#165 Sisters

Lanie has become a big sister, and she is super excited. Lanie tells everyone that Mia is her baby. When Lanie was still with grandparents, she would ask Tess and me again and again how Mia was doing. She even reprimanded us one time for going to get something from the store instead of staying in the hospital with Mia.

As great as all that is, even more fun is when Lanie talks to her sister. Every so often Mia will cry, and Tess or I will say something like, "It's okay, baby girl. Mommy and Daddy are here." Immediately after that, Lanie will parrot back, "It's okay, baby girl. I'm right here." Once or twice Lanie's told us Mia is crying because she wants her big sister. I'm sure the days are quickly coming when Lanie will get sick of having Mia around, but for now she's just thrilled.

Lanie holding her sister for the first time!

All four of us in one photo for the first time (on my birthday, too!)

Grace and peace,
BMH

#164 NICU(te) Baby Girl

If you're reading my blog, you probably have come from Tess's Facebook page, where you can see lots of updates on Mia. However, just in case you don't know what's going on with Mia, here's the lastest as of Friday, February 21: Mia is doing really well. She is in a crib now and is working on learning to eat by mouth instead of by feeding tube. We don't have a timetable as to when we'll come home yet, but the doctors and nurses are all very encouraging.

Back in post #162 I told the story of Mia's birth. Today I thought I would continue by describing my first few days with her in the NICU.

I arrived at Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines a couple hours after Mia. After checking in at the front desk, I found her sleeping in a bassinet under a heater in her room. The on-duty nurse told me Mia was still doing well. The only update was that they had moved her IV from her umbilical cord to her arm. Mia's heartrate, respiration rate, and oxygen saturation level were being monitored, and her temperature was being carefully controlled. I spent a little time talking and singing to Mia, changed my first preemie diaper, and then tried to settle in for a night in the NICU.

So many wires!

With a blanket, sheet, and pillow on a pull-out couch I slept in spurts. Every so often I'd wake up to Mia crying or a nurse coming in to check on her. I'd go talk to Mia and put my hand on her head. That first night Mia scared me by throwing up brownish-colored blood. When the nurses saw that, they made use of the tube running down her mouth to her stomach to suck out a little more. (Later on, when I was more awake to ask, I learned that Mia had swallowed some of her mom's blood during birth. It's fairly common.)

The next day I really got to hold Mia for the first time. Once again her tiny weight shocked me. We cuddled skin-to-skin to help with her development. Mia also started eating through her feeding tube: 4mL every 3 hours. (That's about 1 fl. oz. in a day.) Before each feeding the nurse would check the contents of her stomach to see how she was digesting. Gradually the amount of old blood coming out of her stomach decreased. My mother-in-law came to visit for a little bit in the afternoon. During the evening, Mia was placed under a special blue light to help with her skin color. She was quite the sight with her special mask on!

Tummy time!

Ready to "sunbathe"

Blue light life

I tried my best to adjust to NICU life, but I felt llike I was on high alert all the time. After receiving good reports from the doctor making rounds and the different nurses rotating in and out, I wasn't really worried about Mia's health, but it was hard to get comfortable. I felt very alone; I missed Tess and Lanie. I was glad to be with my daughter and get a chance to bond with her, but I always wondered if I was getting in the way of the hospital staff. I spent  Friday to Sunday in the same clothes, feeling less and less human as time went on.

On Sunday Mia got released from the blue light. Because she was so stable, there was no longer a need for instant access, so she moved from the basinet to an isolette, where her temperature could still be easily controlled. My parents came to visit for a little while. Lanie came, too, but because she was getting over a cold and still coughing, she wasn't able to meet her little sister. I loved being able to play with Lanie, but saying good-bye to her was heartbreaking. (She spent the next week with grandparents in Wisconsin.) I went back to Mia's room and cried.

Resting up during another big day

Looking good!

Inside the isolette

Mia's nurses kept putting blankets and bumpers around her so that she would feel enclosed and secure like she was still in the womb. But Mia is a fiesty one. No matter how many things the nurses used to surround her, she would keep on kicking until she broke free. On Monday the nurse placed Mia in a sleeping sack, which kept her in place a little more.

Smiles for the sleep sack

By late Monday afternoon I was feeling pretty good about Mia. Then Tess, still in the hospital in Clarion, called me. Her blood pressure was still high, so she was being kept in the hospital for a fourth night. Our parents had all gone home. Tess was beyond overwhelmed. So Monday evening I left Mia and rushed back to spend a night with Tess. She was released with some restrictions and a bunch of medication on Tuesday. We rushed down to Des Moines to find Mia swaddled up. Tess got to hold Mia for the first time. That evening we began our stay at the Ronald McDonald House, where we slept in a real bed for the first time since the previous Thursday night. We slept well and woke up with new hope. Tess and I were together with Mia now.

Swaddle modeling

Mommy's here!

Let's leave it there for today. Until next time,
Grace and peace,
BMH

#163 Super Birthday

I know, dear readers, that you're here for an update on Mia. I promise that one is coming next time I blog. I might even blog again this week if I remember. But today is my birthday, and today also would have been the 100th birthday of a personal hero of mine, Curt Swan, so I'm going to go ahead and blog about Curt Swan, like I've been planning for about a year.

Curt Swan was an artist, specifically a comic artist. Over the course of his career Curt drew a mind-boggling 19,000 pages of covers and interior pages. The reason I'm such a big fan of Curt Swan is that he was primarily a Superman artist. He first drew Superman in 1948 and was the main Superman artist for about three decades from the mid-1950s until 1986. And Curt was a remarkable Superman artist, doing an incredible job of making a fantastic character seem believeable. Rather than boring you with my thoughts on Curt Swan, I'll just leave you with a sampling of some of my favorite work of his:

Happy birthday, Curt!

Grace and peace,

BMH

#162 Grace

There's been no shortage of excitement for the Hofman family since I last blogged. Our second daughter, Mia Grace, was born on Friday (Feb. 7), but if I'm going to do the story of Mia's birth justice, we need to back up a few days.

Last Tuesday Tess went into the doctor for another checkup. I came home from work to be with Lanie, who was coughing and running a low fever and just generally feeling miserable. The morning was starting to drag on when I got a text from Tess. Her blood pressure was high, so she was going to have to stay longer while the nurse practitioner ran some more tests. Tess didn't come home and didn't come home and finally told me she was being kept overnight at the hospital. On Tuesday and Wednesday Tess received a couple shots to help baby's lungs develop, just in case. Wednesday she was released on bed rest and told to come back on Friday for a non-stress test.

Tess's mom came out to Iowa on Wednesday to help us adjust to Tess being on bed rest and to enable me to get some work done again. Wednesday and Thursday passed by pretty quietly.

Friday I took Tess back to the doctor. She was feeling fine. Howeer, her blood pressure was high again, so after the non-stress test, the doctor told Tess she would be staying overnight once again and ordered an ultrasound. Baby girl only met about half the standards there, so Tess and I were told to wait while the doctor planned next steps. Suddenly Tess's nurse rushed back into the room with a hospital gown. "Doctor says you're having an emergency c-section now. Take your clothes off and put this on." Tess immediately started crying, and before long I was crying, too. We tried to comfort each other as doctors and nurses rushed back and forth getting Tess and everything else ready. Before long they took Tess back to the operating room, and a nurse brought me some scrubs. Everything slowed down for me as I waited to be brought back to the OR, fighting desperately not to give in to panic and fear. Soon I joined Tess and held her hand during surgery. At 2:09 we heard, "Baby's out," and held our breath for a few excruciating moments, waiting for a cry. Then Mia cried, and Tess and I both teared up. Mia was here and okay for now, but what was next?

After the doctors finished Tess's operation, a nurse led me to Mia. She was little, only 3 lb, 5 oz, but doing very well. She was breathing on her own and had good color. I held Mia's hand and waited for the team from Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines to arrive to transport her to the NICU. Once the team finished Mia's preparations, Tess got to see Mia for a few brief moments. Then Mia left. I said goodbye to Tess, swung home to see Lanie and grab a few things, and headed out after Mia….

Mia's been in the NICU since Friday, and there's more story to tell there, but I think this is enough for now. Mia's birth certainly did not go the way Tess and I would've planned, but we've seen God's goodness to us in a number of ways. First, as brutal as staying overnight in the hospital on Tuesday night was for Tess, God knew Mia needed those shots so she would be ready for birth on Friday, seven weeks before her due date. Second, Tess felt fine on Friday. She wouldn't have gone in if she wasn't told to come back, so God made sure Tess was already in the hospital when she needed to have the emergency c-section. Third and most of all, Mia was born in really good health. Even beyond her breathing, she just seemed ready to come into the world. Tess and I were scared, but God answered our desperate prayers for a healthy baby. Tess and I picked the name Mia Grace before all this excitement, but we've definitely seen God's grace through Mia's birth.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#161 Discipling

1 Corinthians 5 has popped into my head a few different times over the past couple of months. In this Bible passage Paul is writing to the Corinthian church about the proper way to deal with a man who is pretty proudly and publicly do something that is sexually immoral. It's clear that Paul believes Christians should live differently than how the world around them lives. At the end of the chapter he instructs God's people to avoid individuals who claim to be Christian but live worldly lives. He also tells them not to worry about judging people outside of the church because that's God's job.

I keep thinking about this passage because I think we Christians in the U.S. today so often get Paul's instructions backwards. We think it's our job to judge and condemn everything our non-Christians neighbors do that is wrong. Sometimes we go so far as to not even associate with them. And often we are also reluctant to admit and call out sins within the church. We don't always like to hold each other accountable.

But here's the thing: accountability is part of what it means to belong to Jesus and be part of the body of Christ. We are Jesus' disciples. We need to engage in the process of discipling, being trained to follow and live for Jesus. We need to encourage one another in our Christians lives. We need to show one another what it looks like to imitate Jesus. And we also need to be called out when we do things that are wrong, when we fail to be like Christ. We need to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness and help. All of us need to continue to grow in Christ.

Now let me clear up a few things to try to make sure I'm understood. I'm not saying we Christians need to become hypercritical fault-finders. Jesus Himself warns us not to be too quick to judge others because we need to hold ourselves to the same standards. But we can't act like sin is okay. Sin is NOT okay. While humbly knowing and freely admitting our own sins, we need to be able to gently yet firmly point out sins in the church. We need to make ourselves mutually accountable. I'm also not saying we need to kick people out of the church if they're not perfect. I'm a sinner. All Christians are sinners. I'm far from perfect. All Christians are far from perfect. However, we should privately and lovingly call each other out. And, to follow the Bible's thinking, if some people say they're Christians but repeatedly feel no remorse for their sins and refuse to repent, then we should separate ourselves from them. Jesus says our faith should bear the fruit of good deeds; if we don't live like we belong to Christ, we probably don't belong to Christ. [On somewhat of a side note, I'm also not saying Christians can never say the behavior of non-Christians is wrong. Sometimes, especially when others are being harmed, we need to stand up and say God doesn't want us to do certain things. But we can't expect people who don't believe in Jesus to live as He teaches. Like Paul says, it's not our job to police non-Christians. We don't have authority over them.]

This idea of lifelong discipling is important for all Christians. I need to be held accountable and helped to grow. As unpleasant as it sounds to me, there's part of me that longs to have someone call me out when I do wrong because I need instruction and help if I'm going to become the kind of person Jesus calls me to be. And I think this idea of discipling is especially important when it comes to Christian leaders. (I'm a pastor, so that would include me.) Sometimes we Christians can seem much too eager to support and defend anyone who is (or even claims to be) a Christian. When Christian leaders sin, we need to be held accountable. We need to be held to at least the same standard as everybody else. Now accountability should be a private thing. Jesus says that when sin happens first one person should go to another person and point out the sin in private. That being said, I think that there are times when a Christian sins publicly that other Christians need to stand up and say, "This is not how we're supposed to act." Too often we rush in to defend and list off all these good things somebody else has done. Recognizing the good God helps us to do is important, but we who believe we are saved by grace shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that we can just make our sins go away by doing enough good things, that God only cares about whether we've done more good than bad. (And it's good that He doesn't, because, spoiler alert, none of us have.)

Christians should not be in the business of riding high horses or covering up scandals. We should be in the business of proclaiming salvation in Jesus, salvation which involves both forgiveness and transformation. That involves confessing our sins (and, where possible, making restitution to those we've wronged), asking for help, and following Jesus' example. I need discipling. We all need discipling. Let's commit to the process.

Grace and peace,

BMH