My due date

Yesterday, January 6, was my due date. I thought about it all last week. I knew it was coming, but there was no way to stop it from happening. So it was kind of a bummer of a day.

For those that didn't know, I had a miscarriage on June 29th. It was the day I turned 13 weeks. We had gone to Iowa when I was 10 weeks and told everyone that I was pregnant. About that same time, I lost pregnancy symptoms. I thought it was weird since I was extremely sick with both of the girls (until 20 and 21 weeks). But we joked that this time it was a boy. Then at 12 weeks, I started bleeding. Now that is something that can completely freak you out when you are pregnant. With both of the girls, besides being sick, I had very uneventful pregnancies. So when this happened, I was really scared. We did blood work right away and my numbers weren't going up anymore. They did an ultrasound and saw a malformed sac. They said the baby had stopped growing between 6 and 7 weeks. So why did my body carry it for another 6 weeks? I couldn't understand this. I was sad. I was angry.

I did a lot of praying that week. I prayed a lot for understanding. Why was this happening to me? As soon as I found out I was to have a d&c, I called a few of my friends who had also gone through a miscarriage. And I called Melinda. She had lost twins about a year and a half before me. I needed to talk to someone who understood what I was going through. She was great. I remember her saying, "It's o.k. to be mad! I'm mad with you! If you want to kick the walls, I'll be right beside you kicking them, because this sucks!"

It hit me really hard the week of VBS. That was 3 weeks after the d&c. I found out at VBS that 4 people I knew from church were pregnant. Melinda saw the look on my face when I found out about one friend, and pulled me aside. She just hugged me and promised that it WOULD get better and she would be there to listen anytime I needed to talk about it.

Two days before her surgery, she called me to be sure I was o.k. Here she was, going in for surgery, and she was thinking of me. What an amazing friend.

So I look back on it now and I thank God that this happened to me. See, Melinda and I used to be really good friends. When I first started staying home with Maddie, I think I talked to her every other day for advice on parenting and how to survive. But as friendships do, we got busy with our own lives and we slowly stopped talking as much. And eventually, we became just church friends who only saw each other and talked at church. So I actually feel blessed to have reconnected with Melinda before she died. It really reminded me that she was this amazing friend that I was so lucky to have in my life for 10 years.

I'll save my miscarriage advice for another blog since this one turned out longer than I originally thought. But just know that I am fine now. I know that God wanted me to go through it. If not to reconnect with Melinda, then maybe to help someone else go through it. I can't tell you how much it meant to me to talk to my friends who had been there. Maybe I went through it to help one of my daughters go through it someday. And if that's the case, I'm glad it happened to me.

Another thing that does make it a little easier for me is that I'm pregnant now. I admit that I prayed a lot about being pregnant before my due date came. I knew that January 6th would be hard, but being pregnant sure made it a lot easier. I'm due August 6th. Seven months to the day later. I am 10 weeks today. So pretty nervous. This is when I lost pregnancy symptoms before. But my doctor has been great. We've all ready had blood work. We've even done an ultrasound. We saw the heartbeat. So far, so good. We'll do another ultrasound in 2 weeks, just to be sure. But until then, please pray for the baby and for me to not worry so much! Oh, and Russ would throw in, pray that it's a boy! ;) He doesn't think he can live in a house with four redheaded women.