Thankful

This pregnancy started out a little "shakey."

I went in and my doctor confirmed that I was pregnant.

(When I called to make my appointment, the reception joked that I had to stop letting my husband touch me. They knew us well - had seen me often at this office.)

My doctor had me schecule an ultrasound and bloodwork.

I remember no one being too joyful in the office. I could tell they were concerned about something.

My numbers came back low and my ultrasound showed me at 5 weeks.

We thought I was at least 7 weeks along.

At first I didn't worry too much because I saw our baby's amazing little heart beating on the screen.

5 weeks. A beating heart. Life.

But then they wanted me to go in and have bloodwork done every couple of days and my numbers were ok, but still lower than they thought they would be. So I started thinking back to when we had had the miscarriage.

The next week when I went in for another ultrasound, I was scared.

All I wanted to hear was "There's your baby's heart beating."

That is all I wanted to see.

And I did. And the measurements showed that our baby had developed another week. That is when they told me that the previous week they really didn't think our baby was going to be ok.

We sat with my doctor and looked at the calendar.

We figured out that we got pregnant "off" my schedule.

God had planned our baby.

What a beautiful, loving, and amazing gift.

We were going to wait to tell all of our children, but when a few of our neighbors found out, I was afraid that our oldest 2 would hear from someone else. I decided to tell them. Brandon was usually good at reading me. He usually guessed I was pregnant before I'd get a chance to tell him. This time, he did it again. As soon as I told him I needed to tell him something, he knew. I then told Ethan later that day.

The rest of our children had to wait. We wanted to make it memorable. We decided to tell them on Thanksgiving Day - since this was something we were very thankful for.

Everyone was in our Family Room (Tom's mom too) after eating dinner.

I handed Jacob a piece of paper and told him to take it to Rachel and Noah.

They opened it up and read it outloud. It said, "I am thankful that I am going to be a big brother." Their responses were wonderful. Noah was funny - he acted like he was in a daze and asked -- What just happened? Our girls were excited, even little Sarah. I got lots of hugs and kisses and tummy rubs.

(We have the whole thing on video.)

We were all thankful for the gift God had given to us.

We were thankful that the tests and ultrasounds all looked great. 

We couldn't wait to meet him or her.