Testimony

I started attending a women's group at my church and was asked to share my testimony.  Here is what I shared:

February 5, 2009 I was 25 weeks pregnant with twin girls.  I was having a healthy pregnancy and the doctor had not put me on any restrictions.  That night about 6 o'clock I went into pre-term labor.  I was rushed to the hospital where they had hoped to stop it, but couldn't.  I was already 6 cm dilated and progressing quickly.  There was not even enough time to receive a critical hormone injection to help with my babies immature lungs.  I was taken to the operating room where they performed an emergency C-section just before 11 o'clock. 

My daughters were immediately resuscitated and taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  In the recovery room before I even had the chance to see my own children, the neonatal doctor came to inform me of all the things I should expect.  She told me that 24% of babies born this early die.  She told me that of those who do survive, 57% will have moderate to sever neurodevelopmental impairment and 38% of them will have profound neurodevelopmental impairment. 

I had lost a baby two years earlier, which was a huge test of my beliefs and I spent many months being mad at God.  I wondered why God was going to do this to me again.  I questioned if He really understood me or even cared about the emotional torment I went though after that loss.  I had been praying for healthy children since high school and I started wondering if God had ever heard those prayers.

My girls were born weighing 1 lb. 13 oz each.  For those who have never seen a baby that small, it is not pretty.  It is hard to look at them without crying.  They were bruised terribly and their eyes were still fused shut.  My wedding ring could fit all the way up their arm without touching it.  They had wires, cords and tubes coming from every tiny inch of their bodies.  They were sick, very sick.  Their skin was so fragile, we could rarely touch them and when we could, we could not caress them.  There is almost no fat on their bodies - they were like little skeletons.  In the beginning there wasn't a day that passed that they didn't stop breathing.  There wasn't a day that passed that their hearts didn't stop beating.  Alarms going crazy to alert the nurses and doctors that something was wrong - how would they ever survive this?

At this point in our lives, we did not have a home church to pray for our girls, but we did have family and friends.  I honestly believe there were hundreds of people praying for my girls.  Family and friends put us on prayer chains at their home churches.  The girls had several primary nurses that were believers.  I know those nurses said prayers for them.  I thought it was amazing that out of all the nurses we were blessed with the ones who knew the Lord.  There was nothing more comforting to us during this time than to know people were praying.  And God was answering those prayers. 

Battle after battle the Lord fought for Keira and Kyla.  Every day was critical to their survival and health.  It was important that every test they did on them came back "normal" to avoid them becoming one of the statistics.  They had brain scans to check for bleeding on the brain.  Of course, any bleeding on the brain and they didn't stand a chance of leading a normal life.  In the second week of their lives, they developed life threatening anemia.  Their bodies could not reproduce the red blood cells that were lost through the daily blood draws.  They had to have life saving blood transfusions.  They were at risk for heart surgery because they had an open ductus that ran between their heart and lungs.  All babies have this open ductus, but upon their first breath, it closes.  Since my girls never took their first breath on their own, that ductus didn't close and it was causing them to stop breathing and their hearts to stop beating.  Eventually the hole closed on its own.  Because they couldn't breathe by themselves, they had to be intubated multiple times to put them on ventilators.  Babies who are on ventilators tend to have vision problems, so every two weeks they had eye tests to check the development.  The longest battle was learning to eat on their own.  Up until the last couple of weeks in the hospital they had feeding tubes.  It was a constant roller coaster of ups and downs. 

Finally after 116 days in the hospital, we took our girls home, weighting just over 8 pounds.  God had transformed them into healthy babies!  Because of the miraculous healing God did, you would never know my girls were extreme preemies.  The only signs that my girls were born nearly four months early are the pictures we took and the scars on their feet and hands from the pic lines and IV's.  God truly is the great physician and He is not bound by the statistics the doctors give.  He did not allow my girls to be a statistic - to be one of the 24% who die or one of the 57% who have severe neurodevelopmental impairment.  He heard every prayer that went up and He answered every single one of them. 

Keira and Kyla are consistently referred to as the "miracle twins."  They truly are.  They are my living miracles.  They are proof of answered prayers.  They are evidence that we serve an amazing God who has no limits and can do the impossible.  Before my girls, I didn't really believe miracles happened often and I definitely didn't believe an average person like me would experience one.  I now believe that every day God is performing miracles - even in the average persons' life.  There is not a day that goes by that I am not humbled by God's mercy and faithfulness. 

It may sound crazy, but I am thankful for what we went through.  God did an amazing work in my girls, but He also worked in me.  God has changed my heart.  I was not walking as closely with the Lord as I should have been and I had lost my compassion for people.  God used what happened to get my attention.  He is bringing back that compassion and teaching me to love people despite what they may believe, what they may have done or even how they look.  I think because of this, I am a better and more loving mother than I would have been had my girls been born healthy at full gestation.  God reminds me daily not to take my children forgranted and to pray without ceasing.  He does hear and answer our prayers.