Monday, September 4, 2017

Coming February 2018!

As most of you seen a couple weeks ago, we are pregnant again!! Yay! And oh no, what were we thinking? There's so much to how God has worked through this pregnancy, but we have to go back to December to get the whole story...

December 10th Jim and I went to the Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant concert for our anniversary. I am generally not a Christmas music fan and can't wait for the radio stations to go back to normal after Christmas. But after just losing Toodles and it being our 5 year anniversary we were desperate for something to numb the pain and get us in the Christmas spirit for the girls. So what the heck right? God moved mountains for me in particular that night. A man sat next to me and the whole concert I was just drawn to him. At first out of slight annoyance because he literally sang at the top of his lungs the entire concert. I kept looking around expecting someone else to hear him and be annoyed with me and not a soul gave him a glance. But at some point, I realized maybe I couldn't hear Amy Grant or Michael W. Smith loud and clear over him, but he had an amazingly beautiful voice and was just as much a pleasure to listen to as the concert we were there for. And to be honest... I had no clue who Amy Grant was anyways.

Poor Jim, he was such a good sport and put up with me crying the entire concert. But about halfway through the concert my sobbing went from letting all the pain out to some intense healing. Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant had a guest singer, Jordan Smith the winner of some season of The Voice. My God can that guy sing!!! He sang a couple songs and every time the whole Target center just echoed with his voice and filled your soul like nothing else. He sang Oh Holy Night and I swear to you this absolute overwhelming peace just flooded my whole body. When he got to the part about "fall on your knees" I literally almost fell to my knees because I was just complete mush. https://youtu.be/m4hLgUHdA0Q this video doesn't begin to do it the justice hearing it live did but just so you get an idea! Before he sang this song Amy Grant was singing some good old fashioned Christmas carols and had everyone standing up singing with her and when he came out we all continued standing and swaying. Well back to the man I was so drawn to... he swayed one way and Jim was swaying the opposite and I was in the middle getting bumped by both of them and too mushy to sway with either of them. But I kept thinking, I should grab this guy's hand, or put my arm around him or something but I chickened out. Finally at the end of the concert everyone was getting up to run out the doors and Jim and I and this man and his wife stayed sitting to avoid the crowd and I just knew it was now or never and I'm a believer in you should really tell people when they have an impact on you. So I turned to him and said, "I just have to tell you thank you, you have such a beautiful voice and it was such a blessing for me to listen to you all night." He shook my hand and said, "Wow, thank you, my name is Sam, it's so nice to meet you." I instantly knew, I told you guys over and over how 1 Samuel had such an impact on my pregnancy with Toodles. We talked a little more, turns out he worked backstage for Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant and had just retired, that's how he knew every song so well. He had just retired and this was the first time he had seen the concert on this side of the stage. At some point, he reached behind me and shook Jim's hand. Eventually we left and still got stuck in the crowd for forever, but it gave me some time to think because my mind was going 1000 mph after all the emotions and thoughts of the night!

 As Jim and I were walking through the parking garage I told Jim "I think if we ever have another baby we need to name him Samuel. I know it sounds awkward and uncomfortable since I have an ex named Sam, but God just keeps putting this on my heart and mind over and over again and there has to be a purpose." Bless Jim, he was just like "uh we should talk about this I guess, where did you get all that out of this concert?!" So I told him how I was drawn to that man all night and when he told me his name was Sam I just knew. Jim was surprised that was the guy's name and I told Jim he had told him when he shook his hand and introduced himself. That's when Jim told me "I think you were sitting next to an angel." I kinda laughed and he went on "that guy shook my hand but to be honest I couldn't really hear anything he said and just seen his mouth moving but until he shook my hand I hadn't even noticed him." I laughed at him again and was like "whatever, I know you heard him singing all night" and Jim said "no Heather, I never heard him." I was pretty shocked since the guy sang at the TOP of his lungs and seriously I could barely hear anything else until Oh Holy Night.

We chatted the rest of the way home about it and the more we talked the more excited we became about our future. That despite what happened, God has so much in store for us and who are we to keep receiving his gifts like this. When we got home I couldn't wait to grab my Bible and reread 1 Samuel 1 for the millionth time. But this time, something told me to continue reading. Suddenly I shouted at Jim, "hunny! Did you know there is a 1 Samuel 2?! There's such good stuff in here!" and that night I learned 1 Samuel 2:20 "Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying "May the Lord give you children by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the Lord." and my heart was mended.

Fast forward to April and we still weren't pregnant and we were becoming frustrated. What happened to God's promise we felt in December. What happened to our baby Samuel we had prayed for so often. Every single month my heart broke again and again when we found out there was not a baby yet. But after April we couldn't take it anymore. We love our girls and our family we have, we still knew adoption was in our future, maybe this wasn't how Samuel was to come to us. I couldn't handle the disappointment every month and Jim couldn't watch me hurt anymore. So we decided to stop trying. To be clear, us trying has always been just not us preventing. But we got lazy, and didn't go to the store and I was watching my grandma overnights and I never made the doctor appointment but didn't really think anything about it.

 June came and we headed to Iowa June 10th for Jim's mom's family reunion. That night I woke up at 2 am to Oh Holy Night by Jordan Smith BLARING in my head. I literally sat up and searched the room from our bed looking for where this insanely loud music was coming from! Finally got up and went to the bathroom and it started fading out but I was totally shook up and couldn't figure out what the heck that was about. The next morning we went down to the hotel lobby for breakfast and Jill came to talk to us about checking out and out of nowhere I almost puked my breakfast up on her but managed to convince her we had it figured out and go ahead, we would be ready to leave in 10 minutes. The girls and Jim finished their breakfast and I practically dragged them back to our room and stared at the toilet for 10 minutes trying to figure out if I was going to puke and figured out I must be pregnant. We got in the truck to go and I told Jim, he didn't even bat an eye when I told him and just said "ok, let's do this." That was Sunday, felt fine the rest of the day, felt find Monday, felt fine Tuesday and pretty much had myself convinced I wasn't pregnant. So Wednesday I scheduled an appointment to donate plasma and figured if  I was pregnant we would find out, since that was how we found out I was pregnant with Toodles. If I wasn't, well we need the money either way. Appointment went fine and I decided screw it, stopped at Walgreens and picked up the test. Barely barely a line. Great! Now what?! Jim and I decided it was probably a yes after Iowa and scheduled an appointment to confirm. Day of appointment I was like I am not going to be the girl that cried wolf, we're taking a second test before I show my face there. This one was pretty solid.

So here we are, almost 16 weeks pregnant! I had no intentions of not saying something right when we found out, because we no longer believe in the magic 12 week number. (For those that have never dealt with pregnancy, your miscarriage probability is supposed to drop after that point) We were 16 and a half weeks when Toodles passed and didn't even figure it out until 20 weeks, so if it's going to happen it's going to happen and the number doesn't matter. So we started telling people as we seen them. In fact, after that first pregnancy test I went to the IF:Table and told my mentor mom from MOPS this last year. Which led to me telling our church secretary, which led to me messaging our youth pastor's wife etc. etc. And we weren't even really sure yet! That's how well I do secrets! Later I found out... I woke up to Jordan Smith at almost exactly 2 weeks pregnant and started blabbing to everyone at 2 1/2 weeks which the normal person doesn't even know they're pregnant yet! But I figured I was further than that. But I wasn't ready to write the blog yet. Some things came up that I wanted answers to before we started telling people then we went on the neverending vacation and finally tonight is the night!

Wondering what came up? So our first ultrasound we thought we were around 9 weeks. Ended up we were around 7... but there was an extra blob in the picture. The ultrasound tech called it a yolk sack but in 2 other pregnancies I never heard of such a thing and that REALLY looked like an extra baby to me. Googled yolk sacks and they all looked like a ring, but ours was solid. So I totally talked myself into there were 2 babies in there. We were prepared for we know about disappearing twins and if that was a second baby it was definitely a little smaller and we either would or already had lost it. But ya never know. My Dr wanted to schedule an appointment right away just to check my blood pressure since it was so screwy with Toodles. At that appointment I told him my fears and he said the exact same thing happened to his sister and law and with our history we weren't taking that chance, we would redo the ultrasound in a month. So right before our first official OB appointment we did the second ultrasound and only 1 baby! Phew!! They did find the yolk sack again and this time it looked like Dr. Google showed. At my appointment my Dr was talking about my history with the girls. Since I was on hospital bedrest with them, they quit testing me for preeclampsia since I was already being monitored so closely. Problem with that is there is now new research about how to treat a pregnancy after a preeclampsia pregnancy. So he decided to send me to Maternal Fetal Medicine at the U of M and since they quit testing they could make the call on how we wanted  to treat it. I figured I would just walk in they would say yes you had it, take a baby aspirin every day, not deliver past 38 weeks (you're placenta is more likely to die quicker with a following preeclamspia pregnancy) and send me on my way. But oh no, Maternal Fetal Medicine doesn't work that way and how quickly I forgot in the last 5 years. (with the girls the top MFM in the nation for that year, told me I wouldn't make it past 22 weeks and they don't resuscitate before 24 weeks) This time around they talked about since I had it so early with the girls I was more likely to get it early again, and IF I make it past 36 weeks I could deliver in Princeton, but I probably wasn't going to make it that far and then I need to deliver at the U. I will probably end up giving myself shots of blood thinners before I was done. But don't worry, they are going to closely monitor me and I'll have growth ultrasounds every 4 weeks starting at 18 weeks and if I reach 30 weeks they will be every 2 weeks until I deliver. When I see my regular doctor I'm going to have xyz tests every appointment and blah blah blah. All I could think was... or I have a perfectly normal pregnancy and you could be a little more hopeful, but what do I know, I only beat their odds by 7 weeks last time. When I scheduled the appointment I was all excited to see our old buddies, but of the 10-15ish MFM doctors I could have seen of course I got the one that admitted me with the girls and I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

On that note, how are we doing? Trying to take it day by day, ultimately I'm terrified every moment of every day and the weeks between appointments sucks. Particularly right now when I know I lost a baby around this gestational age. Right after we found out the girls were laying on me and I asked them to get off me because they were squishing me and they looked like they were going to cry and asked if they hurt the baby and if that was how Toodles died, because they squished him. Talk about break your heart into a billion pieces! And questions happen often, every time we walk into the clinic they ask if I remember that time we were there and I cried because baby Toodles had died? As often as they bring me to tears with painful questions they bring me to tears with their giant hearts. They have to kiss and hug my belly most nights and fairly often during the day and they tell the baby "aww, you're just SOOOO cuuuute!!!" We told the girls if it was a boy we would name him Samuel and Isabell got in a fight with our doctor's nurse about "Baby Samuel." They were checking for the heartbeat with the doppler and my Dr told them to come over and listen to their baby and Isabell went "aww, it's Baby Samuel." Our Dr and nurse looked at her with this look like wait a minute, and Kim asked them what if it's a girl?! Isabell gave her this evil glare and said I don't want a sister, it's a boy and it's name is Samuel" and literally turned her back on Kim and wouldn't talk to her the rest of the appointment! Usually my girls love Kim! So if we have a girl my family is going to need therapy.

Ultimately though, we are getting to watch God's better plan play out before our eyes and are constantly reminded that He knows best and we need to just keep trusting in Him. I have 2 friends that I was pregnant at the same time with with the girls that are due within a month of me. 1 of which we are trying really hard to line up our days and right now if I go to 38 weeks we will only have a 5 day gap, but she figures she's going to go late so.... Eee! Another friend that miscarried about the same gestation but a couple months after us is due shortly before us. A relative that had several miscarriages is due 4 days before me. Ultimately we wish we had Toodles, but if we did... we wouldn't be surrounded by so many people that know our pain and are experiencing our same fears and joy right now. We as humans are meant to do life together and what a blessing to be able to not only do, but bring life into this world together. I need these people right now, I hate that we know the same pain, but we do and we can either ignore, deny, be angry about it... or we can embrace each other, love each other and thank God we have each other to get through this with. A man in the NICU tonight shared with me James 1:2-3 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." Then James 1:12 "Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him." He was speaking for his own trials their family is dealing with in the NICU.... but I think he just gave us Samuel's middle name....

God's blessings!
-Heather, Jim, Anabell, Isabell, Toodles and Baby Blob (Anabell's name for Baby... UNTIL it comes out of mommy's tummy, then it's Baby Samuel)

2 comments:

  1. I ann excited for you and praying for you all!

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  2. Heather, you are an amazing writer. I think you should write a book. I love reading your blogs. I will pray for a healthy pregnancy for you two!

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