This picture was taken when he was about 6 months old.
Part III: Coming to the reality.
After the birth of our son, all seemed right with the world at first. I remember trying to take in every moment, every smile, every smell, every touch. As the pain I had endured over the last years seemed to come to a halt slowly and I wanted to spend every waking moment with this little miracle. The pain of losing our daughter was still inside of me though. I guess I assumed that having another child would take the pain away. Instead it brought on a different kind of grief. Even though I was overwhelmed and incredibly thankful for our son, I now grieved for him also. I grieved that he had a sister and another sibling he would never know. A sister wouldn't be there to dress him up in dresses and have tickle fights with him. He wouldn't be able to play hide and seek with them or have water fights in the summer. These thoughts began to dawn on me and when they did I began to feel guilty. I had this precious child and here I still felt sad.
I focused my time raising him and making every moment count. Days turned into weeks and weeks into years,.. when Caed was about 2 1/2 we began talking of having another baby... we decided to consult with a doctor but since in their mind we had "only had two pregnancy losses" they didn't feel any need to do any kind of testing, so we were given the green light for me to go off my birth control and start trying. About two months passed when I began having some very odd bleeding and went in because I couldn't figure would what was wrong with what was what I thought my period. They said they would draw some blood and call me back with any results.
I was at work the next day about an hour from the gynecologist when my phone rang. It was a nurse on the other end who told me flat out the reason I was having that odd bleeding was because I was in fact pregnant! And the number of my hormones were 'great'. She estimated me to be around 8-9 weeks and told me to come in and they were going to do an exam. I was so excited and she reassured me that even though I was bleeding my numbers were so high and strong she just thought it was early trimester bleeding. I took the hour drive alone and got to the doctors office not shortly after the phone call. I sat and waited while women with beautiful swollen bellies sat all around me and I just couldn't help but hope this wasn't another case of false hope and everything would be fine.
She took me back and said that with as far as I was she should be able to heart the baby's heartbeat on the doppler and squirted the cold gel on my belly. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully searching for a heartbeat she decided to send me to ultrasound. Within 10 minutes I was informed that this pregnancy would too end in a miscarriage.
All the emotions I had experienced in the previous years came flooding back.. I felt like a cloud was hanging over my head when the doctor came back in and told me that she had a strong feeling something "was wrong" with me. That I should see a specialist before I should consider trying to conceive again. The hour drive home was the most emotional drive I had ever taken. This wasn't just a drive of coming to the realization another of my children were in heaven. This drive was so very different. This drive was a drive of uncertainty of our future. The realization that there was a chance, I would never in fact have any more children.
I remember in the weeks that followed instead of turning to my loving Savior I turned to myself. I put myself on auto-pilot and decided I would beat this. I would find out what was wrong with me and we would get it fixed. Within two months I had an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist. This is a doctor myself I didn't know existed until I began looking for one. At our first meeting she told us all the procedures we would do,... I realized over the next several months I would spend countless hours doing several painful procedures, have 30+ vials of blood drawn and wait,.. wait for results. Within a month the doctor scheduled us an appointment and told us they had pinpointed what they thought was wrong.
My husband took off work and we drove the hour drive to Houston to meet with her. I was so scared to meet with her but anxious and ready for results, hope anything really.
I remember thinking the papers this doctor held in her hands would determine my future. Whether my dreams of having a large family would come true or not. The drive we took that day really would become the rest of our lives.
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