Unexpecting the Unexpected

How's that for a title?   Since giving birth to Isaac, Joseph and I have always been open to more children, but just haven't felt right about having another one join our family at any particular moment in time.  We've been a little back and forth about things.  Joseph came to me in August and told me that he was becoming more open to the idea and had an impression that there might be another little girl.  (I kind of laughed, I've always been amused when someone has an impression of a particular gender.  I wonder if there are any studies on statistics of the likelihood you will have the gender that was impressed upon your mind.)   I wasn't as open right at that moment because there were some really difficult things happening at work.

Fast forward a month and I had a feeling that I might be expecting.  We hadn't been really "trying" (if that phrase can really hold any water, haha), but our timing had been a little off and after taking about 15 pregnancy tests for about a week, I decided that all of the positives and faint positives must be true.  I calculated my due date and I was due in the beginning or middle of June.  About a week before Joseph was scheduled to do his Ironman Triathlon.  Perfect timing...NOT!  :)

Joe was in the thick of things with work and so when the thought entered my mind that I might be, I didn't even tell him.  It wasn't until about a 7-10 days after my missed period that I finally had him go to the store to buy yet another test, this time a digital one.  Again, it was positive.  It took some time to wrap our head around it.  At one point, while we were dealing with the initial shock, well I should say while Joseph was dealing with it, because my initial shock kind of wore off with every test that I took.  I had to give him time to absorb the shock.  I remember he sat on the floor of our bedroom, shaking his head, wondering how it was possible and how we were going to take it on.  (Things were really bad a work!)  I think he even said something like, "Okay, we can do this, it's not like this is a teenage pregnancy."  It was pretty funny.  It took a few days, but then we got pretty excited.  Our kids had been begging for a new sibling, we knew they would be so excited with our news.  I remember telling my sister Emily.  She was thrilled! This would mean we would have babies just a few months apart.  She had always wanted to be pregnant together.  This was probably our only chance.

A couple of weeks after this, I started to notice some spotting and at first just dismissed it as implantation bleeding, but then as the days progressed it got heavier.  One night I felt a dull pain in my abdomen and lower back, similar to the feeling I felt the night before I went into labor with Isaac.  Symptoms of the pregnancy that I had felt were disappearing.  I called Emily and started to cry telling her what I thought was happening.  I hadn't told my parents about the pregnancy yet, but I called my mom and in the same sentence had to tell her about the surprise pregnancy and what I thought was a miscarriage.  I felt so sad inside that night.  With the symptoms disappearing and the pain that ensued, I felt so empty.  I had this unexpected person that I had been dreaming about for the past weeks and really had to train my mind to accept this new being.  I thought of myself as a mom of five.  Then in an instant, just as unexpectedly as it came, it was no longer part of our life.  I spent the next couple of days on the couch as the miscarriage became complete.  I called my doctor but told them I didn't want to come in because I was certain it was a miscarriage.  I think the hardest part was when the doctor asked me to take another pregnancy test at home.  When the digital test read "not pregnant" it seemed so harsh and blunt.  "The night before I was expecting, and now just like that, I'm not." I remember feeling so sad and sobbed as I got into the shower that morning.  I felt really awful for a few days and down for a couple of weeks, both physically and emotionally, but then everything just felt okay.  It happened over Fall Break and I felt like a terrible mom because I wasn't up to taking my kids to do anything fun, but my mom came and saved the day and took them for a few days while I recovered.  I told the girls so they understood that I wasn't just sitting on the couch, being a boring mom for no reason.  Brynn cried and Abby wailed and sobbed.  They took it really hard.  Abby was a little mad at Heavenly Father for allowing it to happen and asked over and over "Why?"  It was hard.   A few weeks after I had to go in for more blood work and I was amazed at how much better I felt in such a short amount of time.

Right after the miscarriage happened I didn't know what to do with my feelings.  There was a great void and at first, I felt that we would surely have a fifth child, it was just a matter of time.  Now that the physical and emotional wounds feel more healed, we are open to the idea again, but we aren't feeling a sense of urgency about the matter.  So we will see.  Maybe there will be a fifth and maybe there won't, but all will be well.  We'll seek for feelings of peace either way.