Hard Feelings

It's been a rollercoaster of a year for me, with regard to my fertility.  Who knew that after four healthy, uneventful pregnancies, I would suffer so much loss.  When I think back to my fifth pregnancy ( the one that would result in my first-ever miscarried baby), I have many different emotions.  It was the last pregnancy that I had (or will ever have) feelings of excitement and not a trace of worry about whether it would result in a new life brought home from the hospital.  I was so shocked, so completely unprepared for that miscarriage.  Not to say that you can ever really be "prepared" for one to occur, but it was the one that felt like such a "sucker-punch." I never expected it.  I had taken all of my healthy pregnancies for granted, and even though I like to think that I do not have the mind-set, as a mother that I "know it all," due to having a few kids, subconsciously I did think I knew it all when it came to my body and pregnancy. Such a foolish notion.

It was a rough Advent/Christmas season in a way.  I have now been through the first anniversary of my second miscarried baby, Susanna (lost 12/26/11).  I have also now lived through yet another unfulfilled due date (12/27/12).  I am wondering about what December 2013 will bring. Will I be dreading it for yet another reason (I found out I was pregnant 12/04/12), or will we be celebrating the lives of five living children and just three in Heaven?  I am trying not to let myself think of it.  Right now my goal is focusing on one day at a time.  Sometimes that is really, really easy to do.  Other times it could not be harder.

But on a positive note, and this is what I try to think about when I am alone in my own dark thoughts, I really have been given so much.  I have more than so many.  I am mother to eight (EIGHT!!!) beautiful souls. No matter what happens in this life, I am one blessed mama.  My heart aches to hold the children I never met.  It fears whatever losses the future may hold.  But it is eternally grateful for what God has given me.  The word 'grateful' doesn't actually even do justice for what I really feel.  I am so unworthy of all of my blessings, but thankful for God's plan.  Though my tears may be plentiful at times, even in my deepest sorrow, He is with me.  There is nothing more I need.