The Parker Family HomePage Miracles Do Happen!

Faith is not reason's labor, but it's repose.--Young

David and I were both diagnosed infertile the second year of our marriage; he couldn’t make sperm and I couldn’t make eggs. The doctors told us that it was so unlikely we would ever have children that even with medical intervention it was a one-in-a-million chance we would ever conceive. Imagine then, if you will, our surprise when I did conceive - in the fourth year of our marriage. It was February 5, 1986 when I found out I was pregnant, following a trio of prophetic dreams in which I was told of the conception, given the due date, and informed that there would be two of them. Two of the dreams, we soon learned, were true; I had indeed conceived and the due date was October 27. But an ultrasound revealed a single fetus, and we assumed the third dream had been wrong. That’s what we thought anyway. And that’s the trouble with interpreting your own dreams; you sometimes tend to implant your own wishful thinking on them and end up with a confused message. Given our diagnosis of infertility, when the first two dreams came true, I assumed the message in the third dream meant that our one-in-a-million conception had been blessed by the two-for-one fairy, and we were having twins. But the dream eventually proved to be accurate in that it predicted I would have two children. And a week before Father’s Day, on June 12, 1988, a home pregnancy test revealed I was pregnant with our second child! No dreams this time, just foul tasting coffee two mornings in a row that triggered an instinct and sent me running to the pharmacy for a test kit. I wanted to wait for Father’s Day to tell David, but I was too excited and too overcome with emotion to wait more than a couple of hours. We almost lost Katie Mae when she was born. Me, too. She was seventeen days past due when my water broke and it was discovered she had “pooped” while in utero. When her heart finally stopped for a third time in less than an hour (I never went into labor), I was rushed into the operating room for an emergency c-section where my blood pressure bottomed out and they almost lost me. But Katie Mae was alright; she hadn’t swallowed any of the poisoned amniotic fluid. It had stopped just short of her vocal chords. And after two days in intensive care, she was finally brought to me - in my intensive care bed - to hold for the first time. Holding her in my arms, the room was suddenly filled with music and song like I’d never heard before, like a chorus of angels whose words I couldn’t understand but whose meaning I comprehended in the depths of my soul. Truly. And I knew her life had destiny and purpose. We almost lost Gentry as well. From the beginning it was a difficult pregnancy and I suffered from mild depression. It didn’t help that there was a lot of stress from a lot of different sources in our life at the time, and it all took it’s toll and came to a head on November 5, 1988, when my water broke. I was just 28 weeks pregnant, and when the doctors confirmed our worst fear and assured us we would lose him within twenty-four hours, we began preparing emotionally for the worst. But forty-eight hours later I was still pregnant. We were told not to get our hopes up, that it wouldn’t last more than a week, and that we should continue to prepare ourselves. To make a very long story short, Gentry and I defied the extreme odds and held on to each other, despite further complications, for twelve weeks after my water broke - and then - when he wouldn’t even make an appearance for induced labor, the doctor had to go in and get him. He was born with no ill effects twenty days before his due date; my healthy, bouncing baby boy, who went from being my high risk pregnancy to being my high maintenance child, plagued with the oddest and most bizarre life experiences you can imagine. He can still throw us for an unexpected loop and continues to live and do things his own way. But his life, too, has destiny and purpose. Of this, I have never doubted. Two conceptions that defied the greatest odds imaginable. Two births that escaped the specter of death. Two babies that came into the world despite all worldly understanding. They have always been the most conclusive proof I have that god and miracles do exist.

The Parker Family HomePage http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/9288 Cartersville, Georgia, USA parkerplace@gmail.com

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