I sat down to write Rahab’s birth story before her birthday next week. But as I started writing her birth story I kept on realizing that I needed to start earlier, and earlier, and earlier. I finally realized that I needed to start even before the very beginning of her life. So here I have found myself. Her actual birth story will have to be in a follow up post. ~Abi

Rahab’s pregnancy was such a sweet gift to us from our kind Father who loves to give good gifts to His children. Jordan and I had loved so much being parents to our sweet Hadassah Joy. Despite what others had told us during pregnancy, we loved her newborn days and nights. We loved watching her grow and learn. We were in awe of her. (If you don’t believe me, go search my Facebook for back in the day where I have 3 minute videos of her just staring at us! How embarrassing!! Oh wait, …..I still do that. Never mind.) We quickly knew experientially what we had long believed to be true: “children are a blessing from the Lord”. …. “A heritage”, a “reward” a “crown”, “arrows”, “like olive shoots around your table.” We had quickly seen as parents that all the things God says to be true about children… they are really, really true. And the things the culture was telling us? They were lying. We now knew experientially that what we had for so long believed to be false really was false: children are not a set back, they are not a distraction, a burden, an unfair part of life that ties women down. Hadassah was not making me feel unfulfilled. She was not making me feel like a zombie. She was not bringing tension to our marriage. She was a joy.

When Hadassah was 6 months old we realized, “hey…. why are we trying to keep ourselves from more babies right now!? Why are we doing this to ourselves?” We realized that we were attempting to prevent a pregnancy for literally no reason. …. We loved being parents. We weren’t overwhelmed. We weren’t as broke as we could be. We wanted to grow our family eventually. WHY are we waiting? I think we were just going along with what we had always considered to be “normal” without even sitting down to consider how we personally felt about it. We kept talking about Hadassah being a big sister one day as if we were painfully waiting the day when she was “old enough” to be one. Once we realized how ridiculous it was to be preventing what we were already ready for and already wanted we were so excited to grow our family and make Hadassah a sister.

From that point on, we kept quickly getting pregnant, and then miscarrying at different lengths of gestation. We fell in love with each individual baby God gave us and grieved each child so deeply and differently than we had the one before. It felt as if God was dangling the desire of our hearts in front of us, allowing us to grab onto it, and then snatching it back away from us. The pain of losing each child was infinitely bad. Just so bad. There was no possible way I could have been more sad after losing our first little baby. It was not that the pain got worse with each loss. Each loss was just as bad as it could be. But, there were new fears that were introduced with each loss. I began to wonder how much more loss my heart could handle. We began to try to determine how many losses we could keep having before we were being irresponsible and just creating life that we knew would die. We began to wrestle with the thought of only ever being the biological parents of one living child.

And then, God gave us Rahab Mercy.

The moment we found out that she was growing in me we were as in love with her as we are right now. We knew way less about her – we knew none of her quirks and spunk and crazies. But we knew there would be quirks and spunk and crazies about her. And we couldn’t wait to know her. But, we were also paralyzed with fear that we would never know her quirks and spunk and crazies. We knew we had already missed out on getting to know sweet personalities, on hearing sweet high pitched, squeaky voices, and missed first words, missed kissing chubby cheeks and capturing dimples in photographs. We were afraid we would not see those moments with her, too.

When we were 4 weeks pregnant with her (most people do not even know that they are pregnant at this point), our doctor started doing twice weekly blood work to keep an eye on her and my body and how we were doing. We had had done 2 of these blood draws and my HCG levels and progesterone levels were looking great. Our HCG levels were multiplying as they should, and my progesterone was around 14-15 each time (above 10 is good, 9 and below is cause for concern). We had our 3rd blood draw at 5.5 weeks pregnant. Jordan was at work (an hour away from where we were living) and Hadassah and I were getting good at going to get blood drawn by ourselves. [The picture to the right is of Hadassah waiting across from me in the lab that very day as I was getting my blood drawn.]

We quickly got my blood drawn and then left as we always did. The results were not immediate. My doctor would call me if there was a concern, but otherwise I would hear the results at my next appointment, which was at that point, never more than 4 days away.

That evening when my phone rang just after office hours and I saw that it was my Dr., my heart sank. After each blood draw I would anxiously await 4 pm, when the office closed. Anytime before 4 pm i considered it a possibility my Dr. would call with bad news. She always told me she would personally look at my labs before she left her office. So I knew if something was wrong I would get a call the same day. It was 4:40pm when my phone rang. In the moment before answering the phone I was already grieving as if my baby was gone…. Again. By the time I answered it my voice was already quivering as tears were streaming down my face. My Dr.s voice was low and quiet and steady. “Abi, I need you to stay calm, but I want you to come back in. I was about to leave the office and I checked on your lab and your progesterone levels dropped from 14 to 4. You may have had a miscarriage. Come in and we will give you progesterone and see if we can see anything on an ultrasound.”

Jordan was still at work, but I called him and told him to start driving to the hospital. Hadassah and I beat Jordan there by about 40 minutes. (He was clearly driving way too fast). I had already been given progesterone. On the ultrasound we saw a fetal pole, but no heart beat. (A fetal pole is the first sight you can see of the actual baby in your womb. It is what you see before there is any distinguishable body features, and before you can see a heart beat. It looks like a little dash in the yolk sac). She told us that this may be because it was such an early ultrasound (5 weeks, 5 days), or that it could be more bad news. There was no way to know right then.

She told us to come back first thing in the morning in 2 days, when I would be exactly 6 weeks pregnant. If I was pregnant at all at that point. She said do not lose hope. She cried with us there, as she had done in the ultrasound room before. We went home to take 4 doses of progesterone a day, wait, cry, and pray.

It was approximately two years of time that passed in between the time that I was 5 weeks and 5 days pregnant, and the time that I was 6 weeks and 0 days pregnant. 😉
No, but seriously – I can’t think of which two days of my life could have felt longer than those two days. It was a constant battle to fight off anxiety, to stop myself when i was mourning an outcome that i was not yet certain of, a constant reminding ourselves to trust God. We did trust God. But we also knew that trusting God did not guarantee the outcome we desired. We trusted that God was a good and loving Father. We trusted that He was sovereign over all things. So, we prayed. We prayed that he would protect our baby’s life. I prayed that even if our baby had died that He would bring it back to life. I trusted that He could do that. But I knew from the Bible and from experience that God does not always give us what we want. He does not always act in ways that we can understand. So we also prayed, “but even if you don’t, be our refuge. But even if you don’t, be our peace. But even if you don’t, help us mourn in a way that reflects our hope in You.”

Braced for the worst, we went in on that anticipated, yet also dreaded morning.

We did not see a fetal pole.

We saw a baby.

Our baby.

Our Rahab Mercy.

We saw not just a little “dash” on the screen. We saw her head and her body. We saw her heart beating and we heard her heart beating.

Guys, I can’t even right now. I’m a blubbering mess. This is real life. This really happened to us. God wanted Rahab Mercy Atkinson in our family. And He put her there inside of me and sustained that little helpless baby girl in awful conditions way deep in there and He grew her into the single most cutest toddler with the biggest, most ginormous personality you could possibly have in such a little person.

And it all started before I could even hear her heart beat…. before I could see a dash on the screen. I believe that God planned for her to be a part of our family before the foundations of the earth. I believe that He gave her “life and breath and everything” and that He “determined allotted time periods” for her to live in and determined “the boundaries of her dwelling places.” I believe, based on the authority of Scripture, that before she was formed God numbered her days. And 5 weeks and 5 days old, would not be her last day. Nothing in my body could have thwarted God’s plan for us to have her.

And so we do.

We have her.

What a kind Father. What mercy. When we ask for fish, he will not give us a snake. When we ask for bread, He will not give us a rock. I’m still learning what these things mean. I believe them with all of my heart. I believe I have experienced these things to be true. But I have also felt at times as if I’ve asked for a fish and have been given a snake. I know though that this has never, ever happened. I can not fully understand it or reconcile all of the things totally in my mind, but I know that God withholds nothing good from those He loves. And even more I know that nothing can separate me from His love. Nothing. 

I know that God is near the the broken hearted and I know that He binds up their wounds. My wounds are not fully bound up yet. But I have every confidence that they will one day be.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

To be continued…..