This is a first on my blog. Yes friends, my very first guest post....and I'm really excited to share it with you. Even better? It's a male perspective! It's not often that you hear from males in the blogging world and sometimes, it's a little refreshing. My friend Kyle is funny, light-hearted and a really great writer. I'm super excited to share this post with you.
He's working on a book right now and I'm hoping to share more bits and pieces with you. His wife Melinda is also a great friend of mine. They are due with their second baby (a boy!) in the next few weeks, and Kyle is referencing this pregnancy throughout the story. Enjoy!
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As a pregnant man you have a ton of responsibilities. Um, wait I will come up with one. Ah, worrying.
Worry about money, how are you going to afford the doctor’s bills,
daycare, insurance, much less diapers, and most of all the little peanut inside
your wife’s womb. There are so many
unknowns, boy or girl, green eyes or blue, are they healthy?
As my wife and I found out, all of the other things we
worried about were inconsequential comparatively to that last, the baby
healthy.
I am a planner. So,
we had a budget set, names picked out and even the timing of the birth
decided. Since my wife works for a
school district we even planned our conception according to the birthdate that
would suite us best, Spring. If our
little guy or gal was born in April or May the maternity leave would transition
right into summer, in other words 4 month off, paid! So, when July rolled around it was go
time. Just as we planned it we found out
August 9, 2014. We nailed it! Boom, I
got her pregnant! Everything was going to according to OUR plan. However, our plan was interrupted.
During a routine Doppler exam, listening to our baby’s
heartbeat the doctor notice something.
Something that hadn’t been there before.
As he quickly grabbed the nurse and instructed, with a firm tone, to
“call the Northwest Children’s Cardiology and make an appointment for the
soonest available time,” the nurse hesitated.
His response couldn’t have been more imperative “You have 2 minutes
before they close to get ahold of them.
Why are you still standing here? Go!”
My wife already in tears was told that our son’s heart was
skipping. Every 8 beats there was an
arrhythmia. But, in our doctor’s normal
candor he told her, “It’s nothing to worry about yet.” Yeah right.
She was sent home with some literature on a condition called
PAC (Premature Atrial Contractions).
There is a ton of information on the internet about PAC’s, fortunately,
we took our doctor’s advice and avoided google.
Instead, we read the medical journal he suggested, which informed us
that this COULD be normal and does occur in most pregnancies, but goes
unnoticed. It can be caused by stress or
too much caffeine. It can also be caused
by a malformation of the heart in the fetus.
Our worries we feared were warranted.
In the medical journal there was an excerpt that I took
particular notice to “the condition may only last for 2-3 hours.” What were the
chances that we hit the lottery and the doctor was monitoring the heart during
the 2-3 hour window when this was occurring? Evidently pretty good.
This happened the day before I was leaving for a bachelor
party weekend and was not going to leave my wife alone to worry about this on
her own for 5 days without me. Other
than the responsibility of worrying, as men our other job, is to make sure that
our wives are taken care of. Although I
was totally freaking out I lifted my head high, told my wife that I was
confident everything was going to be fine and I was sure that it was an anomaly. I wasn’t sure. But, I grasped onto that phrase from the
medical journal and scheduled a follow up appointment with our doctor the next
day. Then, I prayed.
Our doctor’s face as we entered the exam room was stiff with
a plastic smile. Usually, he is excited
to see us, he jokes as we go through the routine exams. This day, he looked like a figurine from
Mother Truseaux’s Wax Museum. I imagine
he thought that I was torturing my wife by making her listen to our baby’s
condition again. And he shrugged off my
suggestion that the arrhythmia not be consistent according to the article he
had us read. As he placed the Doppler on
my wife’s protruding belly I closed my eyes.
I shut out the world as I focused all my effort listening to
each swoosh coming from the speaker of Doppler wand. A typical fetus heartbeat at 6 months is
between 120-180 beats per minutes.
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, I started counting.
1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8...1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8
Trying to keep an 8 count at 160 beats per minute felt like
trying to keep track of a hummingbirds wings.
But, I never heard it stop, there was no inconsistency. I finally took a breath and looked at the
doctor. He was confused and stuttered
through an explanation asking my wife to confirm what they both had heard. I didn’t care, I had done my job.
A week later our pediatric cardiologist confirmed the
results, our baby’s heart was perfectly formed.
We shed tears of relief. Although
we had agonized of what could be wrong and prepared ourselves for bad news. Our
worries were not as we feared, all we had was bad timing.
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See what I mean?? He's good! Thanks, Kyle! We are all praying for that sweet baby boy! And for a healthy and smooth delivery for your rock-star of a wife!
I also am excited to share that I was a featured blogger on last week's "Waiting on Wednesday" linkup. Please check Holly's blog. She's a total inspiration!

Your blog is amazing!! :)) You are a great writer who obviously has a passion for what they are writing about! I would appreciate it if you would check out my blog and let me know what you think in a comment on a post you like! I would love to have a talented writers input! Keep up the great work!!!
ReplyDelete-Wanderlust Rach <3
Such a special story of trusting in God and the love he has for his wife. I love it!
ReplyDeleteNeat story. What a blessing! Best of luck with the book you're writing! Judging by this post, it'll be a good book :)
ReplyDeleteHi, Kelly! Thanks for linking up with Waiting on...Wednesday (and for your very kind words - made my day!). What a great guest post! It's refreshing hearing from a guy and you can definitely tell he loves his wife. So sweet! Lucky girl! Thanks again and have a great day!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story! Thanks for linking up at Women With Intention Wednesdays!
ReplyDelete