I recently ran into an acquaintance of ours at the grocery store.\u00a0 She warily eyed my mid-section and asked what was new with us.\u00a0 (Everyone checks out the belly first\u20269 pregnancies in 15 years\u2026)\u00a0 I confirmed her suspicion when I said, \u201c#7 will arrive in December.\u201d<\/p>\n
She swallowed in a way that told me my news was painful for her to hear.\u00a0 \u201cSo that makes you\u2026.6 weeks?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that kind of early to tell people?\u201d<\/p>\n
I understand what she\u2019s saying.\u00a0 She lives in a world where a positive test doesn\u2019t necessarily mean a live baby.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know how to tell her that I live in that same world.\u00a0 My sweet husband and I have stared in stunned disbelief at ultrasound images of dead babies.\u00a0 We\u2019ve held our sweet girl in our hands and then buried her.\u00a0 We live the entire pregnancy in a fear of what-ifs.\u00a0 We tell anyway.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, after losing a baby, we went to a family event where it became very obvious very quickly that no one knew I had been pregnant or that I no longer was.\u00a0 The entire roomful of people was oblivious to our pain.\u00a0 The Computer Guy\u2019s cousin plopped her perfect newborn daughter in my lap because she just knew how much I love babies.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 I wanted to run as far from that<\/i> baby as was humanly possible.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 How could I interrupt the celebration of that perfect child by saying \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to hold her.\u00a0 You see, my baby is dead and it took every ounce of strength for me to get in the car today to come here\u201d?\u00a0 You can\u2019t say those things, you simply smile and coo and fight the tears.\u00a0 If they had known, the situation would never have happened.\u00a0 So, we tell because it saves us pain in the event of things going horribly wrong.<\/p>\n
We tell because it is obvious to anyone with eyes that my middle is expanding, because I struggle with horrible morning sickness and fatigue and I don\u2019t want people to be offended if I run from the dinner table, because my children know and have big mouths, and because people get offended if we don\u2019t tell them ourselves.<\/p>\n
We tell because life and death are a part of living, and we are people who deal in reality.\u00a0 The baby is here today<\/i>.\u00a0 It is alive today<\/i>.\u00a0 We are joyful today<\/i>.\u00a0 We are so very aware that things could change tomorrow and so with our children we have made the decision to live for today and not allow the what-ifs to steal our happiness. <\/p>\n
We made up our minds long ago that our children were meant to be joy from the very first moment we knew of them.\u00a0 We can choose to live in secret fear or we can rejoice in their lives.\u00a0 We\u2019ve chosen to rejoice.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently ran into an acquaintance of ours at the grocery store.\u00a0 She warily eyed my mid-section and asked what was new with us.\u00a0 (Everyone checks out the belly first\u20269 pregnancies in 15 years\u2026)\u00a0 I confirmed her suspicion when I said, \u201c#7 will arrive in December.\u201d She swallowed in a way that told me my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n