My Story

I thought with a new year beginning, it was time to share some of the feelings that I've been having, but in order to get there, I need share my story from the beginning. This may take a few posts.

My whole life I have felt that I was supposed to have 3 kids.  I grew up with only one sibling, so I'm not exactly sure where this feeling came from. It was something that I had always planned on. Michael and I got married in 2000 when I was 21 and he was 23.  We waited a few years before trying to have any kids. I did get pregnant a few times before we were blessed with our first baby boy Mikey in 2003.  Those first pregnancies ended in miscarriage during the early weeks. Mikey was a handful to say the least.  He still is!  As any parent knows I felt an enormous love for him from the minute he was born. I got pregnant again when Mikey was 9 months old.  That pregnancy was a complete shock, but we were up for the challenge.  Unfortunately, we lost that baby too.  I remember being thankful to God for at least giving me one child.  After that loss, we weren't sure that we would try again.  The miscarriages were very hard on us, and we were starting to get the mindset that it was OK if Mikey was an only child.  Not too long after that, I was pregnant once again.  As fast as that pregnancy came, it was taken away.  After a little time, we decided to try one more time.  If this pregnancy didn't work out, then we were not going to put ourselves through it any more and we would possibly look into adoption later (I'm actually adopted, so that prospect was a little exciting to me).

We were soon blessed with our baby girl, Jovie in 2006.  She was a very sweet balance to Mikey and definitely made our family feel complete for a time.  After about a year, I felt that pull to have a third child again.  I became pregnant quite shockingly.  At that time we knew there was a chance that we may lose the baby, but still made plans to prepare for it.  We began the process of selling our house to move into something a little bigger.  A few days before signing the papers to begin the building of our new home we lost our baby.  We were crushed.  I knew that I was prone to miscarriage, but it still hit me very hard.  We found out a couple of weeks later that the pregnancy had actually been a Molar Pregnancy .  Basically, the placenta had formed into an abnormal mass of cysts rather than becoming a viable pregnancy.  This meant that I had to be closely monitored by my doctor by having blood drawn every six weeks for six months.  If any of those tests came back abnormal, then I was going to have to do rounds of Chemotherapy.  That was a very scary time, but we made it through it. It's weird, but I hardly remember the trips to the doctors office, or the testing. Maybe it's because our life was chaotic at the time with the building of our house. Because of the Molar Pregnancy, we could not get pregnant for one year. I thought for sure that we were absolutely done having kids.  Obviously we were meant to have two.  I had come to accept it and had started to move on.  We were now living in our new home, and things just felt right.  Although, I must admit that I still had that pull.  Michael and I decided that we would try ONE more time.  If this baby didn't make it, then we were absolutely done.  It's a good thing that we decided to try that one more time because that baby did make it. I was pregnant with Carter.