I have been doing really well.  I have been so grateful for the joy I feel, and the peace I have had. I have really been enjoying life and taking in all my experiences. Then, I got a feeling. I'm not sure if it was a real prompting, or something else, but I felt that another baby was impatiently waiting for me. Like this baby needed to come NOW. I would be watching des and paige and have this terrifying feeling that I had forgotten the baby somewhere. What baby? I don't have another baby. I have felt baby hunger so intensely! So  I prayed and fasted and went to the temple, and I felt so good about it!  That was 3 months ago. 3 failed attempts to get pregnant. Now, it hasn't affected me NEARLY like it had before. But it still hurts. It still hurts to fail. Was I wrong? Was the feeling all my own creation? I have really been reconsidering my previous thoughts. Doubting my feelings. Praying about Heavenly Father's plan for me. Life is so confusing.

Birthday Blues

I've got the birthday blues. Not in the way you might think, though. Yeah, I'm getting older, and yeah, I'm not particularly happy about it. But, it's not that at all. I've been feeling blue because it was this time two years ago that I lost my first baby. No joke. The same week as my birthday. What a great way to remember that loss. I was hoping I could forget about it. But then I felt an overwhelming wave of guilt for wanting to forget about my baby. It was only 6 weeks old when it died right? But it was so much more than that. It was the enormous potential of another life in my life. I planned its birth, its room, its name, its place in my home and heart. What I lost wasn't just a small blob of cells. It was so much more. And now my birthday (which unfortunately comes every year) will ALWAYS remind me of my losses. Both my babies.

Remembering

It's been a long time since I had to write last, and I am so grateful for that. I am so grateful that I had no problems during my pregnancy. I am so grateful that my depression finally disappeared last year and has not come back. I am SO grateful for a beautiful angel in our home. I have never felt more rewarded for something I have deserved far less. But I am incredibly grateful. Why the post then? I guess I just wasn't expecting some emotions to show that have. A friend posted on her blog that she is expecting and had a hard time deciding if she even wanted another baby. And I saw the ultrasound. I got the same heart stopping panic and tension in my chest that I used to get whenever I saw ultrasounds or baby announcements before I got pregnant. Why? I'm not sure. I didn't experience that at all while I was pregnant with my baby girl. Will it always be like this? I'm a little scared. I want to be happy for my friends who are pregnant. I want to be happy for myself when I get pregnant in the future again. I don't like the fear. I don't want to just live in panic during my future pregnancies like I did for so much of this last one. I'm a little scared that I felt those feelings again. And just thinking about my experience brought up all those emotions from my depression. It is still hard to think about and even harder to talk about. The emotions are still so sharp. Even after so long. It's been a year since my last miscarriage. I've had a healthy pregnancy and beautiful healthy baby since then. I am honestly a little shocked that I still feel those things so acutely. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. All I can do is hope they never come back.

Waiting.

The last couple months have been so full of cascading and completely opposite emotions. I have been so scared and have honestly had a hard time even acknowledging that I am still pregnant. I try not to think about it, try not to talk about it with my husband, and just plain ignore it. Though, it is hard to ignore being sick 24/7. Every once in a while I get a brief flash of joy about possibly being a mom again. But I just can't let it last. I can't let myself get caught up in that. Because it's just too hard to lose. The last few days have been a little tense because this was the point my last baby died. This will be the furthest I have gotten since my son. It is so scary for me, so I just try to live in a mind set like I am not. I am trying to just trust in the Lord and have faith that everything will be ok. I feel assured most of the time, and I feel peaceful most of the time. But it is hard to keep the fear at bay. And, as horrible as it is to say, it is hard for me to trust right now. I KNOW that anything is possible with the Lord, and I KNOW that if He wills it, it will happen. My problem is trusting that He wills it right now. It is hard to let go and to fully trust, but I'm working on it. It is something I never thought I would struggle with.

MORE news :(

Is it always going to be this way? I am soo soooooo tired of hearing about PREGNANCIES!!! 3 more announcements today, and 2 genders. Each one is still such a shock. And is still so depressing to me! I just need to stop reading blogs and facebook. It hasn't been doing me ANY good this WHOLE year.

Peace

I have been trying so hard to be patient and not use a pregnancy test this last week. Which is really funny because I was testing 10-12 days early. I know, I said I was trying. Not succeeding. And on Thursday I told myself I could wait until Monday. Well, Sunday morning I couldn't help myself, and I tested. And it was blue! I was so unsure how I would react to good or bad news, and I didn't cry. I didn't scream, I just had the peaceful feeling of "I knew it." Like I really had known all along. So today has been a really really good day. The sweet relief and peace I feel at church was just SO intense. I felt so blessed. But I guess it's a bad habit I've made, because now that it's dark, I can feel the anxiety creep in. Will I lose this one too? Will I get that beautifully swollen belly I see so many of my friends with? Will I get to announce the gender or birth? Will I get to keep my baby? Since the beginning of this month, I have had this feeling that this month will be the one. And I will be blessed with a healthy baby. I felt that before I even started my period that week. Then when I started testing for ovulation, I just knew when it would happen, and knew that it would be successful. I can't even tell you the assurance I had before I used the pregnancy test. I already knew. I just did. I have not had the paralyzing anxiety I thought I would have, or the horrible fear either. But I guess I have just felt so saddened by my friends' pregnancies for so long that it is habit now. Or is it the dark? I don't know. But right now, I just praise Heavenly Father, and thank Him with all that I have that I am pregnant right now. I am so happy to just have this unity.

New year.

I have come into December with bittersweet feelings, that for the most part have melted away. I can confidently say that my bout with depression is over. I am so intensely relieved and thank Heavenly Father EVERY time I pray that I can feel joy again. That I can be happy just "being" again. That I can just swell with love for my son like I did before. I know by the way it ended and how quickly my emotions changed that it was a not just something that happened, but a very precisely picked trial. It was planned out from the beginning down to the number of days it would last. I had tried so many things that just didn't help at all. Even the antidepressant I tried made me so sick I couldn't stand it. I was MEANT to feel every little tiny bit of hopelessness, depression, darkness, and misery I did. I got to the point that I was so entirely fatigued and beaten by it, that I just needed some reprieve. Some kind of release from the horror even if only for a few minutes. That is how it affected me so completely every moment. I just so desperately needed a break. I was losing my grip and fight so quickly I was willing to turn to meds to get my small release. Just anything to stop the pain and even of only marginally re cooperate. Then, I can remember that I just woke up one morning, and felt good. It really was over that quickly. As soon as I really did hit my breaking point, it was over. I had felt I'd reached it sooo long ago, but I really hadn't. How do you know how strong a tree limb is until you've broken it? It's been a couple of weeks now, and those torturous months I spent in despair, that seemed to simply never, end seem so small now. I still can feel the sharpness of my loss, but I don't feel so lost anymore. I came into December with inescapable pain, and I am approaching Christmas with so much less burden. It has been exactly one year now since we started trying to have a baby. Just a few weeks ago, I would have come upon this anniversary with such excruciating heartbreak. I would have cried from pain for hours. But, I'm not. I am so sad to know that I don't have my baby that should be a month old now, but I'm not broken from it like I was before. My trial is over, and I can only pray I passed the test. Sometimes I don't feel like it gave me any benefit at all. Don't trials make us better people? I didn't feel better, just broken. Even after the pain subsided. Then I got some revelation that I will never forget.

1. Back in our pre-mortal existence, we looked upon our Heavenly Father and Mother, and could see something different. And it was so desirable that we VOLUNTEERED to come to earth, endure pain, heartache, despair, darkness, and every horrible thing to obtain what they had. Of course we didn't completely understand what it was we were signing up for. How could we? We had never experienced anything before. But what they had must have been so beautiful, we would make that tremendously hard journey.

2. This life is the TEST not the REWARD. This life is designed to be hard. To tempt us, to hurt us, to tear us apart. It has to be hard to get the great reward. Even the most valuable rewards mean little if only little is needed to obtain them. Our reward is THE greatest reward. Nothing is more precious. So shouldn't it be the most difficult to achieve? Shouldn't it cost us the most?

3. The atonement is beyond my capacity to describe as precious. It was so perfectly designed with such perfect love. Christ paid the price for not only our darkest sins, but for our pain as well. All our pain we experience innocently at the hands of others, or because of nature, or because of health, was also endured by Christ. He knows how you feel. He does because he felt it, too. So he is the perfect comforter. Let him. Because he knows you and your pain.

4. Trials will come. And you should be grateful they are long and hard, and that Heavenly Father lets you struggle. We can only gain experience in opposites. We can only experience joy at the same degree as pain you experience. You can only feel the highest highs if you know the lowest lows. You must know the dark to know the light. So, while journeying through the valley of death, just remember that joy, just as exquisitely good as this is bad, will come. This hardship will allow you to see the beauty in your life with much deeper understanding. And you will cherish it all the more.

5. Keep an eternal perspective. We have heard it so many times: it will be a small moment. And it will! It will. You all know that because you can look back now and see the hard times in your lives, and they are small now. Keep your eye on your reward. Keep your eye on that characteristic that Heavenly Father and Mother had that we saw in the pre-existence. We trusted them to send us here. Don't lose that faith and trust now. Consider this. A bee stuck in a bus couldn't get out no matter how hard it tried. The bus driver opened a window and tried to usher it out. The bee wouldn't be guided. Trust in someone who has a greater perspective than you to guide you. It may not make sense to you, but it would if you had a different perspective. Keep your eternal perspective.

6. YOU are the one who decides what happens to you because of your trials. MAKE them mean something. Don't endure the trial just to be the same afterward. You paid for something. Don't let it slip away. Make the trial work for you. Use it!

Things I have learned:

1. I have never had the opportunity to become so close and dependent on my Father in Heaven and my Savior Jesus Christ.

2. I have learned how to thirst and hunger for the gospel. How precious and priceless the sacrament is, and how I simply need the rest I get when I am in the presence of the Spirit.

3. I have learned how to need to pray always.

4. I know the meaning of "I need thee every hour"

5. I can so clearly understand some truths about the atonement I didn't before.

6. Faith does not make a trial end. Faith is still going to church, still serving, and still having hope through it.

7. I can do hard things.

8. All things are possible with Christ. No matter what it is.

9. So very few of the things I "care" about day to day don't matter at all.

10. The greatest characters are the most scarred.

My Father in Heaven loves me enough to turn me into something of great beauty like pressure does to coal. So here I am at the 1 year mark with a whole new perspective. And I am making this trial mean something. It will not be just a hard time for me to forget. Rather, it will be a hard time that taught me some of the most sweet truths of my life. So, here I go with this new year.