The Fear of Another
Another baby.
No way on God’s green earth was I going to have another baby after what I had gone through. Sure, we talked about it, debated it, prayed about it. As for myself, I prayed half-heartedly if I prayed at all. I was not interested in God’s answer. I had no control over what happened to me the first time, so I surely was going to control whether it happened again.
God thought otherwise and had much better plans than I did, thankfully.
When our son was about 14 months old, we made a “final” decision to not have any more children. The stress of possibly going through PPD again was too much for both of us. That same night, friends of ours came over for dinner. My friend M had just found out she was pregnant with her third and was pretty surprised with it as well. We chatted and I joked about our decision to not have any more kids, then dumped on her all my pregnancy stuff – books, clothes, everything. Chris joked about the same thing with her husband, S.
The next morning, a Sunday morning, we were all up around 6am and it dawned on me that I had not had my period in a while and my breasts were a little more sore than they should have been.
Naaaaaaaah. But maybe I’ll take a quick test to make sure… (Previously infertile women are never without a pregnancy test.)
It was instantly positive. No need to wait the dreaded three minutes.
“Seriously, God? We just decided last night to not have any more kids and I was pregnant all along?!”
I stuttered and stumbled my way out to the living room to tell my husband who declared it had to be wrong. I proceeded to make a run to the 24-hour drugstore at 6am just to confirm what I already knew with not one but three tests. I even splurged on the no-brainer digital read-out test in case morning fog was still clouding my brain.
We were pregnant.
I was terrified. Shaking. Crying. Scared. Excited. Stunned. Nervous. Did I mention terrified?
We somehow managed to get ready for church where I saw my friend, M. I looked at her and the first words out of my mouth were, “I need my stuff back.” I think her eyes bugged out of her head and her mouth dropped open as she said, “NO!” Not meaning “no” as in she wouldn’t give it to me, but meaning “no” as in she immediately understood what I was saying and was just as stunned as we were. We still laugh about it.
So now what? Here we were, a toddler in our arms, just over PPD, I had just launched this ministry, and now this? I could not believe it. I knew what infertility was like, now I knew what a surprise was like. But how do I do it? How could I go through this again? I am not a happy pregnant woman – lots of puking and migraines – and I dreaded nine months of that again as well. But, my faith in Christ buoyed me. My God had His plan. He is the Author of life and He knows what He is doing. I would rely on Him.
And I had to plan. Very carefully. It was one thing I did have control over.
Next: The Plan…