Urgent Prayer Request

I'm posting today to ask prayer for my niece Karen Coleman. She is expecting her first biological child and is having some serious complications. The following is taken from an e-mail from her husband:

We found out that Karen has a high risk of pre-term labor because her cervix is half as thick as it should be. Her cervix is closed tight, but is much thinner then it should be at this stage of pregnancy. The doctor said that she did nothing to cause it. These things just happen. She is at 22.5 weeks and our first goal is 24 weeks. At that point the doctor said we would have a 60% chance of survival. Every day and every week we can keep the bun in the oven is extremely valuable.

The doctor implied that we are not going to make it 40 week, but that is the miracle we are praying for. The cervix is a muscle and can thicken back up some. Karen is going to be getting a Progesterone shot once a week in hopes that will help hold off the labor.
Karen spent the first two months on the couch because she was so sick. Now the doctor is ordering her back to the couch. Last time, if she felt good for a few hours, we could go do something. Now she has to stay still no matter how she feels. I told the doctor that tonight was date night & she said that date night was going to consist of the kids leaving and us on the couch together watching a movie.

She told us that all the sitting could cause a risk of blood clots. I asked if Karen could slowly walk the driveway. She said, “I don’t know how long your drive is, but no.”

We are also going to really miss church. The doctor said we needed to make child care arrangements because Karen is not allowed to lift the kids. She said I have to live as a single dad for “hopefully” 18 weeks.

Some of the craziness in the paragraph above should ease up if the cervix were to thicken. We can not tell you how much we appreciate your prayers. We are human and at times we have a tendency to ask God, “why”. It is hard for us to understand why it would be His will for us to feel so stressed out, worn down, and overall drained.

We know that God has received glory through our hard times. We are surrendered to His will and hope He can find a way to get glory through this chapter of our lives as well.

Please help us pray for a healthy birth of our baby girl and that we (Including Debbie, Karen's Mom) will be able to properly manage the stress and worry that we are going to be dealing with.

God is good all the time and as crazy as this may sound, He continues to bless us more then we could ever deserve. He has provided all of our needs and many of our wants.