Week One: In the Beginning

Hello baby! Even though you are no longer a baby, you will always be “my sweet baby!”  You came into the world this week and our lives were changed forever.  I cannot believe how fast my pregnancy went. It felt like it was moving so slowly as I counted the days, weeks and months as they went by but at the same time, everything seemed to go by quickly.  Does that make sense? 

I couldn’t wait to reach certain milestones in the pregnancy.  The end of the first trimester meant the risk of miscarriage was significantly reduced. The 22^nd week meant that if I had to deliver you prematurely for some reason, you had a very good chance of surviving with intensive medical care. The end of 36 weeks meant that you were ready to be born and could be considered full term.  I felt as if I held my breath the entire pregnancy and allowed myself to breathe a little more freely as we reached each milestone.

Yes, Emily, your mom tends to be a worrier.  It’s one of the traits that I hope you don’t inherit from me.  Life is challenging enough without worrying about everything.   I give you permission, sweetie, to not worry!

One of the best parts of the story of how we conceived you (I’m sure you’ve heard daddy tell that story by now) is how God gave me permission not to worry.  It was such an incredible invitation to let go and relax through trust in our Heavenly Father.  I was seeing Sandy Ditewig, a Spiritual Director, at the time and she was helping me as your daddy and I struggled with the possibility of never being able to have a biological child. 

At one of our last sessions, she asked me what I thought God was saying to me. This was approximately one year into our journey of dealing with a diagnosis of infertility. We had gone through 2 IVF cycles by that time and were heartbroken and discouraged.

I closed my eyes and leaned in to listen with my heart.   It’s still hard for me to put what God said/did into words but I’ll do my best to explain.  I sensed He was telling me that His goodness far exceeded my need to worry and fret.  He was reassuring me that His goodness was far greater than my problem and that He did not require that I worry about it in order to push Him to act on my behalf.  God could and would act on my behalf freely.  I felt He was giving me permission to stop worrying.  I was not being more spiritual or faithful by fretting, even in prayer.  It was the most liberating moment for me.  It was hard for me, an avid worrier, to digest the fact that God seemed to be telling me He would take care of my problem and that I could let go. Of course, I didn’t explicitly hear God promise that I would get pregnant with you in half a year’s time, but I sensed something good.

That was in August 2010. By the end of February 2011, we had 4 positive home pregnancy tests that changed our story forever.  You were on your merry little way!