A few nights ago, The Child and I loaded into our car to head home from church. Before pulling away from the curb, I scrolled through the missed messages and emails that had accumulated on my phone while it had been silenced. Growing impatient and bored with my reading (and being anxious to get dinner and pack her bag for an overnighter with The MotherSuch), The Child finally asked: “If I start singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ will that make the car go?”

I took her up on her offer and as she began singing, I began driving. When she paused between verses, I slowed down. When she moved on to the next verse, I picked up the pace again. When she sang as fast as she could but I failed to drive as fast as she sang, I watched in the rear view mirror to see her furrow her brows at the limits of the illusion of control. But I kept her safe. Because she is my child and that’s my job as the real driver, duh. At a stoplight she took a moment to tell me: “Remember: you’re taking me to BeBe’s!” The light changed, she resumed singing, I resumed driving. She was clearly enjoying being in charge. Sweet child.

*     *     *     *     *

Thursday morning The Husband and I were kind of grumpy with one another. We each had our own reasons and neither was interested in the reasons of the other–at least not until we had a couple hours of wakefulness behind us. You know how it is in marriage: sometimes one person has the crankies, sometimes the other person, and then sometimes both of you have them at the same time and the air is all static-like with my-crankies-are-more-justified-than-yours-so-get-over-it-already. That was our car ride to Dr. Bigger Picture’s on Thursday morning.

We weren’t ugly to one another, just quiet. About halfway there, I finally shook off my grumpies and told him something about how I knew we were both in a mood but I’d like to have a nice morning together so whenever he was ready to put his mood behind I was ready to do the same with mine. He said nothing. He wasn’t ready yet.

By the time we reached the doctor’s office, he was ready. Me too. We aired the little irksome things that were bothering us, got over ourselves, and walked into the office as the clouds of cranky rolled on out of our skies.

*     *     *     *     *

The Husband flipped through some fitness magazine in the waiting room, paused at a page with an ad for a half-marathon. I remarked how I’m going to do one of those some day because why not. He flipped to the next page. The only other person in the room was called back for her appointment.

Then I started reading the captions on the muted television, picking up on whatever program had been chosen by some patient before us. A woman on a TLC program was talking about how long she’d had an IUD. Then talking about this weird moodiness followed by negative pregnancy tests followed months later by strange cramps.

“Nice,” I told The Husband. “It’s one of those wow-I-didn’t-even-know-I-was-pregnant shows.”

He looked up briefly, went back to his magazine.

I watched the silent story unfold, thinking the reenactment looked as ridiculous as the whole idea of being unaware of a pregnancy. I simply cannot fathom being so completely disengaged from what my lady parts are up to that I would be surprised when OOOF, out pops a small human.

It was surrealish, being the lady sitting in the fertility specialist’s waiting room, being the lady who has monitored and charted almost every single instance of ovulation in the last five years, watching the lady playing the lady who had spent nine months not knowing a person was growing inside of her.

“I’m nervous,” I whispered to The Husband, leaning into his shoulder.

“Everything’s going to be good,” he answered.

And back we were called for our turn.

*     *     *     *     *

Dr. BP came in to conduct our exam, surprising us as we’d been told he was in egg retrievals that morning and we would be seen by Dr. G. He was in scrubs, between retrievals. Briefly, I considered that he was coming in because they were concerned about our ultrasound and he wanted to handle it personally. I am super sensitive to signs of impending doom like that. Quickly, I dismissed the thought. I have become much better at banishing the negativity. I think.

Almost as soon as The Wand was in place, I saw the flicker of the heartbeat.

The HEARTBEAT, Sisterhood!

This teeny-tiny flicker of white beating against the gray and blackish blobs of uterine background.

The Husband was holding my hand. I was squeezing tightly to his. I exhaled.

I don’t even know how long I had been praying to see that heartbeat. A week? Two? A month? Two years? I don’t know. But I had prayed and prayed that we would see that, and right there in front of my eyes it was just flick-flick-flickering along.

*     *     *     *     *

Dr. BP was measuring the baby, turning his screen so I could have a closer view than the one on the wall across from my feet.

“Well,” he began, “the baby is still measuring behind. I’m sorry to tell you that, but it’s measuring around 6 weeks. Now let’s get the heart rate.”

I watched the ticker spike. He turned the volume on and I head the beautiful oooosh-oooosh-oooosh-oooosh noise. I watched as he chose a segment on the ticker and the computer extrapolated an average  ’beats per minute’ for that segment of 105.63bpm. Reaching back into my knapsack of anecdotal-information from the Internet, I knew that heartbeat was a little low for the 7.1 weeks at which we were supposed to be.

The exam was over, I was sitting up, and Dr. BP was holding onto my funky-sock-clad foot. Explaining. Patiently, compassionately explaining.

I hate when I find myself wading through these kinds of explanations.

Instead of measuring at 7w1d, the baby is measuring 5w6d. Meaning, only about three days of growth since we were there last week.

There’s a small technical margin of error there, he explained, but just a small one. Meaning, the measurement is not off by a week.

At this point, they want to see the heart beating at 120bpm or so. The rate of 105bpm is pretty low for the baby’s age.

Ultimately, the likelihood is that this pregnancy will fail, he said. That the heart will slow, cease beating, and I will miscarry. Not a small likelihood, he told us, but based on his experience in these situations, a probability of better than 90%. He was so sorry to tell us this, he hoped he would be wrong, but he couldn’t send us away thinking everything was okay only to have us come back in a week to discover we had lost the baby. He told us to schedule a follow-up ultrasound for whenever we want to come back next week and we’ll check the progress again–but we have been cautioned to expect that it will not be an improvement.

He answered every question I could think of–which if I remember right was just one. Or maybe three. Let’s call it two. Not that it matters. But he didn’t rush us. I asked something about whether it is possible for an IVF embryo to implant later than expected (answer: not as late as my dates would require), but can’t remember what else I may have said other than a bunch of “okays” and sighs.

He hugged me. He wrote down his cell phone number and assured us that if we have other questions, he wants us to call him. And he told us that what we do now is pray, that sometimes these things turn out okay, and that his wife would be the first to tell us that he is not even close to always being right.

We booked a follow-up for next week and wandered back outside.

*     *     *     *     *

The car ride home was about as quiet as the car ride there had been. Except for when I was crying.

I stared out the window and thought about the cloud that had hovered over us on the trip up there.

As The Husband held my hand, driving in silence, I wished I had that other cloud back, instead of the new one following us home.

*     *     *     *     *

Spent the rest of the afternoon laying on my bed–praying, resting, texting with various friends and family, Googling a little, confirming my plan to attend a previously-planned dinner with a small group of girlfriends.

As the afternoon wore on, I thought back on those darkest of dark days last year when my Daddy was in the hospital. When some of his doctors were cautioning us to expect things not to turn out okay. When we were encouraged to meet with hospice. When we met with hospice. When my Daddy was laying in the hospital bed, thin and frail from the cancer and the treatments for it and talking to me about the kinds of things that you only talk about when you think you might not have too much longer to talk about them. I thought about how thin and frail we all were from the cancer and the treatments. Maybe not physically, but Sisterhood? Our spirits were worn thin, our hope was frail. I thought about how my Mother talked in tones of faith infused with reality, tones that were hard to hear because I was so scared that it might mean that the moment where we would have to give up was right around the corner and I didn’t want that moment to notice us trying to creep around it. In hindsight? My Mother was just talking as a wife, as a believer, who had put it all on the altar.

Several months ago, out of respect for my family’s privacy and so as not to drag readers here through the extreme highs/lows that we were encountering (the drama was hard enough to live but felt worse, sensastionalizedish or something, in the retelling), I decided not to write more about my Daddy’s illness. But my Daddy is an illustration of the kind of ‘unexpected’ of which our God is capable. Because now? He is across town with my Mother, in incredible health that we were cautioned not to expect, his exams in the last five months showing that the tumor shrank from over six inches to under two and that there are no longer active cancer cells buzzing about.

So.

We know what the medical realities and scientific probabilities are here.

We know that when we return to the doctor next week, we may learn that this baby is already gone.

But we also know the kinds of things our God can do.

And yesterday? I saw the heartbeat, the one I had prayed to see.

And as of this moment, I am still carrying this baby. I am still loving and carrying and praying for this baby.

It is still all on the altar and my heart is knifed by the knowledge that my obedience may be tested past the point of sacrifice and through the valley of grief, yet again.

But Sisterhood, I am praying onward.

For this baby to grow in health,

for that heart to beat strongly.

For the unexpected.

I am telling my God where I want us to go, and I am chorusing over and over as though my prayers are the fuel we need to arrive at my intended destination.

Even though I know I am just a passenger.

I am the child in the backseat, singing about the wipers on the bus,

the horn on the bus,

the people on the bus.

Even as the tires are running flat, the tank is nearing empty, the windows are stuck open, and we’re driving into what the forecast predicts to be a terrible storm, I am singing.

Because I know He is the driver.

And at some point, if the bus breaks down?  He will walk right alongside me.

And if my legs fail, He will carry me.

And whatever else we consider any of this, that much we should consider joy.

So sing with me, Sisterhood.

Sing about the wheels.