11 months ago Preston and Julian were born at 3am. I was 19 weeks and 4 days pregnant.

I am 19 weeks and 4 days pregnant today with our third son.

It’s hard to put into words, out loud or here, what emotions wash over me. I’ve thought about this day a lot. Part of me is proud to have made it this far with this little boy, proud my body is able to get past the point of the stages of loss from the twins.

There’s still the fear of losing him, yet I’m more and more thankful for each day that passes instead of simply terrified.

I honestly didn’t think I’d make it even to this point. I figured at 11 months I’d be grieving another loss again, and here I am. Still pregnant.

(more…)

I’ve hesitated writing this on here for so long because I’m so sick of hearing my own fear and worry that I could honestly scream. But when I push it down, tell myself no one wants to hear it, that I’ll only get back loads of advice and “Just give it all to Jesus!” or the worst “Stress is bad for the baby!” – it consumes me even more. I know that to let it out publicly (to a therapist, friend, or here) means that part of me fights back against that lie of “no one cares.”

Tomorrow I am 16 weeks. And there isn’t a day, isn’t an hour that goes by that I’m not fearful of losing this baby. It’s hard to focus on anything else when everything revolves around it so much. Twice weekly Dr. appointments. Bella asking. Sam checking in. My clothes. My appearance in the mirror. All the pills. Being sick.

I can’t get away from it and instead of being like, “BABY! YAY!”…

I feel like a time bomb simply waiting to go off again and life to once more implode. Where I am left trying to make sense of everything that just shattered around me while going on. Where I’m shaken to the very core, left trying to find God and peace and the reason why in the mess of humanity I can’t seem to get away from.

I can’t control this pregnancy. I can’t control my feelings. I pray, I read the Bible, I write, I go to therapy, I talk it out, cry it out, yell it out. I am trying to put together the pieces of my life without my sons while tentatively pondering a life with this much wanted baby. But overshadowing it all is this sense of out of control that looms over me – the knowledge that indeed, at any moment this could all end again.

I hate this.

Last night I laid in bed reading Scriptures about anxiety and fear. Anything. All those nice words about giving it to Jesus don’t mean a thing when YOU SIMPLY CAN’T. I can’t figure out how to give this to Jesus because it’s my body. My baby. My life. My fear. My worries. My reality. I’m the one laying in the bed at the hospital. I’m the one injecting myself with needles everyday. I’m the one taking the pills. I’m the one who is sick. It’s me. I can’t figure out a way to hand it all to Jesus because it seems like it’s just constantly being handed back to me.

Only – it’s really not. It’s me. Mentally taking it back again and again. “Sorry Lord, I know I asked you to handle this but really, I can do a better job. Obviously I’m doing great down here so if you could just give all my fears and worry back – that would be great.” FAIL.

And? It’s really not my body. My baby. My life. My story. It’s all His. His works, His hand on my life and my testimony. The worry and fear are real, I have a right to feel them. It isn’t wrong to be fearful. What is wrong is what I am letting it do – consume me. Consume my days. My fear and anxiety -

I hardly can type this.

They have become my idols.

I turn to them more than God. I let them enter my mind and my heart and my appointments and my days more than I let Jesus. I’m so comfortable in this place that it’s the easiest place to go. “Oh? You have another pill to take? Well, let’s find out what we can worry about with that. You feel the baby move? Let’s picture it dead. You’re peeing a lot? How about we remember your water breaking?”

On and on and on and on until I want to scream and shake myself hard saying, “STOP STOP STOP.”

And so last night, just for once, I let some of it go. As best I could. I’m human, it won’t be immediate. It may not be total. Ever. But I can’t live in the fear and trauma anymore. I know, I know so well, that if I do end up losing this baby I will regret those thoughts every.single.day. Forever. I will forever regret that I didn’t allow myself a lot of joy and to simply be pregnant.

I don’t know how to hand it to God other than simply to repeat over and over when the fears come, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” – Isaiah 12:2

It’s not a simple act to give your fears to God. It isn’t a trite saying. It’s hard. Sometimes I feel like everyone else has got this down but little old anxiety ridden me. But then I open up on here, on Twitter, in my life, and see it isn’t. We all struggle with this. So many areas of our lives are simply consumed by our need to control and the fear of not dwelling on it, of not being two steps ahead mentally of a situation that terrifies us.

I’m challenging myself and each of you struggling: find your verse. Find your mantra. Say it over and over until you feel a little bit less heavy. Tell yourself it is ok for 5 minutes, for an hour, for a day, to let those thoughts go. To push them away for a while. Start small, then ask Jesus to help make the joy and ease of not living in fear a bit longer each time.

And don’t stay silent. Reach out. Tell someone. Talk about it. You might be tired of being afraid too – but so many of us are right there with you. Don’t let these things not from God consume you and take up space where He needs to be. Longs to be.

Sometimes there are moments where you see everything so clearly in a split second.

Yesterday was that moment.

I found myself sad, wanting to control the adoption process, feeling irritated and annoyed. I was upset that our honesty with it all had caused it to start to crumble, and part of me wondered if maybe we’d have just kept it to ourselves about Sam’s drinking, maybe we’d have gotten to move forward.

Sam came home that evening and I could tell he was off too. We were snappy and on edge, trying to figure out what path to take next. We seem to be at a crossroads that we aren’t really in charge of.

I kept saying, “How can they punish us for a past mistake that we’ve worked so hard to fix? It’s not fair. I don’t understand how this is our life suddenly – what the heck happened?”

I was ashamed to come on here and write about it. I thought maybe I’d just not say anything about it until – “SURPRISE! We changed our minds! We don’t want to adopt after all.” And no one would know.

But I remembered the post about writing because this was God’s story of our lives, not just ours.

And then it hit me. God’s story. We were trying to do God’s will. Publicly. In faith. The best we can being imperfect humans.

This is Satan.

(more…)

I didn’t know this could happen.

I had no idea that you could experience postpartum anxiety or postpartum depression after the loss of a baby or a miscarriage.

I mean, it makes sense. I think I just figured it happened from lack of sleep, nursing, hormones, etc.

If you lost a child, you grieved. You were sad. I was. I was all of that and more. But it was all normal – right?

And then the nightmares started. Vivid ones, where I could see Bella falling and being killed, being run over, finding her dead – and there wasn’t anything I could do. I had them constantly at night. I’d wake up around 4am and toss and turn, unable to get back to sleep. When I did, I’d have another one. Sometimes they were about Sam. Always someone was being killed or already dead.

I felt a normal grief process during the day – for the most part. But when it hit me, it hit me so hard that I couldn’t function without forcing myself to move on, to ignore, to push it down. Or just explode into tears and grief and sob.

(more…)

This is kind of a “pre” BlogHer list – but in general it works for just about anything. Like – you know. For all of you who are going to run into me in El Paso.

::snort::

Anyway, if you’re headed to BlogHer this year, here are a few things you should know about me:

• I’m incredibly shy. Really. I remember both last years BlogHer and Blissdom this year there were points I felt like I might pass out. So here’s the thing: if you catch me staring at you and then I look away – I’m not being rude! Promise! I’m usually just trying to figure out who you are or I know and I’m too nervous to come over and say hi.
• Clothes shopping is not my thing. I like new clothes, but if they somehow could magically appear in my closet (all the correct size) without me having to endure a shopping trip to get them that would be wonderful. I absolutely hate shopping for new clothes. So I’ll be the one in the not so new clothes that are very comfy and probably very unstylish. (more…)