waiting for the bottom to fall out...

Our daughter!

Last Friday was a monumental day for me. I was terribly excited to find out the gender of our child, but more than that, I was terribly anxious to see if our baby was healthy and whole.

We have not had the best track record in our journey to parenthood. We tried for four and a half years to create a family, our adoption process took a really long time, then failed, and honestly, I felt conditioned to expect the worst with this pregnancy.

For the last 14 weeks since I found out that we are pregnant, I feel like I have been holding my breath - I've been waiting for the bottom to fall out, so to speak. 

There are so many things that can go wrong in pregnancy and life and while I was praying (and knew there were an army of people praying too) that our child would be healthy, I had this crazy anxiety that our baby would have something wrong with it medically.  In the weeks leading up to the ultrasound all I could think about were the worst case scenarios I had lived through with my friends or heard about - my friend Jessie's daughter has a heart defect, my friend Tonya just helped bury her friend's baby who was born without a brain and my old roommate's first son never grew kidneys or a bladder.  

So when it was time to see our sweet miracle baby via ultrasound this past Friday, I was a hot mess.  I tried to stay calm and cool around Matt, but the minute I laid down on the table and the tech put that cold jelly on my stomach, I turned into a ball of stress.

The tech went slowly, showing us what we were seeing, telling us what she was looking for. Body part and organs were checked off one by one and each one became a still image to go in our file. It wasn't until she was totally done that I realized how tense my body was - I was holding my breath at times and my hands gripped the side of the table.

But in the end, everything with our daughter was fine. Her heart was fine, her brain was fine, her kidneys and bladder were fine. She is healthy and whole and beautiful.  It was such a relief to see her in all her sweet perfection. I felt my eyes well up with tears and started to relax as the tech said, "Your daughter is healthy! Congratulations!"

Hindsight is always 20/20 and I wish I had trusted in the Lord more these last three and a half months for my daughter's sake.  The bottom didn't fall out and my fears didn't come to life (for once!)  I was hoping for the best, but my pessimism really got the best of me.  Lesson learned God!

I am so thankful that our daughter is here, growing and safe in my belly, and that she is already blessing us in ways we cannot imagine.  I'm excited for these next five months to just enjoy the rest of this pregnancy and pray for her life, her health and precious little spirit. 

My little skinny girl (they are so skeletal at this stage)!  She kept sucking her thumb and putting her hands over her face during the ultrasound.  Isn't she sweet?