IT'S A GIRL!!
Today (technically) marks 25 weeks and 3 days, leaving 102 until Adelaide Renee is due to enter this world. I've been feeling great, though the beginning was worse than w/ the other kids, for me that just means I felt slightly more nauseated but still have managed to maintain my ridiculously lucky status as one of the very few women who never gets sick while pregnant, not even once.
We are so excited for this new little lady coming into our family. It was a long, stressful road but after three years we finally were blessed with another baby. Thats not to say we weren't blessed before or during that time. But we had decided that we wanted to leave it to God's perfect timing to decide if and when we would be able to have another baby and after a year..two years..I was really beginning to think that His answer was 'Be content with what I've given you' but..that just didn't feel right in my heart. I didn't feel like our family was finished yet. So we waited. and waited. and..
A little more than a year before we found out we were expecting, I had miscarried (on my birthday..Happy Birthday to me..) and that really made me start to doubt God's plans for our family. I really struggled through the next year. Between when we 'stopped preventing' and conceiving this baby, I think there were something like 13 babies born to family and friends. It became a huge struggle for me to even be excited for people when I found out they were expecting. I just wanted to cry. It's not fair. Why them, why not me?
And then I started feeling tired. Really, really tired. It wasn't too abnormal for me, I have sleep problems. But this was ridiculous. So, I took a test. (Disclaimer - I'd taken probably 30 tests over the prior years and had only the 2 positives from what ended up a miscarriage) I fully expected it to be negative even though I felt pregnant. And it was negative. Once again. Move on with life.
Two weeks later I was still feeling so tired and I went to get a coffee one morning, which normally helped a little. But it just didn't taste good. Not that it was bad, I just..didn't want it. Thats not normal for me. So the thought popped in my head that maybe...maybe...
So I tested again. A pink + appeared. "Wait WHAT?!?" (My kids wondered why I was talking to myself..) That CAN'T be right, theres no way.. so I tested again, same result. So I waited till the next day and again, a pink + showed up. Over the next week until I could get into the doctor, I tested two more times. My doctor laughed at me that I tested 5 times and still came to see him. But he knows our situation so he understood my doubt completely.
We had the first ultrasound and that made me feel a little more confident that this was actually happening. But it didn't feel real. I wasn't connecting like I had with our other kids. Even as I started showing, I still wasn't sure. Two of our friends lost their precious babies w/ in 6 months and that started getting in my head. I felt so guilty that I was still carrying my baby, that as far as anyone could tell, everything was healthy and normal. I felt aweful for the past few years of being so jealous and angry w/ everyone else being pregnant when I had miscarried and then, here I was on the other side and all I could think was, but why me and NOT them?? So I just kept expecting to go in and find out something went wrong and I would soon lose the baby or there would be something wrong that we couldn't fix.
We decided to get the 20 week ultrasound (my doctor had told me we could skip it since we have healthy family histories and I've had no history of any sort of complications in pregnancy or in our kids. Plus, we had decided to not find out the sex so there was no reason to have the u/s) But I didn't feel ok. I didn't feel like there was necessarily anything 'wrong' but I think it was more that I just didn't feel confident that everything was ok. My due date sets me at October 8 but other calculations and my measurements set me as early as September 7. Not knowing the sex meant not knowing what we need to keep or what we can get rid of, what we'll need to get still and all of these uncertainties were starting to build up and make me lose my mind. I felt so not in control and not able to do anything. My back has been having problems that keep getting worse also. My doctor has pretty much told me I can't do anything, including housework even if I'm really careful. So I really felt like all I can do is sit here and not know whats going on. All of this lead us to the decision to get the ultrasound and to find out the sex so that I can at least have the illusion of control, being able to get rid of things we wont need and make sure we have everything we will need, be able to have a name to hopefully feel more connected and just have the peace of mind knowing for sure if everything is ok and if not, know what to expect.
I've never been so nervous for an ultrasound. Even with Bella when we were getting them at least once a month because she had hydronephrosis and I never felt worried or anxious. But everything looks perfect and we found out we're having another girl. It took a few days after the u/s to really feel better about everything but now I'm really glad that we ended up finding out.
God is good. In everything, He is good. His timing was perfect and is perfect and we have every reason to be excited and feel so very blessed by this new creation in our family! Faith and trust in God is a process and sometimes doubt comes in, sometimes you can start to wonder if He really has our best at heart but looking back at the past three years, I have no regrets and I have absolutely nothing that I would change, as difficult as it has been and as much as I wanted a baby three years ago, I'm so thankful that He knew better and blessed us in His timing.
Mark your calendars for October 8th..give or take a few days!! Miss Adelaide Renee will be making her entrance into our family, already loved more than she could ever imagine!
