The Daily Hailey

As we’ve been creeping towards the end of the year, I’ve been looking back on our year quite a bit. Its been a huge year, with all kinds of new experiences. I’ve said a lot in the past that I don’t feel like a grown up yet, and I’ve wondered when I’d feel fully like an adult. Honestly, this year did it. I gained some new life experience this year that shaped me in so many different ways, and it has been really really hard. Remember how, at the end of last year, everyone was celebrating such a hard year finally being over? Well, 2017 wasn’t a great one for us after all, though I did learn a lot.

Something big that I learned this year is that God is in control, but in a different way than I had ever really had to think about before. We have suffered through some pretty difficult things, but we have also been amazed at how many prayers have been answered! And how quickly they have been answered! God has been surprisingly merciful, and I have never paid much attention to that gift from God until recently. With that, I know just how closely He is watching my family. He is ALWAYS with us. He never left. He knows our desires, and He knows what we need.

He knows how often I reminisce about telling the kids about Theo last Christmas.
He knows my fear of and simultaneous desire to plan ahead.
He knows how often I replay the first nurse in antepartum telling me what was going to happen, and how we both cried.
He knows how much I wish I didn’t want anymore kids, because it would all just be so much easier not to.
He knows we’re not done, though.

I feel like I’ve written this blog before, but we are here again. I am pregnant. Only a little bit pregnant so far, but there is tiny little life tucked in my womb. I am begging for God to let this baby hold on tight, and that he/she can come home to us next year. I flip flop between excitement and excuses. Joy and fear. Planning for baby to live, or to die. Its impossible to know how it will look.

Its been a very strange couple of weeks, navigating how to proceed. I wrote a post a long time ago with a lot of “I wonders” and “what ifs” in it, and now, I’m trying to figure that all out. Its a lot, and the uncertainty of whats to come is fairly all-consuming. But I’m trying.

I’ve been trying to remember that, what happened last time with Jamin is not common. Its not normal. It was something awful, and surprising, and unexpected by everyone. But him passing away does not mean that this baby will do the same. This is a new pregnancy, a new circumstance, and a new baby. When I mange to push my fears aside, I am back in my first pregnancy, blissfully unaware of anything scary that could happen, and already counting down the days to the day the baby will be born. I can’t help but look ahead to early next summer and squeal at the thought of sharing July, my birth month, with my baby. To bring my fifth child home as I’m about to turn 30. To throw a PARTY for that kid, so all of you (no joke) can come and meet, hold, and celebrate the baby. I absolutely ache with anticipation.

Please, try to understand me when we talk. If I seem negative, I’m not a downer. I’m trying to be straightforward and realistic. Know how hurt my heart has been, how much I still miss my lost babies, and how vulnerable I feel. Hold my hands so I stop chewing my fingers in anxiety. Understand that, sometimes, feeling excited makes me feel guilty. I conceived a baby around this time last year and have nothing to show for it besides a couple of little teddies on my shelf, a looser tummy, and a lot of new perspective. Its been a long road, and I’m still on it.

This feels like one of the stranger pregnancy announcements I’ve ever put out there, but there you have it. We are in the very beginning stages of my seventh pregnancy, and I am grateful for every single day I am able to carry this life. We have seen a heart beating, and are actively praying it keeps doing exactly that! Please join us in prayer and celebration of our little Bambino!