The Journey

"In God's sovereign plan, your present difficulty may be instrumental to your future happiness." -J.Yates

Before Eleanor there was another baby. And before that baby was cancer. It was a long road to get to our sweet girl, but we feel so very grateful that she is here.

Last Halloween we went in for a 9 week ultrasound. We were giddy with excitement as this was our miracle baby. My husband is a cancer survivor and we were told that having children naturally was very, very unlikely. We had begun to research and prepare for IVF when we found out we had somehow conceived on our own. You can imagine our shock and joy. When we went in for our 9 week ultrasound we found out our baby had not survived, and we were absolutely crushed. How could this possibly happen to us? How could this miracle be taken away so soon? Was this our only chance? We prayed for strength and for God to take our sweet baby to heaven with him, and we began to put our lives back on course.

Once we could try again we decided to start slowly and give ourselves time. We expected it would take time for our bodies and hearts to heal, and believed that we would get pregnant again; whether naturally or via IVF. We gave ourselves the timeline of trying on our own for 6 months, then looking at IVF again. After one month of trying we found out we were pregnant again; on Christmas morning. We couldn't believe it happened again so quickly. We were excited and terrified. I hadn't expected to be so afraid. I was so happy that God had answered our prayers and brought more life into our family, but I was so afraid for another heartbreaking ending. My pregnancy progressed and I had every symptom in the book, including serious nausea for the first 25 weeks. Despite the difficulty of feeling so awful, I was thankful for the symptoms as they were a daily reminder that things were on the right track. I both dreaded and yearned for the doctor's appointments. I was so scared to go in, but totally relieved each time to heart our baby's heartbeat or see her sweet profile on the sonogram. I was also frustrated and angry at times throughout the process. I wanted so badly to be filled with joy and excitement for our new baby, but I was so terrified of losing her that it was hard. This pregnancy didn't feel innocent like the first one; it had weight. I breathed easier after 12 weeks, but I kept hearing sad stories of miscarriages far into pregnancies and knew I wouldn't truly relax until I held our girl. We chose to find out the gender of our baby for many reasons, but one of which was how hard it was not knowing anything about the baby we had lost. Knowing the gender helped us to humanize and connect with our growing baby.

On August 28, after a pretty fast moving and smooth labor, our baby girl arrived. And as they gave her to me I cried so hard; I felt so thankful that she was safe. It was a long journey, but she was here. God helped to heal our pain in such a wonderful way. This beautiful girl will never take the place of our first baby, but she has mended our hearts in such a loving way and brought some of the innocence back into our lives.