I'm pretty sure that everyone who reads here is also a friend via FB (really, how else do we see each other's cute pictures of the kids in a timely manner), so the news that we are having another baby is pretty much out. I'm 12 1/2 weeks (yes, I'm claiming the survival of those extra few days!) and the baby will be arriving mid-May if all goes well. Since I have delivered either on or very close to my due dates in the past, we may very well be celebrating mother's day with another birth.
Here is the rest of the story. Ellie was almost 2 1/2 and Peter was coming up on his 1st birthday. My brother and his wife had just announced that they were having their first baby in the spring. Along with their announcement, I had just a fleeting moment of wishing that we were in a position to make that announcement too. We suspected that we weren't done with growing our family but with so many things still to be settled from our move this spring and the neediness of two still quite small children, we were actually pretty content with where things were. My first criteria for deciding we were ready to try for another baby was for Peter to consistently sleep through the night--something that was occasionally tantalizing me with the whispers of what it might be like to have a full night's sleep for the first time in over a year (darn pregnancy insomnia) but had yet to occur with any kind of predictability or regularity. Even as we contemplated reaching this milestone within the next couple of months, we weren't sure that we were going to be ready even then. Jonathan was working a ton of extra hours to get major projects at work finished, we were still unpacking and getting settled after a summer of playing outside and ignoring the inessentials inside and I was enjoying teaching the kids new things and watching them develop into little people--something that I knew I would be distracted from by the inevitable travails of my pregnancies.
One day, a couple of weeks before Peter's birthday, I pulled out some pregnancy tests for a friend who I knew was hoping to try for another baby this fall. I buy the cheap ones in bulk (why pay $10 apiece when you can pay $0.60 apiece) so there are always extras to share around. We keep track of my cycles and fertility signs so I knew that I was on day 26--well before I would have even expected my period. But, on a whim, I decided to take one anyway. Call it quality control since these were left over from Peter's conception and the expiration date was only 8 months or so away. I occasionally enjoy that reassuring single line towards the end of my cycle too (see cheap and abundant tests). But on this occasion, there were unmistakeably two lines. I knew that there had been occasional issues with other lots of this test giving false positives. So I took another one. Still positive.
Jonathan was at work so I had the afternoon at home to process this and figure out a way to tell him. With the other kids, we waited until I was at least a couple of days late to test together and by then we're pretty sure what the answer is going to be anyway. So now I knew and couldn't pretend that I didn't for the five days or so that it would take for him to decide that something was up and we needed to check. I took a picture of the positive test and snuck it into our weekly Friday night fun time together by way of a review of the pictures I had taken of the kids over the previous several weeks. You know that you have two shocked and pensive introverts when the rest of the evening is passed in complete silence.
Over the next couple of days, we reviewed the previous month looking for a way that we could have made a mistake in our tracking or preparation but no obvious moment appeared. There was no room for recriminations or blame anywhere. In the end, we were forced to the conclusion that we had simply been one of those couples for whom God decided on the timing of the child without our involvement.
For many people, an unexpected pregnancy is something that is built into their expectations about marriage and family life. This has never been the case for us. We are planners--sometimes to ridiculous degrees--and we prepare for change by going over all of the possible processes and outcomes well before we put them into effect. When it came to my next pregnancy, we knew that it would be a challenging time physically for me and emotionally for the whole family. With Peter, we were at some level able to prepare for that and set ourselves up with ideas of how to entertain Ellie, feed ourselves and structure the schedule so that everyone got most of their needs met. I also knew that I was not in as good shape as I would like to be before embarking on another pregnancy so we were working on a plan for me to leave the house to get some exercise without the kids this fall so that I would be stronger (and a bit more trim) when the time came. Yet here it was, without any of the grand ideas for smoothing out the process having been implemented and roughly a week to prepare for my significantly reduced capacity which would last anywhere from four to six months.
We have been blessed in some really incredible ways over the last couple of years. Jonathan was hired for a job that he loves doing, we don't have to send the kids out to daycare, we have family close enough to visit frequently, and we were provided with a house that was one of the best that we looked at during our nearly year-long search and, incredibly, was in our price range. And we have two beautiful children. There is a common theme here, however. We planned for them. We prayed for them. We worked for them. We thank God for granting them to us, recognizing that they are still gifts given beyond all earning but we were aware of our participation in the process.
There is a lot of faith involved in praising God in difficult circumstances. I don't want to diminish this reality and I've even been there a time or two. What I didn't expect was the faith involved in thanking God for a blessing that we didn't ask for.
It is one thing to subscribe to the belief that all children are precious and a blessing and sometimes another to accept that God and not you decided that they were the blessing that you were to receive at this particular time. At the beginning, I confess to a wild wish that we could undo this, somehow go back to the way things were with our carefully ordered future. Of course, that isn't possible and we're coming to a place of anticipation, thankfulness and maybe a little bit of extra interest to see this child that God thought we should have so particularly. We're talking about names, how to shuffle the sleeping space and putting on hold some of the things that I don't have the energy for. I can't say that I'm enjoying the pregnancy side effects any more than I usually do but we're surviving most of the time and, as usual, Jonathan is rising to the occasion of my lessened availability and effectiveness in a wonderful way.
I hesitated to share any of this beyond the crazy story of how we found out that we are having our third baby. After all, so many of my friends have lost babies or haven't been given the ones that they prayed for. The pain associated with your surrender isn't something that we've experienced. It sounds ridiculous to even have this struggle when there are so many others who are faced with an unexpected pregnancy in far less ideal situations. So I hope that my story of another kind of surrender isn't hurtful. We're thankful that most of the people we've told who would be concerned for us have mostly squashed their worries and expressed at least some pleasure that there will be another member of the family. We hope that you will join us in praying for this little one and the family that it is expanding.
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