whole parenting baby

On being in the thin space: pregnancy

April 22, 2016

Yes! I’m expecting number four around Christmas and YES! we hoped for this baby and yes, I will probably throw up for 8 months straight as has been the norm with the other three. I feel like I’m in a thin place, a place of between ness. My joy is along side the suffering I’ve witnessed and experienced in our friends and family this past year: struggling to conceive, or to find a partner they want to conceive with, or to hold their live baby in their arms, or to hold their live toddler in their arms. I’ve wept with the people I love, crying out why why why take this love from our midst? Why deprive us of this potential for joy? This delight? And now, why do I get to easily conceive another baby, a fourth? Part of me wanted to wait even longer to stop using NFP to abstain from sex during my fertile times. Part of me wanted to hold out from going through my usual physically challenging pregnancies, and after my last recovery that took a full year to function normally again, that too. Part of me didn’t want to get pregnant to have to maybe lose my baby. To have to say goodbye, as my friends had. The other part of me listened to my dear friend Laura’s pain and insane hurt and decided that I, too, could find hope in a new life for our family. If Laura can find hope in her daughters’ deaths,…

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