Oh Baby!

I realize it has been quite awhile since I have posted an update.  I have stayed away on purpose because my life has been pretty consuming since the morning of May 14.  I have been super busy this summer--napping, eating carbs every two hours, hanging my head over the toilet, and basically just growing a BABY!

We are thrilled to announce that we are expecting a baby in mid-January!  It has been a long road--God has taught me so much about trust and patience, and He has given me a tremendous peace to get me through the first trimester.  I have a had a few moments of anxiety where I wondered if this baby would make it home to our family.  Once you have lived through what we have, the naivety of having a baby with no complications is out the window before you even take the pregnancy test!  I have been to the doctor what feels like more times than I did total with my "easy" pregnancies.  (I have written a couple of posts that have been sitting in my drafts that I will post later that deal with the ins and outs of this pregnancy, but I wanted this one to just be about this sweet miracle I am growing;)

Let me back up just a little bit.  I feel like God has revealed His promises to me over and over in the last 6 months.  Trying to get pregnant after our loss has been challenging to say the least.  I have experienced a bit of secondary infertility in the very smallest of ways, and it.is.hard.  I joked with Greg earlier in the year that I would either be spending my summer with Dr. C or with a fertility specialist.  I am so grateful that on the last month of taking medication to help me get pregnant, God blessed us.  I have a whole new respect for people who have tried and tried and seen doctor after doctor and sometimes get no answer as to why they can't conceive.  I want to be sensitive to those who struggle with this because it.is.hard.

On Mother's Day weekend, I had a very vivid dream.  I rarely remember my dreams, but I remembered every detail of this one.   In the dream I decided to take a pregnancy test.  I took it and set it in the bathroom and forgot to go look at the results (like that would ever happen in real life!).  Days later I went back to check it, and it said PREGNANT-JANUARY 23.  I woke up thinking, wow, that's odd that these new tests tell you your due date--only in my dreams, I guess!  I had not been looking ahead 9 months each month because it just made me more anxious about not getting pregnant.  It made it worse to know what the due date "would have been."  So, I told Greg about the dream.  He said, "That's strange, but please don't get your hopes up."  Fast forward a couple of days, I was late.  I woke up super early to go to yoga and snuck in the bathroom.  Lo and behold, that plus sign popped up on the test pretty quick, and I ran in the bedroom and woke up Greg.  He was in a fog, and we were both in disbelief.  I couldn't believe it until I had a blood test to confirm!  Later that day, I decided to look up what my due date would be exactly since I hadn't been paying attention to this.  I was shocked when it showed JANUARY 23!!

Now that I am almost 15 weeks, I can see God's hand in the last months.  I have felt peace about this baby, and that kind of peace can only come from Him.  There have been a few moments where I worried about no heartbeat or something going wrong, but overall my anxiety level over the baby has been pretty low.  My anxiety has mostly been over myself (coming in another post soon).  Greg would agree that of my four pregnancies, I have been the sickest with this one.  I am starting to feel a bit of reprieve from the nausea, and although it stinks to feel sick all the time, it has been a reminder that the baby is growing.

Pregnancy after loss is scary.  I know too much now.  I have heard too many random stories of others who have lost sweet little ones in the craziest of ways or who have had losses that forever go unexplained.  But I will continue to trust in the One who created this baby and rest in those promises He set out for me.