choices-lrc-cares-2

May Update

ashley@rankmonsters.org (Ashley Street) — Wed, 29 May 2024 14:36:31 GMT

May Update

May 29, 2024 | Blog

In the Room with Holly:

I had the absolute privilege of meeting a kind-hearted, God-loving young woman for the first time in my office this week. This young woman was facing an unplanned pregnancy and expressed quite a bit of fear and anxiety, along with quite a bit of morning sickness, which didn’t help the situation. She came in with her mother, who I discovered was a pediatric nurse, caring for infants and children. We offered her a limited OB ultrasound to confirm her pregnancy was in the uterus, measure the baby’s heart rate, and give her an estimated gestation based on the baby’s size. Before her ultrasound, I asked for her permission to show a short, 5-minute video produced by the Endowment for Human Development. I felt like she might benefit from seeing all the changes that were going on INSIDE her body so that she better understood what she was going through. She and her mother agreed, and we watched “Your Life Before Birth”, which can be found at EHD.org. I watched as the young woman smiled and shed tears of joy as she saw all the growth and development that had quickly taken place in such a short amount of time. The heart began beating at 4 ½ weeks, just about the time she had taken her first pregnancy test. The brain had formed and was already active with brain waves at 6 weeks, which leads to reflexes and movement of the hands and feet. This beautiful and precious baby had every organ in place at 8 weeks and was playfully moving its hands up to its face. It’s the miracle of life and each and every one of us started the exact same way. Our DNA was determined the moment the sperm penetrated the egg to combine 23+23 chromosomes = 46 human chromosomes and the start of our life. The only difference between you then and you now, is time. We are simply on a time continuum from the start until the day we draw our last breath.

After the video ended, we all took a deep breath, sharing in our moment of awe about God’s beautiful creation. I showed them baby models that are accurate to gestational size so they could further understand fetal development. The young woman’s mother, the pediatric nurse, said, “I had no idea that all of that happened so quickly once conception occurred. I thought that you could get an abortion up to 8 weeks because nothing was really going in the uterus until then.” I reassured her that the intrauterine fetal development video that we just watched was not only factual and scientifically accurate, but also, we were about to confirm everything with the ultrasound where she would see her 11–12-week-old grandbaby.

And that, we did! She and this new little momma were able to see that precious baby, fully formed, playful and actively kicking and moving its hands and feet. The baby was seen putting its hands up to its mouth, then forehead, and then to its ears. The legs were curled up until the baby stretched out fully extending its legs and feet as if to stand up inside the mother’s womb. It was all captured with our eyes and with printed images for her to keep. The perfect reminder that her baby’s life was well underway and that all her nausea and vomiting was not for nothing. Today was good medicine for this scared young momma. It was also good medicine for her mother who was now equipped with the TRUTH about the beauty and miracle of life that begins at the very moment of conception.

If You Know, You Know!

February Update

ashley@rankmonsters.org (Ashley Street) — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 14:30:14 GMT

February Update

Feb 1, 2024 | Blog

In the Room with Holly:

A broken, 18-year-old girl is sitting in front of me, convinced that she wants an abortion. She confesses she already experienced a surgical abortion two years ago. This means she was at the tender age of 16. She’s tall, beautiful, and speaks with street smarts well beyond her years. She has been forced to grow up faster than any little girl should. She has been raising other people’s children in her grandparents’ household since she was eight years old. With no mother or father to protect her, she was molested and raped by her brother. Her Step-grandparents are her current custodians and from her perspective it’s “too little too late.”

The odds are stacked against her. She knows nothing about sexual health, menstruation, cycles, or even how conception really occurs. She listens intently and remarks that she never had a mother teach her, or anyone who cared enough to give her the information she needed. Slowly but surely her cold, strong, protective wall starts to crumble, and she softens. She agrees to allow us to perform an ultrasound and test her for STIs, and to wait two weeks for those results before making her decision on abortion. There is now room for Hope.

We meet many young girls so starved for love, affection, and care that they are unable to see past their own needs. Parenting requires a selflessness they cannot fathom until their own needs have been addressed. Unless these women find a sense of self love and worth, there is no way they can choose love for a baby. They are unable to give what they do not possess. Loving, encouraging and building them up is such a blessing to me. This is far more effective than just pointing out their obvious wrongdoing. Jesus was firm and unwavering but always so loving and kind when he confronted sin. We, at Choices, choose to walk beside them, giving them a safe place and the beginning of a support system.

It’s much like working at a homicide hotline center. You must address the mental, emotional and spiritual state of the caller or client in front of you before you can address the future crime they are intending to commit. Keep in mind, in this culture there is no legal consequence for the homicide of preborn life. In fact, the culture and oftentimes the law is in favor of the death of their child. In the face of no moral conviction, absolute brokenness, and desperation, The Holy Spirit is their only hope. Attempts to persuade, convince, or coerce these girls into a better choice rarely, if ever, will be successful. They may initially waiver in their consideration during the conversation but once they leave the doors of the pregnancy center, and re-enter the harsh reality of their world, all their previous arguments, and the overwhelming circumstances of their situation lurk outside, waiting to devour them as soon as they walk out the door.

If they agree to STI testing, there is a greater chance of them returning in two weeks for their follow up, which allows time for the seed of The Word to take hold and a heartfelt, decision-making conversation to be had. On this follow-up appointment, there is less emphasis on the abortion decision ahead and more focus on her decision-making process.

– What choices were made that brought you to this situation?

– What previous experiences have altered your life and thrown you off the path you originally intended?

– Is there hope of returning to this path and how do we get there?

We all face these types of dilemmas throughout life, although a unique journey for every woman. It’s in these moments that we allow ourselves to stop, listen, seek the truth, and feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit causes us to turn away from our dark place and realign ourselves with Light. It’s this leading of the Holy Spirit that will allow her to see how her path can include the birth of the baby she is carrying.

The appointment with this precious girl is ending. The truth at this moment is that she remains abortion determined. But seeds of HOPE have been planted. There is a softening and a stirring in her spirit. The girl in front of me needs healing. Today was the first step in a long road of accepting that she is lovable, there are those who do love her, and most importantly a God who would die for her.

November Update

ashley@rankmonsters.org (Ashley Street) — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 14:19:37 GMT

November Update

Nov 13, 2023 | Blog

In the Room with Holly:

I am a self-professed science nerd. I not only love using modern technology but investigating its origins and uses. As the Nurse Manager at CHOICES, I have the privilege of using a very sophisticated ultrasound machine. Ultrasound has been used clinically in obstetrical practice since the late 1950s. It quickly went through a rapid number of changes. The first came in 1966 when Dennis Watkins, John Reid and Don Baker created pulse Doppler ultrasound technology. This new technology allowed for imaging of blood flow throughout many layers of the human heart. An ultrasound of the heart is now referred to as an echocardiogram. Using standard ultrasound or doppler ultrasound, a visual image forms. This cardiac echocardiogram can then be used to measure, diagnose and provide a treatment evaluation. We can measure blood flow and diagnose maladies such as congestive heart failure, murmurs, or various diseases. After diagnosis, an effective treatment is prescribed, or surgery is recommended.

A reality struck me the other day while in the ultrasound room. I was performing a limited OB ultrasound on the young woman lying on the table. On the screen, I looked at her uterus, visualized her bladder, and scanned across her pelvis. At some point I moved from scanning the young woman on the table and switched patients, now using ultrasound to scan a separate individual, someone completely different from the person I had started with and whose name was on the screen.

As the probe settled over the patient’s uterus, we could plainly see a thriving baby nestled in her uterus. The tiny little one was fully visible, crown to rump, and there was a beautiful, fluttering heart, capturing our attention. As I zoomed in on the baby’s heart I could see the contraction of the cardiac chambers, ejection of the blood, relaxation of the cardiac chambers, and the refilling of the chambers again with new blood. There was a distinct and perfect rhythmic sinusoidal wave form produced that was generating these live images. I was able to record a video clip of the heart beating, as well as capture the motion of the systole diastole cycles that were produced using M mode on the ultrasound machine. This was no longer an ultrasound on the woman, this was an echocardiogram on the baby!

My background in nursing is rooted in emergency room medicine where patients with acute chest pain and myocardial infarction were placed on cardiac monitors and 12 lead EKGs were obtained to diagnose and differentiate what was happening electrically in the heart. We’d use EKG and sometimes order echocardiograms to look for problems in myocardial tissue, electrical conductivity, or to diagnose various cardiac diseases.

The sinusoidal waveform on the echo cardiogram of this seven-week fetus gave me the SAME type of imagery that we use to view adults. The only difference was that the baby is much smaller.

I remember thinking – It is actually the baby, inside the mother’s womb, who was getting an ultrasound. Yes, I did have to view him/her through the mother’s uterus, but this little human had its own separate body, complete with its own heart. I was seeing a tiny image-bearer with its own separate brain, its own organs, its own hands, and its own feet, etc.

While working in the emergency room over many years, I saw my fair share of dying and death. Cardiac monitors show activity, while life is still hanging in the balance, even as death approaches. But a person is definitively dead when the electrical signals have stopped, and the heart is no longer beating. Alternatively, all creatures that possess a heart that is beating are by any and all definitions, alive.

Here this baby was floating inside the amniotic fluid, nestled safely in his/her mother’s womb, fully alive, demonstrating sinusoidal waves, systolic and diastolic cycling of the cardiac chambers, with an audible heartbeat at 138 bpm. This was my second patient that day.