Peace

 
{Me and Baby Claire. Looking at the pictures from her NICU stay still makes me cry.}

What we've been praying the most for this pregnancy (besides a healthy delivery, of course) is a peaceful acceptance of God's plan. You see, this third pregnancy is a crossroads for our family. 

If I have a third c-section, I will have c-sections from this point forward. And, really, only a couple more. My doctor hasn't seen anybody through more than five. At that point it starts to get quite risky with things like placenta previa, placenta accreta, uterine rupture, etc. I've been in a scary emergency birth situation before and I would absolutely like to avoid experiencing that ever again.

If I have a successful VBAC, I will be on the vaginal birth track from here on out. Of course, only God knows what the future holds, but given that I'm only twenty-six, it's possible that we could have A LOT more children. 

As the weeks have passed and we're getting closer to Betsy's arrival, we really have felt a great sense of peace about her delivery. We've realized that either of those options have their pros and cons. With a smaller family than we'd originally imagined when we got married at twenty-one, we'd certainly have more time and money to go around. With a larger family, well, we wouldn't have to use NFP to avoid pregnancy for upwards of a decade. And why wouldn't we want to welcome more love into our lives? 

We've also realized exactly how blessed we are. When Claire was born a month early via emergency c-section due to a placental abruption, many people told us how we should be happy to have a healthy mother and baby. But mostly I just felt sad that things had turned out so differently from what I'd expected. 

And it's absolutely normal and okay to feel sad about having a c-section. Over the last four years, however, I've met so many people who didn't come out of a traumatic experience with a happy ending. I've met families whose mother or baby did pass away. Parents who are both carriers for a genetic disorder that was passed onto their child, with a very sad ending. Mothers with illnesses that make pregnancy really, really scary. Deliveries that went so wrong the mother ended up with a hysterectomy after her first child.

It's entirely possible that Claire and I both could have died and left Adam a widow before he graduated from college. It's taken me a while to fully process it, but lately I have been feeling so thankful to be alive. So thankful that my daughter is alive, that we've had another little girl, and that we've been given the chance to do it all over again. 

I still fully intend to do everything in my power to avoid another c-section, but if that's how things work out, I really feel at peace with that outcome. Definitely not a place I would have imagined myself in eight months ago!