Ashley Meddings

People of Norwood - Ashley Meddings

“For this child I prayed…” 1 Samuel 1:27a

I always knew I wanted to be a mom. When my husband, Kyle, and I decided it was time to start our family, I was ecstatic! It took us a little while, but we were pregnant within a few months. I was so excited…until my doctor told me I was a “high-risk pregnancy” due to a potential congenital heart condition that our baby was at risk of developing. Every other month I had to go in for additional ultrasounds to make sure Baby Meddings was not developing any heart defects.

After a few months, our doctor was able to determine that our daughter’s heart was growing as it was supposed to and was not developing the defect; however upon examining her overall growth from one ultrasound to the next, our doctor noticed that Baby Meddings had dramatically stopped growing! Baby Girl had a condition called IUGR (Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction) which was discovered when she went from the 17th percentile to the 3rd percentile for size for her gestational age. The doctor was very upfront and told Kyle and I to be prepared as it was possible for our daughter to be stillborn.

We both cried on the way home. To have joy finding out we were pregnant and joy that she was not developing a heart defect, to now being told that she may die?

In still, small voices I remember hearing God whisper to my heart, “Do you trust Me?”

Many times the words to Blessed Be the Name of the Lord echoed in my head, “You give and take away, You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be Your name.” My daughter’s life was God’s. He brought her to us. It was completely His authority to take her if that was His plan. No matter the outcome, we had to trust Him.

I had to undergo twice a week monitoring where ultra sound technicians checked the amount of liquid in the placenta, blood flow in the umbilical cord, heart rate over a period of 10 minutes, and had to see a voluntary and involuntary movement (ie: arm/leg movements and practice breathing). The original concern was making it to full term.

On December 3rd (just shy of 39 weeks), we were at the doctors’ office for a monitoring session. Everything was going well, baby girl was passing all her check points and we were finishing up our last test (heart rate over 10 minutes) when the tech came in and told us though our time was up she had to help out with another monitoring real quick then would come back to unhook me and we could leave. It was completely providential that we had to stay later as in those few minutes the tech was gone, baby girl all of a sudden had erratic heart rates. She had been perfectly fine until that point.

When my doctor saw the test results, she had us go to the hospital for a two hour heart rate monitoring. During that test, baby girl continued to have erratic rates so we were admitted into the hospital. That evening I was started on Pitocin to begin the labor process, however each contraction brought on a significant heart rate drop for Baby Girl.

The next day it was decided we would need to do a C-section. During the surgery, the doctor noticed Baby Girl had the umbilical cord wrapped 3 times around her neck and there was a true knot in the cord (we believe this was the cause of her IUGR). She was 4lbs 15oz without a trace of fat on her body! Unfortunately because she did not have any fat stored, she was unable to regulate her own body temperature and had to go from the recovery room straight to the NICU. Again we saw the Lord’s hand at work having her in the NICU.

While there, the NICU pediatrician discovered baby girl had low blood sugar, and with further testing for her sugar levels they discovered she also had a low blood platelet count. This may have gone unnoticed if Little One hadn’t needed to go to the NICU.

It was so hard for us not having baby girl with us! We were only allowed to hold her in the NICU every 3 hours during her feedings. But even through that, God was so good!

He protected her and sustained her and 5 days and a successful blood transfusion later, baby girl was allowed to leave NICU and stay with us in our hospital room. After 2 additional days, baby girl was finally discharged from the hospital and we were all allowed to go home.

We named this little gift Hadleigh Grace. “Hadleigh” (pronounced “had-lee”) means “rest, or wisdom, from God”- a fitting reflection of God’s work in our lives with this little blessing. We decided to give her the middle name “Grace” as a reminder of the grace God had already shown her in her young life.

Though there had been a lot of ups and downs with my pregnancy and Hadleigh’s first few days of life, it is always incredible to reflect on God’s sovereign plan for all of us – from the peace He provided to the protection He gave, God had been, and continues to be, so good to us.

‘You give and take away. You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be Your name.'”