Ashley's
anencephalic Story

            Our first step in the baby process was to find a doctor that was on our insurance plan.  The closest hospital to us was in St. Joseph, Michigan. We tried to find out where the closest gynecologist was in the area that our insurance would cover. Wouldn’t you know it?  The choice was either Watervliet (45 minutes) or South Bend (45 minutes) instead of the 15 minutes to Lakeland Hospital in St. Joseph.
            A friend from high school that lived in the area recommended that we try the doctor in Watervliet.  She had just had a baby and really liked him.  He also happened to be on the insurance plan.  So we decided to go to Watervliet to the clinic that she had been going to.  Later, we recognized the first of God’s miracles in choosing this doctor. 
            I went with her for the first appointment. Our doctor was very likeable and Pam especially liked his caring attitude.  Things were going along smoothly and Pam went to most of the appointments by herself, since they basically just weighted and measured her. 
            Finally, though it was the big day for the ultrasound. I couldn’t let Pam find out the news by herself, so I had to go as well.  We were pretty excited as we drove to the doctor’s office.  We were going to find out if our little one was a boy or a girl.  We didn’t want to wait because both Pam and I are planners and like to have everything organized.
            We talked about whether we wanted it to be a boy or a girl.  I think that Pam wanted a girl and I leaned toward having a boy.  Whatever God gave us was fine with us because we knew that they would be special.
            As we drove to the doctor’s office, Pam needed to go to the bathroom because she had been drinking lots of water for the ultrasound.  Even though riding in the car was hard, she made it.
            We finally got to Watervliet and went in to the doctor’s office.  They got us into the ultrasound room and we waited for the doctor.  Our doctor finally came in and did the ultrasound.  After several minutes he told us that we would have a girl.  He knew Pam’s family history of twins and wanted to make sure that twins were not in the picture.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t get a clear enough picture to be able to tell us whether there were two babies or not.
            He decided to send us to Kalamazoo for an ultrasound there.  He said that with their machine you could see everything down to the tiniest of fingernails.  Of course, we were very excited about this.  I wasn’t real exited about taking off work to go to Kalamazoo since I would have to take off most of the day, but if that is what it took I would go.  I didn’t want to have Pam go by herself.  As will become evident, this was another aspect of God’s plan that we didn’t even know yet.