But I love that my husband doesn't blink an eye when I ask for pancakes and Caesar salad for dinner. He just makes it and eats it with me and tells me I'm adorable as I scarf it down with that fat-pregnant woman satisfied look on my face. I thank God for the way he has served and loved me amidst the difficulties of my pregnancy.
Conception Story:
Yesterday I was humbled as God reminded me of a time in my life when I fist got married, and was falling more in love with my husband and praying for a day that we could share a child together. A year before, I was going into the doctor for internal ultrasounds to have my ovaries checked. I had such indescribably profound pain that left me so debilitated I would be balled up on the ground for hours. I was fearful that I would never get to be a mother as cyst after cyst burst. In all of my trips to the doctor, I learned that doctors can be incredibly insensitive people. To them the facts are the facts and they tend not to sugar coat things. So when I had several cysts burst on my ovaries, it wasn't a surprise to me when the doctor said I had Endometriosis. Hearing a doctor tell you "you might have a little trouble conceiving," is hard for a woman to hear who wants to be a mother so badly. I went on birth control for a year to shrink the cysts so they wouldn't burst and cause me anymore pain, and then we got married. Birth control made me crazy, and I went off of it for multiple reasons. Dustin & I were "safe" but both of us, in the backs of our minds knew, (or thought) that we would most likely adopt because of my Endometriosis. We talked openly about the possibility of not being able to have children and after I got home from Thailand, and after working in the orphanage, I KNEW without a shadow of a doubt that I could love one of God's children as my own.
God had changed my heart about the attachment I had to carrying my own child, he put a desire in me to love the fatherless and motherless. Working in a nursery with new born babies for 2 years taught me that it's easy to fall in love with babies even if they didn't come from my own womb. We decided together that we would try-try for a baby in December of 08' but around our anniversary in June, we got a little impatient. A month before, we thought I was pregnant because I was late like 12 days or something ridiculous because the Endometriosis messes with your periods really bad (I can't tell you how many pregnancy tests we have bought in the course of 2 years. We should take up stock in EPT, I'm serious) so we thought I was pregnant, took a test, we were both super excited and already planning our life around being a Mommy and Daddy, and the test was negative. I cried, & Dustin was disappointed as well and speechless.
Then I finally found out the next month that I was indeed preggers when I started craving olives and ate a whole bowl in one night! Dustin tried to convince me that I was definately pregnant, and that night he went to Walgreen’s and got a test while I stayed home. By 9:00pm the test had confirmed that this time was for realz. I was reluctant to take the test because so many had been negative in the past. But it showed a plus sign RIGHT AWAY!
I looked at Dustin with a big grin on my face as he sat on our bed eagerly awaiting the news, and without me saying a single word just grinning, he said “SHUT UP!” and I said “NO, I’m serious, it’s positive!” (I have been known, in the 2 years of being married to my husband for psyching my Mom and Mother in law out with false pregnancies to get a reaction out of them! I think it’s hilarious; they’re not too into being faked out. That’s the price you pay for having such an awesome daughter….) I'll NEVER forget the flood of emotions I felt as we celebrated, cried, laughed, jumped up and down, said "OH MY GOD" a billion times, went back and looked at the test in disbelief over and over, waved the test around in the air like it was some sort of trophy and ran around our apartment like two little kids! I’ve NEVER felt that kind of emotional roller coaster before. It was all together surreal. That moment with my husband learning that we were going to be parents was the happiest moment of my life, happier than my wedding day, or lying on the beach in Jamaica sipping banana & rum smoothies, happier than anything I can think of.
Us in Jamaica on our Honeymoon!
I remember the day my mentor Trisa prayed over me as the babies in the nursery where I worked were sleeping, that God would allow me to be fertile and have a child. That my womb would not always be empty but someday be the home of a baby to live for 9 months. God reminded me of the day that we prayed that prayer. He humbled me with the realization of his faithfulness.
We still talk about what we want our family to look like in 3,5,10 years. We both have a strong passion for adoption. It is a strong passion we share and dream about often. We talk about how we are going to transition another child into our family, and how we are going to make them both feel like they're our children. I'm not the type of woman who LOVES to be pregnant, I don't mind if I never get pregnant again, and I trust God to make our family what he wants to make it. If we weren't able to have a child, we both know that in a few years we would have adopted. I would have been fine with that. The main reason that I so badly wanted to have a child with Dustin was to see Dustin’s personality manifested in something that we made because we are in love, and was a product of us together. I'm happy that we are being entrusted to take on such a huge task together. I can't wait to see Conrad's face and welcome him into our life. And I can't wait for our friends to shower him with love.
That pregnancy tests is pinned up in our office (that will soon be made into the babies room) in a zip lock baggie as a reminder of that memory!
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