32 weeks

I'm 32 weeks pregnant today. Why is that important? We lost Aaron at 32 1/2 weeks. When (not if) we make it to this weekend, I will have carried this child longer than any other since Noah. The anxiety isn't as high as I imagined it would be. We go in on Thursday for another sonogram. One of the benefits of being labeled "high risk" is that we've had lots of sonograms. This will be our 6th. Hopefully we'll get a date scheduled for the C-Section, too.

I've had a lot of trouble sleeping this time around. I yawn all day, and then lay in bed wide awake. When I DO fall asleep, I wake up every time I roll over, which is a lot. Hopefully I figure something out fast before school starts, or it's going to be a long few weeks!

I think we've finally picked a name. This time around has been really hard. Marty and I will come up with a name, try it for a few days, and then it's gone.

Back in January, when we first found out we were pregnant, I was adamant that I did NOT want to do anything to prepare the nursery until there was a baby to put in it. Of course, the OCD part of me had a hard time with that and a lot of it is ready. Luckily, we haven't had to purchase much, since we've saved EVERYTHING from Noah (and my nephew). Since it's been 6 years since Noah was born, our car seat/travel system has expired so we had to get a new one of those.

I'm having the same struggle this school year that I had last school year. We have several new staff members, many that I work closely with. I want them to know what makes me me. I want them to know what I've been through so that they know what I'm going through. It's an awkward thing to bring up, though. I don't want sympathy. I just want them to know. It's part of who I am and what I do.

I apologize for the rambling of this post... Feel free to go back and read the other less-rambling posts if you haven't already done so. :-)

It's been a while

As we approach the anniversary of Aaron's death, I thought I'd give an update on how life's been for the last several months.

Last fall: After much internal debate, I decided that though I wanted another child, I had absolutely no desire to be pregnant again. I struggled with giving in to the fear and quitting. I began working to convince my husband. I became almost desperate to rid my house of everything baby so that I could start moving on. (The nursery was still exactly as we'd left it.)

Around Thanksgiving, my husband finally got on board. I sold all of my maternity clothes. Over Christmas, we moved all of the nursery furniture to my in-law's house for storage. We moved our office furniture from the front room downstairs up to the room that had been the nursery. We'd even started putting out feelers and doing some exploratory research into the adoption process.

And then everything changed.

On January 6th, I realized that I was running just a tad late. That evening, I sent Marty out to buy pregnancy tests. Even though you get best results first thing in the morning, I took one anyway. The positive results absolutely terrified me. I didn't know whether to cry in fear or laugh at God's funny sense of humor.

Fast forward a few months. Tomorrow, I'll be 17 weeks pregnant. I'm still terrified. I know that God will be with us through whatever may happen, I just don't want to do it all again.

Our 5-year-old said it best. When we told him that we were having another baby, his response was "I hope it's a real baby this time. I hope that the plug (umbilical cord) is alright." All we could say was "We do too."

Please continue to pray for us as we continue through this journey. September seems like years away, but we just keep taking each day, one at a time.