if you’ve experienced a pregnancy of any kind, you know that elusive safe feeling. the moment you tell yourself you will finally feel like you can relax and trust that your baby will turn into the healthy, smiling baby you always imagined.

i’ve been counting down till the moment we’d be able to share the news that we are expecting baby #3.

that safe time, if it ever really exists, is finally here for us. but it didn’t arrive without heartache. as i imagined sharing our announcement today, i knew i couldn’t do it without explaining. i am all too aware of the mamas out there {of babies on earth, babies in heaven, and babies in your hopes}, who might be tempted to look at my neatly dressed family and think that getting to this point was as easy as this picture looks. in reality, it took us hours to get out the door for this picture and countless takes to get everyone almost smiling. our pregnancy journey could be described in much the same way.

the whole truth is, this is my third pregnancy in the last year. when i fill out the form at the obgyn that asks how many pregnancies i’ve had, i now write six. then for the next question, about how many children i have, i write two. the difference in those numbers never goes unnoticed.

we decided in early 2016 that it was probably now or never for baby #3. i wasn’t getting any younger, and we’d enjoyed a couple years of semi feeling like we had this whole parenting thing down. maybe. sometimes. we upped our prayers. i gave up wine and caffeine and tried to eat more fruits and vegetables and anything else i thought might help. i am pretty sure none of that actually helps. but by may we were thrilled to learn we were pregnant.

i spent the summer of 2016 smiling secretly about our news. 24-hour nausea gave me confidence the baby was thriving. but in early august, two days shy of our 11 week ultrasound, i started spotting.

there is nothing that can prepare you for that moment. i’ve been through it before but that doesn’t matter. in that moment, nothing makes sense.

in the whirlwind days that followed, as i tried without success to return to normal, i found my mind continually revisiting a few select details of the miscarriage. the ones my heart just could not get over. i kept almost thinking about these details and then pushing them out of my mind. too painful.

i repeated this pattern for days. i wondered if i would ever be able to think about anything else.

i have an ongoing text with a group of friends who always seem to know exactly the right things to say. they suggested i really let myself feel all the feels in those early weeks. so i prayed that the holy spirit would give me the courage to think through the hard moments and uncover the blessings.

to be completely honest, it has never taken me so long to write a blog post. i was going to write this, and then i wasn’t, and then i was, and if you are now reading it i am probably sweating. i know that if you have or are going through a similar situation, you have your own personal journey. i know i cannot offer a magical solution to relieve you of your heartache and make everything turn out the way you want.

what i can offer is my own story in hopes that some parts might help in some way. i know for me, feeling like someone else gets it or has been there is a comfort in and of itself, even if our stories are not exactly the same. so here they are. the hardest things about my miscarriage and the LITTLE blessings God revealed along the way.

{#1}

seeing the baby but no heartbeat. i went to the appointment alone. my husband was on a plane in route back to indy from a business trip. he would do anything to change this and my heart aches for him. but miscarriage didn’t ask us what would work best for our schedules. my family would have accompanied me without hesitation. but i was holding onto hope that we could reveal the good news in two days as planned. this will always be a hard memory. but there were blessings…

{#2}

losing the baby. once home from my appointment, i had no idea how to prepare. i had an early miscarriage with my very first pregnancy, but physically that did not compare to 11 weeks. the thought crossed my mind that i might want to give this baby a funeral. maybe i should call our priest? there were so many thoughts but i didn’t have the time or clarity to follow through with any of them. i lost the baby, at my house, in a very unglamorous way. in the moment, i thought i might never be able to get past the thought of no proper place for our baby to rest. i begged God for relief from this heartache. this will always be a hard memory. but there were blessings…

{#3}

missing my son’s first day of kindergarten. like any mom, i’ve looked forward to this with mixed emotions for years. watching E walk onto the bus. taking lots of pictures. waving as the bus pulled away, his face in the window. but i missed it. i fainted in the bathroom during the night, my dad rushed over to be with the kids, and i was transported from one hospital to another via ambulance. as E began his first day of kindergarten, i was wheeled into surgery. again, parts of this are still hard. but there were blessings…

{#4}

going from being pregnant to not being pregnant. it’s really weird spending every waking minute thinking of something that just isn’t anymore. everything that happened all summer was with the thought that we had a baby on the way. after the miscarriage, i kept momentarily forgetting i wasn’t pregnant and would have to remind myself. throughout weeks of constant nausea, i told myself it was all worth it for the sweet baby at the end. with no baby, it was just annoying i’d spent the whole summer feeling sick. the baby weight with no baby was also annoying and another reminder that things didn’t go as planned. this was all hard. but there were blessings…

it seems like i should think of a fifth hard thing or maybe erase the fourth because four is kind of an incomplete number to stop on. but that’s what it was. four. the blessings took awhile to surface. it took a lot of prayer and really just trying hard to make them my focus.

in the months that followed, i started going to acupuncture to help with healing and future pregnancies, especially nausea. the decision to try again for baby #3 was not easy. maybe two kiddos was enough? we are certainly not lacking for chaos around here. but i remember thinking, after i delivered K and held her in the hospital, that she couldn’t be my last baby. even with the heartache, we felt like we were meant to have more children.

in early november, we learned we were pregnant again. my mind immediately started with prayers and hope and fear of another miscarriage, but i mostly thought that can’t possibly happen again since it just happened.

three days after the positive pregnancy test, i started spotting. my numbers confirmed it was not a sustainable pregnancy. physically, this time was easier. mentally, if you’ve been through this, you know the incredible amount of hope and love that can be wrapped up in three short days. thoughts that maybe something was wrong with me, and baby #3 might never happen threatened to overtake the blessings. but i made myself focus on the blessings.

if you haven’t noticed, i’ve been in the habit of noticing blessings for the past fifteen years. something i am not good at? waiting.

before this journey, i always thought waiting was the absence of doing something. i prefer to do something, so i don’t like waiting. i think that is why fertility struggles are so hard. it’s a lot of waiting, which feels like doing nothing.

at first, as i waited to be pregnant, i found myself obsessing over what i could do to make my body more ready for a baby. maybe i should stop working out. maybe i should work out more. eat organic. make smoothies with kale. pray more. take vitamins. not lift my three year old. drive slowly. stay away from chemicals. stop doing laundry {would be nice, right?}. crazy things went through my mind. but none of them were the answer.

the answer to what i could do? wait.

coincidently {or probably not}, during all of this, the topic of waiting seemed to weave itself into many of the reflections at my MOMS group meetings. during these reflections i’d find myself looking around like how did this person get in my mind and make sense of all the thoughts in my head? slowly, i began to view waiting as an actual thing. an action word.

waiting allows God time to answer prayers. it is a necessary part of growing and learning and living. there’s a lot that can happen in this patient waiting, and a lot we can miss without it. but trusting this process was something i really had to work at.

this is what it sounded like in my head. what am i doing? i am waiting. that is what i am doing. for how long? i don’t know, but today i am waiting.

13 months of waiting later, on february 1, 2017 i learned i was pregnant for the third time. the first test i took was negative. and i believed it. until two days later when all signs still pointed toward pregnancy. another test. positive. my husband and i just stared at it, afraid to celebrate too much, wondering what this might mean for us.

now here i am at 15 weeks. safe. but last friday i started spotting and that all too familiar feeling of panic set in. thinking all the things on the way to the doctor, i prayed my heart out to be able to handle whatever news was coming my way. it felt like years before they found the heartbeat. it was probably four seconds, and the heartbeat was strong. safe.

all that leads to today and with hearts filled will all the feels we proudly, cautiously, humbly, excitedly, nervously, faithfully announce that we are expecting baby #3. we are as happy as we seem in this picture, but dear friend, please know there is a lot wrapped up in this happy, especially nausea and waiting.

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waiting on something? here are three of my favorite reflections on the subject.

the crushing times by lysa terkeurst

how to wait on God without losing faith by henri nouwen

waiting with patience by henri nouwen