taken completely by surprise!

So, most of you have noticed our baby countdown by now. Yep, baby #3 is on the way! Was this a planned pregnancy? Nope. Were we completely, utterly, and totally surprised? Yep.

Ironicially, Jason and I were looking at the calendar a few weeks ago to plan our summer family outings. Randomly, I just made the comment, "Well, at least we don't have to worry about having another baby in December." (Little did I know...)

FYI: Between our two immediate families this will be birthday #8 in the month of December!

Here's the deal. I haven't even been interested in the idea of getting pregnant again - at least not for a while. I've considered toward the end of the year as a nice time to start thinking about getting pregnant ... only to find out that I will be delivering at that time, yet again! Wow. Okay, so here are the reasons why I have not been excited at the prospect of another pregnancy.

1) I am sick and tired of being fat! No, I'm not obese, but I am overweight. Size 10 and 140 lbs. is a long way from my size 2, 100 lb., frame before I started having children. I desperately wanted to lose weight before getting pregnant again! - especially after having a c-section with Jacob, which totally throws your body off in ways you never imagined! (Yeah, surgery would be ideal, but nothing I could set my heart on at this point, and most likely, ever.) It's heart-breaking and discouraging, and if I spent time dwelling on how much I hate it, I would curl up in a ball and wither away. I honestly feel like a skinny person trapped in a fat person's body!

2) My pregnancy with Jacob was awful! (I'm sure I had it coming because my pregnancy with Laci was textbook.) I was sick the entire 9 months, and it wasn't from the typical nausea that accompanies pregnancy. That came; and I swear that I knew I was pregnant the very day I conceived. That was bad. Worse still: if it was contagious, I caught it. I am not exaggerating when I say that I did not go a week of being well that by the end of the week, I was down with something else! I can't even remember everything that I caught! But in case you were wondering, here's a sample of what I experienced during that pregnancy: sinus infection that lasted 4 months, flu for 7 days, yeast infection that lasted 3 months, bladder issues that we won't go into, and just about everything else you can imagine. I shouldn't complain. I know women who experience hospitalization, IVs, and bed-rest their entire pregnancies. (But, seriously, I might as well have been on bed-rest the entire time!) I felt like Jacob was sucking every nutrient out of my body. (My OB's response to that was that "it's like a parasite to it's host" ... well, if you want to look at it like that. Not exactly the picture you want to have of your new bundle of joy.) Exhaustion is an understatement. Oh, and let's add 6 days overdue to the list, shall we? (That's a big leap when your previous delivery came 10 days early.)

3) As if a rough pregnancy wasn't bad enough, let's cut you open and give you 8 weeks of recovery time. Oh, but that's not enough, let's add colic for 6 months and clinginess for an additional 8. Yeah, you know it's bad when your fellow ward members nickname your infant, [my] "Siamese twin" and "hip child!" I literally held him 24 hours a day for 12 months! Let's forget about the crib, because he'll refuse to sleep in it - so much so that he'll pull himself out and fall to the floor at your first attempt to transition him to the crib (he was 6 months old!). Oh, but that's still not enough - let's add unemployment till all your savings are gone & an out-of-state move! (No wonder I'm still fat!)

Okay, so I've really slathered on the sarcasm, but I haven't exaggerated any of it! promise!

Tell me, was I crazy for not wanting another baby right away? I told Jason a few months ago that a suprise pregnancy is probably the only way that I would have ended up pregnant right now. Recently, though, I have started thinking, if I'm not feeling it's time for another one yet, am I ever going to feel it? Am I only going to have two? That would be a far cry from the family of 10 I was raised in. But I'm not my mom, so maybe I'm not meant to have a large family. Yet, that didn't feel right either.

I'm relieved that I didn't have to wrestle with that decision, and that the Lord simply took over. I am grateful that this pregnancy compares more closely to Laci's than to Jacob's. I'm still battling with my lowered immune system, but at least my energy is high. Definitely one of Father's many tender mercies.

That said, are we happy and excited? Absolutely!



p.s. this is our tie-breaker! And, we've decided that we won't find out the sex of the baby till he/she is born! (Laci was hoping for a girl baby and a boy baby, but since we're only having one, she's rooting for a girl.)