"Healing doesn't come from the explained"

There is a song that I have listened to a lot over the past month called "the hurt and the healer" by Mercy Me. It is a great song and I love the opening lyrics,

"Why?, a question that is never far away, but healing doesn't come from the explained. Jesus please don't let this go in vein, your all I have, all that remains, so here I am, what's left of me?, when glory meets my suffering"

Its really struck home to Ben and I, that God chose for some reason not to give us a reason as to why. We don't know why our baby girl died. We don't know why He chose her. We don't know why He chose us as her parents to go through this. Even if we had an answer to the physiological question of how or why she died, this wouldn't bring us any healing. Our healing comes only from knowing that our great God did in fact choose this, He knew this was going to happen even from the beginning of time. He not only knew this was going to happen, but He allowed it, and we rest in the knowledge that He is a good God, and He loves us, and this is ultimately for our good and going to bring Him the most Glory. More Glory than if He had allowed our Glory to live a full life. God's design for Gloria was to exist for His glory, and 27 hours was what and how He chose to do that. I love the song Glory Baby by Watermark as well, and the line

"We will rest in knowing, that heaven is your home, and that's all you'll ever know".

Oh how wonderful it is for her to only know heaven. She will never have to know the pain and suffering on this earth. She will never have to know this pain that her mama feels right now in missing her baby. I wanted to post on here the information that we do have. That is from our human eyes, what happened 4 weeks ago. I know that I haven't got a chance to talk to many of you, our friends and family and had the opportunity to give you the whole story. And I also know some people don't want to ask for the details. But just to clarify, it isn't painful for me or Ben to talk about. Please don't feel that you can't ask questions or bring Gloria up in conversation. She is our baby girl, and we like to talk about her, even if it is about her passing.

 I was 39 weeks along, and trying to wait patiently for our sweet girl's arrival. She was due on Monday April 30th. On Friday night, the 27th, I had just finished high school girl's bible study at our house. We had prayed that I would go into labor soon. As soon as my girls left that evening, contractions started. I was pretty sure this was it. Some friends, Jarrent and Kristine Farewell came over to talk a bit and we had to cut our conversation short around 9:00 because I was pretty sure I was in active labor. We loaded up the car and headed down to the hospital, which was a 45 min drive and get checked in around 11:30pm. I had thought that my water broke so they checked me straight into a room, bypassing triage, but turns out it hadn't. They hooked me up to monitor Gloria's heartbeat and she was doing great. A strong 140-150 bpm which is good. I had wanted a natural delivery with out medication like I had with Noah and Eden, so they let me move around and would come in and monitor her heartbeat every 45 minutes or so. I labored for another hour or two and around 2:00am I could feel I was getting close to the end. So the nurse wanted to put me back on the monitor to check baby's heartbeat. This time it was different. Her heartbeat had dropped down to 80bpm. The nurse I could tell was concerned and was trying to determine whether to rush me into an emergency C-section or not. It became clear that I was very close to pushing so that was the quickest way to get baby out because she was in distress. The doctor on call was called in and she broke my water. Gloria Ruth was born at 2:36am after only about 10 mins of pushing. As soon as she came out, it was very clear that something wasn't right. She was very gaunt in color and limp. She didn't have the normal reflexes a newborn should when first delivered. They put her right on my chest and I touched her for a second. The medical team immediately knew something was wrong and took her over to the baby warmer. As the team worked on her, the room was quiet. Minutes had passed and she hadn't cried. Then we heard them say "call the NICU", my heart sank. They quickly whisked her off to the NICU followed by her grandmas. In the NICU they had to start chest compressions on her small little body because her heartbeat wasn't strong enough. My nurse and doctor continued to work on me as I had a lot of post delivery blood loss. So Ben stayed with me until I was stable and then ran to be with Gloria. An agonizing 30-45 minutes passed as we got updates via text from grandmas and Ben who were with her watching in the NICU. Around 3:30am we got news that they needed to transport her down to Sutter Memorial Hospital in downtown Sacramento due to the lack of medical technology at this NICU. I got to be wheeled down to the NICU to see her around 4:00am. They couldn't transport her until she was stable, and her blood pressure was very low. As soon as I got to her, I touched her head and said "Hi baby girl" and she opened her eyes for the first time. The medical team was keeping her body cool so that her body could work on sending blood to her brain. They informed us that at some point during delivery she suffered some sort of trauma and her brain went with out oxygen for an undetermined amount of time. She received her first blood transfusion to hopefully help get her blood pressure up. Around 7:00am she was stable enough to be transferred to the downtown NICU. I was sent back to a recovery room, and Ben, Ruth, Kristi, and Josh all followed the transport team down to Sutter Memorial. Around 10:00am Gloria had an EEG to check for brain function and a heart scan. She was having a really hard time stabilizing her blood pressure and had to be on many medications and machines. I was discharged from the hospital around 12:30 and rushed down to be with our girl. I got there around 1:00pm, and was given the Dr's prognosis. Gloria didn't have enough blood in her veins to support her body and she was still very deep in the woods. For the next few hours, all we could do was wait and pray. Around 7:00 Ben and I went to try and sleep for a little since we had been up all night already. Around 9:30pm my eyes popped open and I could not sleep another minute, I had to go back and be with her. Ben, my mom, and I sat with her for another couple hours, and then around 12:00am on April 29th Gloria started to decelerate. Nurses and Doctors were swarming around her. As Ben and I watched this commotion, I was so overwhelmed with peace. In a time like this, the only explanation is that the Lord was holding us close and reminding me of His goodness and love for us and for Gloria. As we watched them work on her, I remember thinking "OK God, you are good and you love us, if this is your will, I trust that." I can only explain this as "The peace that passes all understanding" because I certainly didn't understand it. It was right after this, that Dr Rosas came over to Ben and I and told Ben to sit down. He said that there wasn't any more they could do to her or for her. She wasn't responding to any of the treatments and she wasn't going to make it . Our response was completely God's grace, because it was just a calm "OK". We then asked if we could hold her, as we hadn't got to do that yet. So for the next 4-5 hours we got to hold her still hooked up to the machines and ventilator. All of our family came in and we all got to pass her around and sing to her. We all sang her "Happy Birthday" at 2:36am. She opened her eyes a few times to look at us. The Lord overwhelmed us with peace and He brought to mind the hymn "To God be the Glory" and we sang that to her over and over. Around 4:30am her blood pressure started to drop again and Ben and I decided to take her off the breathing machine and blood. Our family got to take her into a private room and all hold her without being hooked up to any machines. She lived for about another hour as we all loved on her and said goodbye. She was ushered into glory around 6:00am.

At this point in time, all the Doctors can say is that there was some sort of trauma and there wasn't enough blood. We have no answers. And that is OK. We know that even if answers never come, this is not baffling to our heavenly Father. He knows exactly what happened. Knowing wouldn't change the outcome or give us any more comfort than we have already received from the Lord and knowing He is in control.