set the pace.

In a sense, he’s right. But I can’t help but think that the doctor is mistaken. Job 38 and 39 detail the LORD’s response to Job. In no uncertain terms the LORD tells Job that He, and not Job, is in control. If you’ll permit my paraphrase, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Was it you? Oh yeah, that’s right, you weren’t there. Who decided the measurements of the earth? Was it you? Oh yeah, that’s right, you weren’t there. Who told the waves, ‘You can come this far and no farther?’ Was it you? Oh yeah, that’s right, you weren’t there. Who was it, Job? Who? Tell me? That’s right, it was ME!” The doctor is wrong because the LORD is in control.

This has been a humbling experience for me. When we found out that Will would be in the NICU after birth, I immediately thought, “No he won’t. He’ll come out completely healthy because I serve a sovereign God.” I was actually negotiating with the NICU nurse about how many hours he’d be required to stay before Will was born. I had her down to 6 hours. I was a cocky seminary student who was going to show the neonatal department that my God was sovereign. My God was going to give me a perfectly healthy 34 week old preemie. The one minor problem with my theology was that the God I was talking about wasn’t sovereign. Because the God I was talking about was my own vain imagination. I thought God owed me a healthy baby. I thought God would dance to my tune and on my time. I have been humbled because I’m learning that in so many ways I only talk a good game. I fancy myself Wyatt Earp dealing faro at the Oriental but in reality I’m a lot more Johnny Tyler.

Wyatt: You skin that smoke wagon and we’ll see what happens!

Tyler: Listen mister, I’m getting awful tired of your…

[Wyatt slaps him]

Wyatt: I’m gettin’ tired of all your gas, now jerk that pistol and go to work! I said throw down boy!

[Wyatt slaps him harder]

Wyatt: Are you gonna do something? Or just stand there and bleed?

(If this reference doesn’t make sense, you need to get your hands on a copy of Tombstone and a bag of popcorn.)

I trust the LORD with Will’s life. I trust the LORD with the lives of all my children. God does not owe me another breath of life. God does not owe Will one more breath. Every breath we have is a gift. Psalm 8 talks about the God who created the Universe, who placed the moon and the stars in the sky. Then it asks the question, “What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?” The God who holds the expanse of the Universe in the span of his hand (Is 40:12) cares for little William Oliver. He is the God who formed his inmost parts. His eyes saw all of Will’s days when there was not yet one of them (Ps 139). This is the sovereign God in whom I can trust. This God does not march to my tune. He is crafting his own song through Will’s life. I will continually pray for Will’s health. I will continually present my petitions to the LORD, but I must not allow them to become commands. I can’t think that anyone other than the LORD is in control.

We Had a Month...

I’ll give you the brief snapshot from my perspective. Kim will fill in more details and story later. We went to church yesterday and all through the morning and after the service Kim complained that something felt different about the baby. That afternoon while I was getting ready to dig in for an NFL induced Sunday nap (the best kind) Kim kept feeling contractions. This was no big deal because we had a month before the little one’s due date (Feb. 7 to be exact). The contractions were pretty regular, but again, we had a month. After we talked with her doctor on the phone we decided that we’d head to hospital and check things out. Our friend Staci came over to watch the kids. I grabbed a book and my Kindle (most awesomest Christmas gift). Kim grabbed her purse and a few things. As we drove to the hospital Kim kept talking like this made sense because she’d been feeling things with her pregnancy differently over the last few days. She told me it felt like the baby had dropped. She cleaned those corners in our house that seem to accumulate stuff, you know the areas where you give yourself permission to just toss and worry about it later. You know when you clean those areas something’s going on. But I didn’t think this was anything because we had a month.

We talked about the class I was going to take in Atlanta next week. I’ve been busting my hump trying to get reading done beforehand. The book I grabbed on the way out the door was for that class. I figured if we were going to be waiting around for a few hours that I’d get some reading done.

Once we got the hospital they hooked Kim up to all the monitors and such. Sure enough she was in labor. They gave her some meds to stop it and I thought, we be home in a couple of hours because we had a month. The meds didn’t stop the labor. They started talking like we might have this baby today. All I could think was, “We have a month.” The started handing us paperwork. Paperwork?! That means you really think this is going to happen. But we had a month. They started asking questions about the birth. We didn’t have answers because we had a month to think about those things before we needed to answer them. They asked us if we had a name. NO, we don’t have a name…we had a month.

The doctor came in and sure enough, we were having this baby right now. They took Kim and got her prepped. I started writing down a list of stuff I’d need to get at home when I got a chance. We didn’t really bring anything to the hospital because…we had a month.

William Oliver Friederichsen was born at 9:00pm January 2, 2011. He weighed 7lbs 6oz and is 19.5inches. He is in the Neonatal ICU for now. His lungs are not filling like a full-term baby would. He’s on oxygen and we’re praying that soon he’ll be able to get off it and breathe all on his own. While it is a serious issue, it looks worse than it is. We haven’t been able to hold him much and that’s been pretty hard. Overall, though, Kim and I are doing pretty well. If you’re in the area feel free to give us a call if you want to visit and we’ll just be honest with you and let you know if you can come. You can drop Kim an email for encouragement, she’d appreciate it.