A Talk with God

Things were moving along pretty well with the boys, now that the courts had cancelled the transition for Timothy from our home to the paternal grandparents. Sometime around April, the boys maternal grandmother began having weekend visits twice a month with the boys. The court approved her supervising their birth mother and father on their visits during those weekends. While we still didn't like having Timothy and Mason gone from our home, these visits were completely different from the ones before. She, Nana, cared for them, kept them clean and fed and Timothy never fought us when we dropped them off like he had with the previous visits. And, she loved them both. It never felt right to us before that a grandparent would want one child but not the baby brother. These months passed pretty seamlessly. The school year ended, summer break began. Every other weekend the boys would be gone on their visits and we would miss them, but the fear was gone.


We celebrated my first Mother's Day....

Father's Day...

Summertime fun.....



Something happened during this time that was so obvious, but it took Scott guiding me to it before I could really see it for what it was. Getting back to our fertility efforts loomed somewhere in our future, but wasn't talked about as often anymore. As the new school year approached I mentioned maybe we should discuss when we wanted to schedule IVF again to work best around school and volleyball season. This was a very sensitive topic, because at some point Scott had, very lovingly, mentioned that if we weren't able to get pregnant he would be ok. During our testing it was determined that he was not the problem. The problem lay somewhere within me, but nothing was ever found to be wrong, so I took this as him reassuring me that he would not be upset with me should I never get pregnant. Well, being the driven (some would say stubborn) person I am, it was just not ok with me to quit trying. If I never got pregnant, I at least wanted to say I gave it every shot I could, and quitting was not anything I was interested in. So, as I brought up rescheduling IVF to Scott at the end of the summer, it was with a slightly demanding tone, as if to remind him, I wasn't willing to give up trying.

My husband...the man is a gem. He sat with me on the bed and said I need to ask you something. "Is this about you being pregnant, or about you being a mom?" He says he can still see the look on my face when it struck me, that all this time, in almost a year, God had given me the desire of my heart. He had made me a mommy, and that was really all I ever wanted. He said he was certainly willing to move forward with IVF, but asked me to consider what was really important. As I said before, I can be a little 'driven' so the idea of not trying after so many years of its all consuming presence, was daunting. I needed time to think on it.

One night in October, after the boys were down for the night, I was taking an evening shower, the weight of it all on my heart and running through my mind. It had been one year and a month that I had been singing bedtime songs, buying baby clothes, packing a diaper bag, mixing formula, smelling of baby spit up, and loving two little boys that meant the world to me. While I was busy working and caring for my family, God had up and answered my prayers. Suddenly, the need to be pregnant became less important. I didn't need anyone to tell me how cute my baby bump was or have a baby shower, I just needed to hear these boys say, "I love you mommy", to keep them safe and fed, healthy and happy, to hold them when they cried and sing our special song.

That night, I thanked God for Timothy and Mason. For making them my sons, for bringing us together as a family. For the very first time that I uttered words of this type, I meant it, when I said, "It's ok God. If these are my kids, if this is my family, I'm ok with that. I'm really ok." Although alone in the room, I spoke those precious words out loud and knew in that moment that my heart was forever changed. I really was ok, and a weight fell off of me I had no idea was there.

Our family