Before I continue on telling the story of our tragedy turned triumph, lets not forget how it all started.

I used to be so impatient about getting pregnant. Like a child being told they can’t open their presents Christmas morning, I was chomping at the bit for years for my turn. We were married when I was 23 and Jake was 24, which in most opinions is fairly young. Having been together since my senior year in high school, we always knew that we wanted a family together. For me, that family could start as soon as May 25th 2008 (the day after our wedding). But, out of general good judgement and my decision to return to school to become a teacher, we decided to wait.

I decided I needed a plan in early 2011, when I first started hearing my “clock” ticking. People laugh when I say that, but my 26 years of age felt like 46 to me. I had been ready for children since I was a child, and I had decided that my waiting was over. Jake and I talked, planning out when and if we got pregnant. We came up with a small window, between August and October 2011 to get pregnant; this meant that the baby would be due anywhere from April to June. Perfect planning for a teacher, I was thrilled that I would be finishing my degree and having our first child in the same year. To put this in “normal people’s” terms – it was like being told you’re going to win the lottery. Each day until August felt like a month, but it finally came sooner than I thought. Then we had a crazy thought..
One day in early August we got the itch for a new home. We started looking on the internet, driving around neighborhoods, trying to find something we could afford while still living off only one salary. The next thing we knew, we were putting the house on the market and scrambling to give our little house a mini facelift to entice buyers. It must have worked, because our house sold in three days. Eight years of our life was about to be gone, and I had no idea that an entirely different life path for us was already in progress. We found a perfect little neighborhood in city limits and within the school district I wanted a job in, so we decided to build. This would mean three months living with my in-laws, which was a small price to pay for a new house in such a short time. We packed up and headed out and into the next chapter of our crazy little story called life.

Three weeks after moving out, I fell in love with a piece of plastic. It had not one, but TWO lines in the little round window of hope; I was pregnant! Of course, just one test is never enough evidence for a woman. So I took three more tests. All positive, I set an appointment with my family doctor and spent the next three days thanking God for what he had given me. I had to pinch myself, literally, to make sure that I wasn’t in some sick, never ending dream. The positive was finally confirmed by my doctor, so I started planning how I would tell Jake. Who am I kidding?! I knew all along how I would tell him he was going to be a daddy. I found a card with a baby on the front, holding a book that read “How to Parent”. On the inside was a special message from “baby” to daddy, saying it would be here in late May of 2012. It was tradition that Jake always got cards on occasions from our dogs, er, children; so this was no different in my eyes. It was the first of many special hand-written (forged by mom) cards to daddy; I gave it to him on the foundation of our new house on September 15th 2011,christening our new home with its very first special memory.