This morning I entered through the door of the office of my midwives of the last 8 years. They delivered my second and third baby and I used to love entering through that same door into the cozy waiting room that in a past life used to be the living room of the beautiful old victorian. It has now been warmly converted into an inviting place to go while awaiting a new arrival. It hasn’t changed much in all these years I’ve been going there…same couch…same bookshelves…same comfy chairs but it has certainly changed for me. The whole fuzzy feeling I would get each time I would sit in that waiting room eagerly looking forward to my turn to go back to one of the other rooms to chit chat with a midwife, see how big my belly was growing and, my favorite part, getting another chance to hear that rushing choo choo train sound of my baby’s heartbeat had slowly turned to fear and dread during the last couple of years as I sat waiting. While they had shared my joy for 2 healthy pregnancies and births, the last 3 times I had been pregnant I had walked out of the examining room in tears after finding that the choo choo train sound was nowhere to be found. I would then have to return several more times and wait in that room surrounded by swollen bellies to varying degrees to have a blood test taken to make sure that my HCG levels were returning to normal and maybe briefly talk about how I was handling everything since the miscarriage. Not happy memories. So today as my husband and I found ourselves once again waiting in that same room I realized that the warm cozy feeling had completely disappeared…the place had simply lost its magic. It seemed like an eternity that we waited. Glowing ladies with barely noticeable bumps and beautiful women sitting in full bloom sat around me reading magazines and being called back one by one. We continued to sit and sit and sit. As I sat, I wondered if I should just get up and leave. Ignorance is bliss, right? If I did not go back to the examining room then they couldn’t deliver bad news. I could still get out…make some lame excuse or simply just get up and walk out the same door I came in. Do it now and explain later. I had gone nearly 12 weeks knowing I was pregnant but not knowing whether the baby was alive and kicking. Did I really need to know??? As long as I stayed away from dopplers I could go on imagining the best. Yes, the progesterone I was on could keep sustaining even a non-viable pregnancy for a very long time so I could just keep on going just the way I had been for the past 2 months. Suddenly, in the midst of planning my way out, my name was called and there was no turning back. Here we go again! “So how are you feeling today?” the very pleasant young midwife asked me as we settled into the examining room. “Nervous!” was how I replied. So, she decided first things first…let’s find that heartbeat. No! Not yet…I’m not ready for the glass to shatter! I can’t go through this again…I just can’t!!! Here she was, though, laying me back and pulling up my shirt and putting that doppler on it…that doppler that could have been the same darn one that had brought me such pain before. Right away you could hear my heartbeat and some gurgling (I should have eaten breakfast) but I thought…maybe I just imagined…a choo choo train sound very faintly behind it. I looked at the midwife’s face and she didn’t seem to notice it so I chalked it up to wishful thinking. “There it is!” she smiled as she found it but it quickly went away and it was so faint that surely she had been mistaken. More moving around on my belly when all of a sudden the unmistakable sound of a rushing train started blaring through the room. “Sounds really good! Let’s see…(quietly counting to herself)…yes…about 170 heartbeats per minute!”. I immediately covered my face and began to cry. Two months of worry and fear were washing away from me. Could this really be true? Am I carrying a live baby? This part of my life was over…I thought…and, yet…here I am lying on the table and listening to the sweet sweet sound of a new beating heart. What joy! So we finished up our visit and as I walked down the stairs into that dreaded waiting room I began to realize something. The magic had returned. Praise Jesus! We are blessed.