Nervous about 12-week ultrasound today

I've been a bundle of frayed nerves all morning and most of yesterday.


For one thing, I tried for 30 minutes yesterday afternoon to find the baby's heartbeat with my home Doppler... to no avail. I didn't pick up even a hint of the baby's heartbeat... only mine.


I keep having feelings of being SURE something is wrong... either that the baby has a fatal chromosome problem (as all our others have had), or that the baby's heart has already stopped. I've been trying to pray through these feelings... not very successfully.


Then I started thinking of Peter walking on water and how he began sinking when he took his eyes off of Christ. When I take my eyes off Christ and focus on the things of man (statistics, diagnostics, etc.), that's when I start sinking. So I spent most of today praying that I would keep my gaze on Christ no matter what happened this afternoon.


My prayer for today is:


Lord God, please protect this precious baby, and knit him or her in the womb according to the masterful design you created. Please let there be no physiological or other problems with this baby, but let it grow healthy and strong to full term. Please grant me, this child's mother, a peace that surpasses anything I've known so far. Please erase my anxieties about today's ultrasound. Please remind me that YOU are the Author of Life, and our trust is to be placed in You alone, not in man. I love You even more than I love our baby, even more than I love my husband! Thank You for planting this precious miracle inside me, and please allow the experience of pregnancy to draw me even closer to You, even in fearful times such as this. Please remove from our minds any excessive dwelling on what we may find today and allow each of us to focus on YOU, to praise and love and serve YOU. In Christ's name, Amen.