The journey of Faith – I

Faith conceived

As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to father a daughter. In this series- “Journey of Faith” I write in retrospect our journey to planned parenthood. In the first installment of this series, I’ve documented the beginnings till the first 3 months (first trimester) of pregnancy.
To give a background, my best half – Shalom and I are doctors, Shalom finished her post-graduation in Anatomy and joined me in Ludhiana in July 2018, where I was in the final year of my residency (post-graduation) in Orthopaedics.
In early January of 2019 we did the pregnancy test and found out that we’re going to be promoted to parenthood soon. A miracle in itself, that we conceived in the first month when we set out to try, God’s timing is always right. As the initial excitement fizzed and we decided to keep the matters low key, morning sickness hit like a fierce hurricane.
Shalom, who had already been blessed with an hyper acute sense of smell, now had her senses going into an overdrive; just to illustrate, at supper time she could smell my breath and guess what I had for breakfast! Eventually, she had to resign from the kitchen (more like our home, yes, she found the home itself nausea-inducing). More than once the nausea and vomiting made her loath to the core the journey to motherhood making her more determined that ever that this would be our first and last pregnancy (which only time will tell, as God unfolds his plans one day at a time).
We decided to nickname our little one – “Faith”, and I was convinced beyond a doubt that Faith, our first born would be a daughter. I made it a point to sing and play the ukelele at the family prayer every night and most importantly to keep Shalom happy (a happy mother is equivalent to a happy family).
Looking back I realize that when God put Adam to sleep to make Eve from his missing rib, He definitely would have added extra doses of tenacity and resilience for the woman to endure the journey to motherhood. Volumes have been written about a woman’s journey to motherhood, but it is an overwhelming and humbling experience for a man to travel along with her to fatherhood. Now I realize that this journey has brought us closer to the heart of the Father in heaven.