God has a sense of humor!

Sooooo, after a year's absence, I'm back to blogging. Of course that can only mean one thing:

I AM PREGNANT. AGAIN.

Yep, go ahead and scrape your jaw up off the floor. Don't feel bad, I had that very same expression on my face for a solid week. No I'm not offended. I promise, whatever you're thinking, I've already thought it ten times over.

Everyone seems perplexed, and rightly so .... so to clear up a few common questions let's just get a few of the nitty-gritty basics out of the way:

1. No, we were not trying. In fact, we were actually "trying" to schedule a vasectomy, having just gotten the referral 4 days before discovering the surprise.

2. No, I had no clue. No symptoms, no "little feeling", nothing. Not even remotely on my radar. I had a period, which started ... and then abruptly stopped .... and never came back. After a few days James convinced me to use an old test I had shoved in the back of the linen closet just to put my mind at ease so we could go out and enjoy our date night without any worries. Yeah that didn't quite go like we planned.

3. Yes there were lots of tears. And a few words I'm now embarrassed to admit I said. I actually collapsed in a heap and finally laid on the floor of my bathroom closet sobbing. No they were not happy tears. Let's just say it was not my proudest moment. Among my immediate concerns, were "How in the world are we gonna survive this again?"; "Please don't make me tell my Mommy!"; and "Promise me that no matter what happens I will never have to drive a mini-van!"

4. Yes I've stopped freaking out. And yes, I'm now equal parts excited and terrified. But there's lots of both.

The next question everyone keeps asking me is ... "Scared, but WHY???" Assuming that these folks either have major short-term memory loss or just flat don't get it, I'll clarify. Forget the fact that spilling the beans to my mother felt like the emotional equivalent of being 15 yrs old and telling her I'm pregnant .... I guess I could best describe it this way:

95% of my fear is surviving another pregnancy: The wild ride of ups and downs ... the stress and worry at every single doctor visit, the cervical measurements, the hospital stays, the endless months of bedrest, the shots, the home monitoring, the burden on my husband, my kids, and our family ... watching my health deteriorate before my eyes. In all honesty I don't feel like I've recovered from the last roller-coaster ride, emotionally OR physically. And I still have the stupid bruises on my stomach to prove it.

5% of my fear comes from the thought of what will happen AFTER the pregnancy, at the end of the battle when a healthy baby is finally here, God willing ... I do worry about taking care of three, dividing my time even further, etc ... all the normal mom stuff. The two little ones will be roughly 20 months apart (again, God willing) so that of course seems like a huge challenge, but honestly there is only a very teeny tiny part of my brain that can see past the gigantic hurdle of pregnancy to even begin to worry about these things.

I think I summarized it best when I told a friend recently, I feel like I've just started climbing Mt. Everest without a single day of advance notice or preparation. The mountain that lies ahead of us is giant and rugged and I know it well. And the ugly truth is that I don't have the endurance, or the mental fortitude required to fight my way up to the top. Just the thought of it is overwhelming and exhausting and makes me want to quit. There is no way I'm gonna be able to climb that thing again.

After four straight days of crying I finally calmed down enough to open my stubborn eyes and see that God was already making arrangements and working out the vital details (like my new super-duper hemotologist Dr. Genius at Emory) .... and ever so gently He reminded me that I don't have to climb anywhere. I can just trust that God knows what He's doing and rely on Him to carry my whiny butt up.

So that's my plan.