babyIt's a shocking (no pun intended) story with a happy ending. Last summer, Stephanie Alberti of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was three months pregnant, enjoying herself at a stock car race. There she was happily cheering on her husband one minute, and the next she was struck by lightning.

Initially paralyzed by the bolt that shot through her body, she surprisingly didn't lose the baby. Instead, her pregnancy progressed normally, and she recently gave birth to a baby girl, Sophie.

She was a little small, just 6.5 pounds, and the umbilical cord was reportedly wrapped around her body, but according to the Associated Press, amazingly enough, she's perfectly healthy. Her parents say she hasn't shown any superhero powers ... yet.

It's great that they can joke about it now, but I can't imagine how terrifying that was and how scared Stephanie must have been during the rest of her pregnancy. I thought I'd worried about pretty much everything under the sun when I was pregnant with my children -- from avoiding soft serve ice cream because it could be contaminated with listeria to stressing about how my stress was going to affect my baby -- but the effect of a lightning strike on a fetus was never one of them.

Pregnancy is rife with worry, even for the most laid-back people. Doctors, midwives, relatives, and strangers will tell you all the things you should and shouldn't do to keep that baby from harm. Then there are the books and websites and horror stories we hear and read, and the anxiety can spiral out of control. From some of it comes good advice, and we should all do what we can within reason to give our children the best start. Stories like this, however, are a good reminder that we can't protect ourselves and children from everything -- not when they're in utero and certainly not after their born.

It's one of the most painful parts of parenthood -- loving someone so much, even before you've met them, and knowing there are times when there will be nothing you can do to protect them. We can prepare and worry all we want, but sometimes, things fall from the sky -- literally or figuratively -- and jolt us with the realization of how little control we really have. So all that worry seems like wasted effort, as inevitable as it may be.

Watch Stephanie talk about how thankful she is to have a healthy baby girl, here:


What crazy things did you worry about when you were pregnant?


Image via AssociatedPress/YouTube