I am jealous of couples that knew without hesitation when they were done having kids. No back and forth, should we or shouldn’t we….all of the what if’s. After everything we went through with our losses and then the difficulty we had to even get pregnant again, we probably were a little crazy to even think about having another one but I just never felt that feeling of knowing we were done. And well, my husband is a real go with the flow kinda guy so he was not helpful in this situation. After going back and forth and back and forth again and then some more, we finally decided that we were not going to make a decision either way. We agreed neither of us wanted to go through the fertility treatments again, along with all of the other factors, it’s expensive!! So we decided to leave it entirely in God’s hands. If He added to our family, we would be happy and if not, we were happy with the family that we had. That very first month….I was pregnant. Honestly, there was a huge part of me that never thought it would happen but by not stressing about it and entirely trusting in God’s plan for our family, a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. It’s so funny how people say, as soon as you stop worrying about it…..whatever “it” is, will happen…..well, I guess that’s true, at least in our case!
I waited my normal time to tell Kyle, until I saw my doctor and it was confirmed that they pregnancy was moving in the right direction. I wish I had taken a picture when I told him because he was definitely as shocked as I had been. I don’t think either one of us ever believed I would get pregnant again. After the initial shock wore off, we were both excited but agreed to keep the news to ourselves for the time being at least. So imagine my surprise when about a week or so later, out of the blue, Preston told me he knew we were having another baby. I had just picked him up from school and we were driving to the store to pick out a gift from the kids for Kyle for his birthday. My first thought after his declaration was obviously Kyle must have accidently spilled the beans but when I asked him why he would say that he told me he had been asking God to give us another baby. Cue my heart melting! I told him that was sweet but just because we ask God for something, it doesn’t mean He is going to give it to us. To which he said, “I know but God told me that He is giving us another baby.” I don’t know if I can even adequately put into words everything I was feeling in that moment but let me tell you, it is one I will never forget. To make things even weirder, a couple weeks after that he told me my EXACT due date and keep in mind we still had not even confirmed the news to him that I was actually already pregnant. Actually, telling him was pretty anticlimactic since God had already told him….that’s definitely more exciting than just hearing the news from your parents!
This was all happening beginning to middle of October. The day after Thanksgiving, we decided to have our families over to our house to share the news….not only that we were having another baby but to do the gender reveal as well! Because of my history, they do genetic testing and are able to determine the sex of the baby pretty early. Needless to say, our families were pretty shocked. In fact, my aunt looked at my sister-in-law and asked her if she was the one that was pregnant. But much like when I told Kyle, after the initial shock wore off, everyone was very excited and even more excited that we were going to be finding out the gender. We had lost my maternal grandmother right around the time I got pregnant so I was CONVINCED we were having a girl. All of our kids middle names are after our grandparents so if it was a girl, her middle name was going to be Alice after my grandma we had just lost.
Come June of 2020, we were going to have another little boy. Preston was a little upset at first because he said he already had a brother, Morgan, his brother in heaven and he already had a sister but Olivia only had brothers so she should be able to have a sister too…….I mean, this kid is like the sweetest thing ever!! It did not take him long to warm up to having a little brother though!
Just like before, we were planning on waiting to put anything on social media for awhile…..and just about when we probably would have made an announcement, the world shut down. I thought my pregnancy with Olivia was scary, that looked like a cakewalk compared to this time around. There was so much uncertainty in the world, I would go to my appointments and ask my doctor questions and he would say, “I’m sorry, there’s just not enough information, we just don’t know.” Everything was, we just don’t know yet. I was still considered high risk but then he had to weigh what was more important, 2x/week appointments like I had during my last pregnancy or normal appointments to limit any exposure I could have at the hospital. While Preston went with me to every single appointment I had with Olivia and got to see his baby sister growing, there was no one allowed with me at any appointments. It was taking horrible ultrasound pictures (because none of my babies ever cooperate) home and trying to explain to Kyle and the kids what they were looking at, instead of them being able to see the baby moving on the screen themselves. It was not knowing what was going to happen when I went to deliver him or what the world was going to look like then. While the world was in chaos and our lives were filled with unknowns, it was not the time to announce we were adding to our family.
My anxiety forced my husband to sit down with me and make a plan. Even though it was 3 months till my due date, I needed to have a plan. I needed to plan for the worst and pray that by the time we got to my due date, our plans would have been for nothing…how naïve I was. After weighing all our options, which obviously weren’t a lot…there are no other adults in our house and we have two other children at home so we decided I would go to the hospital by myself to deliver him and Kyle would stay home with the other kids. It was crazy to think that might happen but we still had 3 months so probably that plan would not be necessary…..it is exactly what happened.
The last week of May, we found out during an ultrasound that once again, my baby had flipped and was now breech (Olivia did the same thing) so it was looking like there was going to be another c-section in my future. Since I had done one before, it wasn’t as scary this time around, my biggest concern was not being able to get out of bed myself to get the baby when he was crying and not having Kyle there to get him for me but there really wasn’t another option so we were making the best of it. The morning of June 5th, 2020, I gave the kids their brother and sister gifts that they normally would have gotten at the hospital after the baby was born and the 3 of them dropped me off at the hospital.
Checking in, by myself, that was the moment the weight of everything came crashing down on me and I had a full on panic attack at the thought of going through this by myself. What had I been thinking???? I can’t have a baby by myself!!!! But there also wasn’t any turning back, we didn’t have a plan B. So I had a baby…..by myself.
I realized sometime during this whole experience, that I needed to focus on positive things that were coming out of quarantine or I was going to completely lose my mind. So yes, it was awful and sad and all the other things, to not have my husband there to hold my hand while I had our last child. And yes, I hated that he didn’t get to hold him until we left the hospital. But I told myself that military families go through this all of the time. There were probably Dads that hadn’t been able to be there for the births of any of their children, so what did I have to complain about. And Lincoln, was never going to remember that his Dad wasn’t there anyway…..although I am sure that his brother and sister will fill him in someday on just how crazy life was when he was born.
A positive thing from this birthing experience that I will never get tired of talking about is just how amazing my OB and the hospital staff were to me. I have said it before and I will say it again, I adore my OB and am so grateful that he was with me through this whole experience. The nurse that was in charge of me, once she found out I was doing this on my own, she sprung into action and got two extra nurses to be in the room with us during delivery, one nurse held my hand with one of her hands and with her other hand, she held my phone the entire time and had Kyle and the kids on FaceTime. The other “extra” nurse, all she did was take pictures with our camera which was so incredible because without Kyle there, if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have any pictures of the delivery. But my absolute favorite moment……when they took Lincoln out and held him up over the sheet so we could see him, Olivia started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to her brand new little brother and there was not a dry eye in that entire room and it’s definitely a moment that never would have happened if things had been normal.
The day after he was born was when I finally announced I had been pregnant…..SURPRISE!!!! But watching the news every night, seeing the death tolls just keep climbing and climbing and climbing….in the back of my mind, I was never convinced we were actually going to bring a baby home. I was completely terrified by all the unknowns of the world and this virus. I had to keep telling myself that God would not have told Preston we were having another baby if he wasn’t going to make it…..but that wasn’t always easy either.
It was not how I pictured my final pregnancy being….but then again, who could have ever predicted anything that happened in 2020?! But I will forever be grateful knowing now, that our family is complete.
Inner Glow by Jen 