Birthday Relfections

Today is Ethan's birthday! He's one year old. It's amazing to me how a pregnancy can drag on and on, but once the baby comes, time just flies by. Ethan is such a sweet little boy. He's happy 97% of the time, and the 3% that he's not is only when I get his schedule messed up and he loses sleep, or when he's sick. He loves Alyssa. I just moved him into her bedroom and turned the nursery into a play room, and he loves sharing a bedroom with his big sister. I can lay him down after tucking them both in, and he just pays in his crib until he falls asleep. Yesterday I let him crawl on Alyssa and give her hugs before putting him to bed, and he laughed the whole time.

I've been thinking a bit lately about how thankful I am to have Ethan in our family. We had some crazy, and some special times getting him here, and I thought I would share some of them. I didn't know if the Internet would be an appropriate place, but this is my only journal right now and I want it written down so I don't forget.

We had a miscarriage when Brian graduated from BYU, and it took about a year to get pregnant again. It was very difficult losing another baby, and there were other things that it caused (Brian missing classes during summer term that caused a grade to drop low enough to put optometry school off for another year, for example) that made it very hard. When you have a miscarriage you want to get pregnant as soon as possible. I kept thinking, "My baby was supposed to be here around Christmas, so I'm already behind schedule." But as each month passed, I would get sadder and sadder, and soon I was questioning if I would ever have any more children. It turns out that nothing serious was going on, but it was hard not to wonder.

Around Christmas, when the baby was supposed to be born, I was getting more upset and scared. It was hard to pass my due date without being pregnant again. One night as I was saying my evening prayers, I told Heavenly Father how I felt and told him of my fears. When my prayer was over, I heard a voice in my head whisper, "I can hear you." It was so simple. I didn't get an answer as to whether or not I would conceive a child soon or even if I ever would at all, but I knew that my prayer was heard. The voice was so loving. Exactly as a father would speak to his distraught daughter. I know there is a God. I know that we are His children and that he loves us so much. I will never, ever doubt the existence of our Heavenly Father.

I went to the doctor, and she said that most likely I was ovulating and there was no need to worry, and she told me to start charting my cycles to see exactly when I ovulated. I was already 'kind of' charting, but at this point I threw myself into it. It was the coolest science project I've ever done. One of my catholic friends once told me that she knew people who charted for birth control, and she said, "Wouldn't it be amazing to be so in tune with your body?" I can tell you that it is amazing, but the neatest part was having my husband there along side me, learning and working with me, not to prevent the conception of a child, but to get it.

The cycle that I charted and I "just knew" that we would get pregnant, I prayed every night that IF I WAS pregnant, that the baby would be protected. It was one of those nights that when I said the word baby, my mind said "babies" instead. While I would love to have twins, I never said this out loud, because I thought that was asking for too much. But soon I found out that, yes, I was pregnant, and during the sixth week, I started to bleed a little. "Oh, no," I thought. I called the doctor, who sent me to the hospital for an ultra sound. "Yes, " they said, " Baby's all right. See, there's the heartbeat. Go wait downstairs and someone will come talk to you." I waited for a half hour, wondering what could be wrong, when someone came out to tell me I could go home and the doctor would call me. When I walked in the door there was a message waiting, and I immediately called the doctor back. Apparently, it started out as a twin pregnancy, but one of the babies had died. I was shocked. A part of me had already knownthat there were two babies, but I was still shocked. It was a little sad, but at the same time, we still had a healthy pregnancy, so we had a lot to be thankful for.

Soon after getting pregnant, I found myself very sick. I spent all my time in bed or on the couch, and I threw up constantly. We kept calling the doctor, but every time I would go in she would say, "Well, at least you're walking," or "Some people look like holocaust victims. You should be thankful." I would nod my head, and go home to cry, but I really wanted to tell her about throwing up in the parking lot (I carried my "Yucky Bucket" everywhere I went.) and throwing up in the waiting room, and throwing up while waiting for her to come to the examination room. I wanted to tell her about throwing up when I ate, and throwing up when I didn't eat. Didn't she realize I had lost twenty five pounds in just a few weeks? I was sent to the hospital a few times for dehydration, but all they did was pump me full of water and send me home.

It wasn't until the wonderful nurses on the night shift were listening to our story and told us about a great doctor, who just happened to be on call that night. Dr. Andrews looked at the information from my blood test and determined that my body had been in starvation mode for some weeks, and I needed a complete overhaul. He pumped various things through my veins and soon I was eating and feeling better. I still threw up a lot, and I felt sick all the way up until delivery, but at least I could function as a real person and be able to take care of Alyssa.

A few weeks after finding out I was pregnant (I think it was before I got sick.), I was cleaning the house and thinking about the new baby and hoping that everything was going to be okay, when again I heard a voice whisper to me. It said, "It's a boy and his name is Ethan Daniel." How strange that I was lucky enough to be privileged with this information. Sometimes I doubted myself. Did I really hear it, or did I just make it up? No, I really did hear it. I knew he would be declared a boy when we went in for our ultra sound, but part of me thought, "Well, if it's a girl, then I'll know that I'm crazy." It was hard for Brian, because I wanted his approval of the name, but my certainty left no room for discussion of other options. Brian also doesn't like to talk about names until the baby comes, anyway, because that's when he meets them.

Brian is a good sport, though, and when the baby was born via cesarean section, Brian agreed to name him Ethan Daniel, and it seemed to fit him very well. Daniel is Brian's father's name. He is a great man. I love having Ethan named after him.

So now a whole year has passed since he was born, and it feels like all these things happened forever ago. I'm thankful for the wonderful experiences that being a mother has given me. I'm so thankful for both Alyssa and Ethan; I'm so glad to have them in our family. I feel very blessed to have such a great man as my husband and two beautiful children. They bring such happiness to my life.