More to the story.

Justin came home to find this on Caleb's door during his nap!

 Since we were bracing ourselves for another year or more of trying to conceive, I was sort of in denial when around Easter, I was suddenly SO tired and sick. Justin even took a day off work to let me rest {really unheard of around here- we don't take sick days}. He joked about buying a pregnancy test and the next morning I knew I had to. 

  Justin is excited to round out our family, Caleb has no idea what babies are and just can't wait for his birthday party this weekend, and I am counting down the days until I feel a bit more like myself. Oh, and I'm also in denial that I already have a bump! I didn't show until maybe 20 weeks with Caleb! Oy. Give me all the stretchy pants, please.

  I'm also feeling extra sensitive about this pregnancy. The older we get, the more we experience grief and loss and the heartache of infertility and infant loss with people we love. This time around it seems even more relevant than during our last pregnancy and sharing our news of expecting has been very different. We've felt more apprehensive about sharing the news and sensitive about it separating us from others while they are grieving or hurting. Life is so sticky, isn't it? We can't control or predict the timing of things or change how it all might conflict with the timing of other people's things. I was talking with my friend Chelsea about this and her wisdom has stuck with me. After unexpectedly losing her little boy recently at 16 weeks, I was so worried to tell her our news. I didn't want it to hurt her or prevent me from being able to love her well in her grief. She hugged me, looked at me and said that it is possible to do both. To walk through grief together and to celebrate other parts of life together. That one thing doesn't have to perpetually be a reminder of the other or become a gap that can't be bridged. That was so good to hear. Having miscarried and tried for a while to get pregnant again, I know the sting and loneliness that can come with it. You don't forget those feelings easily. I never want to knowingly add to someone's hurt and pain and loneliness, you know? So I've been praying intentionally, throughout these last weeks, that I don't isolate myself or become unrelatable. That I can do both, be present in the bitter and sweet parts of life at the same time.  

  I will always love the way Shauna talks about the bitter and sweet parts of life, and how we will always need both. “Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands.” 

Ps. read more about our journey to parenthood here and here and here