God's big plans

Most people know that Jeff and I struggled with infertility for a very long time before we were finally successful in starting our family. Nearly five years passed from the time we began trying to conceive until Sean, Luke and Charlotte arrived in August of 2006. There were many, many times I prayed fervently to God for just one baby. I made so many "deals" with him about what I would do to honor Him if he would bless us with a child! That I would be happy and content with that one child if that's the only child we had. I also remember, very vividly, an email exchange I had with a friend once during the process of one of our many procedures. I don't still have the email so I can't refer to it exactly, but to paraphrase I remember writing, "I don't know what it is, but God has a plan for us. Some days it's hard to understand why this painful and difficult journey is necessary. But nevertheless, I believe God has a plan bigger and better than anything we can imagine for ourselves and someday this will all make sense..."

Well THAT was an understatement! Not only do we have three beautiful, healthy children to raise, love and call our own, but we are expecting again. Yes, baby #4 is on the way!!! No this is not a "miracle" pregnancy that we conceived naturally. We had a few remaining embryos frozen from our IVF cycle that resulted in the triplets. After my hernia surgery last year and some long, difficult conversations Jeff and I decided our family would be complete, but that we couldn't bring ourselves to dispose of those embryos...we would donate them to another couple to use. As the months passed after my surgery, somehow we just couldn't bring ourselves to initiate the process of donating them. Long story short, earlier this year we began consulting with our doctors about doing "natural" embryo transfers (very little medical monitoring and no drugs) to utilize the embryos. They were so accommodating and after a few tries, voila! Here we are.

So, here are a few photos to celebrate. My due date is currently January 13. And yes, it is just one baby this time, we are quite certain! We are already joking this baby does not know how good he/she has it in there. It's got a huge 3-bedroom apartment all to itself!

I couldn't wait for the official blood test, and took one at home the day before. Surprise!!!

An ultrasound at approximately 10 weeks. Baby is looking down, with its back toward the top of the photo.

This was so cool...a 3-D image! We didn't even get this with the triplets. The inexperienced viewer may not see much, but its head is at the top facing left (you can even see an ear forming), and a little arm bud sort of covering its face.