When I think back to when I decided I wanted to be a mother I end up back in my sophomore math class in high school. I was 15 years old and had just decided that I wanted a tattoo. I wanted a tattoo of a lily on my lower back because I wanted to name my first little girl Lily. Thank the stars that my mother told me to get on birth control when I became sexually active. I did get that first tattoo at the ripe young age of 15 and it was a lily on my lower back. A lifelong reminder of the little girl I always wanted.
Fast forward 20 years...Here I am, finally pregnant and getting bigger by the day. 28 weeks ago I discovered that I was indeed pregnant again. I do not have any children but I have had 2 prior pregnancies that ended in miscarriage. I was really beginning to give up hope. I always thought that as soon as I was ready to have babies that I would get pregnant and have a baby but that is not how it happened.
Rewind to age 32. I was ready to have a baby. I had a loving partner who was ready to start trying. Darren and I had been together a solid 7 years, been through some ups and downs but had a stable, supportive, balanced and loving relationship. We bought a home together, we were raising a lovely little pug dog together, and we were ready to try for a family. I had a great job teaching art in an elementary school and everything was in it's right place. I was shocked to find out that we were pregnant the second month of trying. My mind raced ahead of the moment, all I could see was this baby, being a mom, I was so excited. At 9 weeks I went in for my first doctor's appointment just to discover that there was nothing there. A blighted ovum. I had never heard that term before but learned that it is when the baby does not develop but the placenta does tricking the body into thinking it is still pregnant. Also called a Missed Miscarriage. Of course we were crushed. I miscarried at home and would never wish that on anyone. It took my body some time to recover. We were finally ready to start trying again 6 months later. It took us 5 months of trying to get pregnant again and those 5 months felt like 5 years. Pregnancy #2, I had hope because I thought there was no way that I could loose another one. Sure enough, development was slow, saw the heard beat at 7 weeks and at 8 weeks the fetus had died. This time I had a DnC at the hospital and that was a lot easier to recover from than the natural miscarriage. Even more devastated, wondering what is wrong with me, how many times can I go through this before I loose my heart and mind. Not to mention the hormonal insanity that my body went through. So we recovered and decided to try again. This time it took 7 months of trying to get pregnant and those 7 months felt like 7 years. Pregnancy #3...This time I just expected to loose it, I was just waiting to find out that it was not going to work out again because then I was going to give up on being a mother and live life with this empty place in my heart. But this one stuck, everything has been perfect since the beginning. The baby has always measured ahead and now at 28 weeks I can see and feel it rolling, kicking, stretching, hiccuping, etc.
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