Answered Prayers

Every night before bedtime, Natalie and I say her prayers. It's a routine that I want to establish for her now so that her future relationship with God is a good one. After we say hers, I "think" mine and I always pray that God will guide me in making the best choices and decisions for Natalie.

Recently Natalie has started sleeping on her tummy, which has created horrible anxiety for me. As you know, my biggest fear is SIDS and I've done everything in my power to prevent it. When she started sleeping on her tummy I would immediately go into her room and flip her over, usually she would cry and fuss for a short while and then fall back asleep. I can still remember the panic I felt the very first time I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at the monitor only to see her face down! I dashed into her room at what felt like the speed of light and flipped her immediately. All kinds of thoughts were going through my mind "how long has she been like that?", "can she breathe?"...

At her last check up with Dr. Manzo I asked him about the tummy sleeping. He very calmly told me to let her sleep any way she wants (with a few obvious exceptions). He told me that as long as she rolls over both ways, lifts her head and her upper body and can get into the crawling position, she's totally fine. For those of you who don't know, Dr. Manzo is WONDERFUL! He is very calm and reassuring, and is first to suggest a second opinion if he feels at all uncertain about something (he did that for her hernia). I completely trust him and his opinions, and went home that night and let her sleep on her tummy.

Last night we said our prayers as usual and Natalie went to sleep on her tummy as usual. But something in me didn't feel right. I wrestled with the idea of flipping her over, and went back and forth about it with Chase. Before bed I went in to check on her and she was basically face down and her breathing sounded heavy and muffled. So I flipped her. She never cried, never made one peep. That was confirmation to me that my instinct was correct and that I had made the best decision I could for her.

I think people search for huge spectacles as proof of God's faith; I'm realizing that, just as everything else in life, it's the little things that count. I prayed for the ability to confidently make the right decisions for my daughter, and as far as I'm concerned, my prayers were answered.