I try to keep my social media pages and blog a positive space. Not because I want things to “look perfect” but because I want to always be a positive light to people. I don’t like the idea of someone seeing my content on their feeds and feeling a negative feeling. There’s enough drama and negativity in the world. But this past few days have been incredibly hard on me. I’m a huge storm of doom and gloom. I wanted to hide it and go about my social media life as if it didn’t happen to keep my content positive but I’m not going to walk around my feelings or sugar coat it any more.
I feel ashamed of myself and my body.
I regret rearranging my living room furniture the day before I found out that I was expecting.
I feel embarrassed for being so pathetically excited. I bought baby girl clothes because we have everything for a boy. I ordered the blood test to find out the sex next week. My grandma made the baby a blanket. I was planning photo sessions. Nurseries. Names. Coming home outfits.
I wonder why we lost the baby.
I wonder why I just didn’t get pregnant to begin with.
I wonder what the point was of getting pregnant just to have my heart ripped out by losing it.
I wonder what the odds were. We were being safe. I had decided not to get pregnant right now because of the whole Covid 19 thing. I’d need a sitter every doctor’s/midwife’s visit. If I wasn’t able to birth at home my mom, photographer, children, mother in law, ect couldn’t attend the birth or the hospital. The virus itself is scary. We had decided to use protection indefinitely so the fact that I was pregnant was shocking in itself. I took 5 tests and still couldn’t believe it. I genuinely felt like that baby was meant to be here! He/she had a purpose in this world.
I can’t even explain how thrilled I was. Pregnancy makes me feel like my truest self. It is a happy place for me and we knew most of Granger’s pregnancy that we planned to have another baby. Originally we were only going to have one more and we were going to wait until I was closer to 35 but at some point we both just got this peaceful sense of not feeling like the Lord was putting a cap on our family size. We didn’t feel like we’d end up with 20 kids someday or that we’d have another baby right away. We just simply felt like God wasn’t calling us to be done adding to our family. We felt a calling towards adoption again. If you don’t know us or our story, we were in the process of adopting when we conceived our oldest child. The adoption fell through due to legalities with being pregnant while adopting but we were able to pick the home that that sweet boy went to. It was a gift to be apart of his story. We also were foster parents with hopes of adopting through foster care but our boys were reunified with their mama (she fought hard to get her babies back and we were so happy for them all.) Then I got pregnant a few months after they left our home. Along with adoption we felt a call towards birthing another baby as well. We didn’t feel peace with being done growing and we didn’t discuss a stop number. A stretch from where we were a year and a half ago. We were done, done when we first got pregnant with our 5th. Like, Vasectomy as soon as the baby was born, done. However, God changed our hearts during the pregnancy and he changed it at the same time on our own terms apart from one another. I’d say that it was crazy but it was God. We both just had this sense of letting go and letting God. No pressures. No set numbers. No closing doors. No worrying about what people would think or say. Authentically open hearted to whatever the end game was on how big our family would grow.
I know that people have an opinion about our family size but at the end of every day, we don’t care what anyone but our kid’s think. I will not be on my death bed and regretting having a big, close family. I won’t be regretting struggles financially or physically that we had because of our family size. I will not regret not being able to go to Disney World once a year like we did before. I won’t regret this choice. I will die surrounded by love and lives that the love of my life and I brought together. I will leave behind a legacy, a crew of children that will always have each other to lean on in the hard times. Sometimes I imagine what our home will look like on holidays in 20 years from now and it makes me emotional. My babies with their babies. With their partners. A huge group of lives that started because Brian and I fell in love. A house full of love and laughter. I will never regret listening to God’s call to motherhood and to having a large family. I know that this is why I am here. This is what I was called to do. I find peace in that. I know that God has a plan for us. As much as this aches and apart of me wants to be mad, I KNOW my calling. I know that this isn’t over. I know that I will meet that baby one day. And I know that we will grow again. I don’t know when or how but it will happen and i’m done thinking that my timing is best or trying to manage that. I’m full heartedly letting go and letting God. I’m trusting HIS TIMING and his plan. All I can do is pray for the journey, trust the Lord, and work within my self to find peace with our loss. I’m also done feeling the need to keep it all together in front of people. I’m done feeling like a failure for having hard times.
I get the desire to have it all together or to stay positive on social media. I do. I’ve been there. But I also think that disappointment and heartbreaks are apart of life. By hiding those ‘ugly bits’ we are putting up a false sense of being immune to struggles. Like our lives are so perfect that we can lose a pregnancy and just breeze on with our day as if it’s all just fine. It’s not true. This has wrecked me. I’m still not on my own two feet yet. I’m devastated. I just want that baby back, safely growing inside of me. I’m going to stay raw to that grief process.
I don’t know when we will grow again. Or how. But I do know that we will. Not because that’s just what I want or have planned but because that’s without any doubt what God has called us to do.
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