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We were sent for an early scan under the guise of dating the pregnancy, BUT….seeing as we knew the exact date of conception – I knew exactly how old this baby was.

I realize just how much in shock I was because as conflicted as I felt – I really wasn’t processing things on a certain level.

It wasn’t until we walked into the Ultrasound Clinic that I realized just how fragile I was emotionally and it also hit me again so hard that LIFE is so fragile.

When the technician called my name and I walked with her back to the room, we were talking and I thought, “You have no idea what you are in for, lady!”

She closed that door and I turned to her and asked that regardless of the outcome of the scan, could she please bring Jon in to see the baby – even if it was not alive.

And then I cried!

I tried to pull myself together and she looked at me with a very concerned/stressed look and asked if I had any reason to think the worst.

No, there had been no bleeding, but then again, there never was with any of the other 4 babies that we lost.

I figured that she was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t wreck her morning by having things turn out badly.

I climbed up on the table and she put the wand to my stomach and you could feel the tension and then…….she smirked.

I desperately hoped that the smirk was an indicator of a positive outcome, but I was mentally prepared for the worst.

She mentioned that our little one was “Alive and Kickin” and that things looked really, really good.

She took a few measurements, and let me see the baby, then went to go and get Jon.

She brought him in and let us see a little bit more and even let us hear the heart beat. That is such an amazing, AMAZING sound.

We got a few pics……..

You can click on the picture to see a bigger view.

I walked out of that Clinic feeling cautiously optimistic. If only time would speed up and I were holding this precious little one in my arms…….it’ll come soon enough, won’t it?

I know that I’m blessed.

I know that I’m in a position that some other women would give anything to be in.

I was one of those who would have given anything to be pregnant.

But, I hold firmly to the belief that I’m allowed to be shocked by something that was not organized by us and that we had not planned on.

I believe its possible to be both in shock that you’re pregnant with your 5 child and that this was something you’d not planned on, and at the same time terrified that you might lose another child.

It’s horrid to know that you are “strong enough” to handle loss and specifically another loss, but to desperately with everything in you hope that you don’t lose this one.

The fact that within seconds of seeing the positive pregnancy test, that I was filled with terror that I might lose this baby was a huge indicator to me that I needn’t worry that I wouldn’t love or that I might resent this baby.

I don’t think it’s possible to want something so badly and to be resentful of it at the same time…..at least it’s not possible for me.

I really didn’t want to have to deal with the fear and out of control feelings ever again.

I know that I can, but I don’t want to have to.

I’ve had moments when I was certain that this pregnancy was over and I was just waiting for confirmation of that, and on the opposite side of that – I’ve had great and amazing moments of certainty and hope and joy.

I’m barfing every morning and dry heaving a ton throughout the day and this is with being on Liquid Vitamin B complex and a ton of other vitamins and potions to help me…….apparently I just barf my way through pregnancy…..welcome to my life.

With Angelica, I barfed for 6 months straight had a slight reprieve in month 7 and then barfed my way through the last 2 months.

With Alexandra, I barfed for 5 months, had months 6 & 7 off and then continued on barfing in months 8 & 9

With Jeremy, it was the same as with Xandra.

With Nathaniel, I barfed until I lost him and then continued to barf while the hormones abated after I lost him…that was rough.

I barfed my way through the 3 years of losses – again with the not fun….it’s harder when you don’t get anything to show for it at the end of it all..

With Josiah, I barfed for 4 months, then had months 5-8 off and barfed again in the last month. (best pregnancy EVER)

And….we’ll just have to see how this one goes – won’t we?

Yes, I cried.

And being totally and completely honest…..these were not happy tears, but rather tears of confusion. They were tears that held a whole lot of questions within them.

Jon had come upstairs at this point and when I showed him the test……well, to say that we were both in a state of shock is putting it mildly.

And then I started counting!

I was 13 days late starting and had just gotten a faint positive. Counting backwards – this puts conception sometime around when I was actually due to start….which coincides with ONE “incident” where we assumed that we were safe.

I understand that all it takes in one time, but the thing that really baffled me was that I was 2 weeks off my normal schedule. That – THAT – is very strange. I do realize that unless you take the necessary precautions that things like this can happen, but here is a little history on me……

14.5 years of marriage and NEVER ONCE have I gotten pregnant without “ACTIVELY TRYING” and I have never gotten pregnant the first month that we tried. With Geli we tried for 9 months before I got pregnant. Xani was 2 months of trying. Jermey was 4 months. Nathaniel was 2. I have no idea about all the losses, but it never happened the first month and Siah was about 3-4 months…….

So, this business of getting pregnant is not something that has come terribly easy for us and now SHAZAM! Here we are with a pregnancy that we did not plan for.

And, in all honesty – I was quite shaken by the whole 5 kids thing.

I already have 4 kids and loads of people that we meet are already shocked by how big our family is….and now……..AND NOW WE ARE PREGNANT WITH NUMBER 5.

Now, that being said, I am the oldest of 5 kids. My mother’s family had 5 kids. My father’s family had 4 kids. So the concept of a large family is not foreign to me, but……well…….it’s just a lot of kids.

We had been talking for the past year about the possibility of having another child. Jeremy and Josiah have a 7 year age difference between them and as much as Siah has older siblings, in some ways it’s been like he’s an only child.

But, our conversations regarding another child always went something like this…

ME: I think that we could totally handle another kid. Seriously, what’s one more.

JON: Are you kidding me? I am so tired and this baby that we currently have NEVER SLEEPS. NO WAY!

ME: Yah, you’re right, I’m really tired too. But wouldn’t it be nice for Siah to have a sibling close in age?

JON: NO! It’s not happening. We already have 4 and that’s enough.

ME: Yah, you’re totally right – but I still think that we could do it.

That was about a third of the time…….Another conversation that we had on a fairly regular basis went like this…

JON: Siah would be so cute with a little brother or sister

ME: Are you insane? Maybe you should sleep in the TV room tonight. It’s not happening.

JON: Seriously, I’ve been thinking about it and I think that we could make it work…

ME: That’s just the crazy talking and the fact that we’ve not slept through the night in over 2 years…..NO!

JON: Come on! It would be fun to see Siah and a brother or sister grow up together….

ME: NOT ON YOUR LIFE, BABY! AIN’T HAPPENING!

JON: I guess you’re right, but I still think that it could be a good idea.

The other third of the conversation went something along the lines of….

HA HA HA HA HA! We’re never having anymore kids. These 4 we already have are WAY TOO MUCH WORK!

YAH! I TOTALLY GET WHAT YOU’RE SAYING! WE HAVE SO MANY KIDS.

MAYBE SOMEONE SHOULD PUT THEM ALL TO BED NOW….IT’S PAST 10PM.

SURE! GO FOR IT. I’M TOO TIRED!

MAYBE, THEY’LL JUST FALL ASLEEP WHERE EVER THEY’RE AT AND WE WON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING.

I DOUBT IT.

YAH! YOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT, BUT I CAN HOPE, CAN’T I?

Yah, We’re yelling to hear ourselves over the chaos…….It’s that awesome over here, and those lines are interchangeable. Either one of us could be on either end of that conversation.

So yah, We’ve been slammed with a HUGE assault of conflicting emotions and have really been working on processing through them.

To say that it’s not been easy is an understatement.

I can say with all certainty, that I am so happy to be welcoming this baby into our lives and into our family. I am so looking forward to meeting this little one and pouring every ounce of love and care that I have into this sweet baby.

I feel like we’ve been given a gift and although it’s not something that we, on our own, had planned to appreciate and invest in and love…..now that this gift is ours…..we are waiting in joyful anticipation for the day when we get to fully embrace all the love and joy and laughter that this gift will bring with it.

But there are sometimes that the fear of past hurts and previous losses overshadows the joy and makes even breathing seem unbearable. The waiting, waiting, waiting is…well….it’s brutal.

There is the anticipation that the other shoe is about the drop or the axe is about to fall and that is such a hard place to be in. There is also the anticipation on Christmas Eve as you wait for morning to come, knowing that something great is about to happen and even though you don’t know what you’re getting, you still know that it’s going to be an awesome time. If only I could live in that anticipation for the nine months of pregnancy…..wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Wouldn’t it be, though? Nine months is a very long time.

I’m not one to get all caught up in the “Why’s” of life. Even when Nathaniel died, I hurt and I cried and I felt so sad and empty, but I did not get caught up in questioning “Why this happened?” or even “Why did this happen to me or to us?”

I’m more likely to just “feel” the moment whether that’s with joy or with pain and to continue to put one foot in front of the other. It’s carried me through some pretty dark times and helped me to keep living life.

I will admit that I had a hard time seeing the “positive” show up on the pregnancy test and the feelings and emotions that washed over me after that. It was probably the closest to a “WHY ME?” that I’ve ever gotten.

I am regular…..like you could set your clock by me regular. I cycled every 35 days before I lost Nathaniel. The years during all the losses were a bit crazy, but then I had so many hormones swirling and whirling around inside of me that at that point NOTHING was regular. About 3 months before I had Siah, I went to the Naturopath and it felt to me like my body hit a huge RESET button and I started to cycle at 28 days.

When things resumed, after Siah came along, I was right back on track within a few months.

I expected to start on a certain day and when I hadn’t started by the day’s end…..I took a test. There was no reason why I should have expected to be pregnant. There was no unsafe activity (If ya know what I mean) during any scary, dangerous or critical times of the month and so I was basically just flushing money down the toilet. It was – OF COURSE – a very blatant negative!

Alrighty!!!! So, I expected that things would start by the morning and went to bed.

So 4 days went by and NOTHING. In fact, if I were completely honest with myself….I really didn’t feel like I was about the start my period but then I really didn’t feel pregnant either. I took another test the next morning and again…..NEGATIVE. Like, it couldn’t get any more negative. Not even a hint of a line, even if I held it up to the light or to the window and squinted funny while looking out of the corner of my eyes. (Hey! I’ve peed on a lot of sticks over the past 5 years – I am a professional! Trust me!)

So, I figured that I must have nursed Siah a bit more over the past few weeks and maybe possibly the nursing had messed me up hormonally and I was having a wonky cycle. I was still nursing Siah at this point. I waited for over a week and decided that I was going to take one more test – which of course was going to be negative – and then I’d just wait it out.

I peed on the stick, set it on the counter beside me and clicked through on my blackberry to Twitter to kill some time.

After a few minutes, I glanced at the pregnancy test and then did a double take……was that a line? Are you kidding me? It’s not very dark?!? Is it really a line? It can’t be? It’s not possible?!? What? Nooooooo! NO WAY!

And then I cried…………(to be continued)

Well!?!