When the desire is stronger than the fear of loss...

When you meet and fall in love with the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you spend so much time discussing everything.  Where you want to live, the places you want to go before you die, how many children you'd like to have, how far apart they should be, what you'll name them, will you have cats, dogs or bunnies, will you both work or one stay home, will you drive and SUV or a mini-van? and on and on and on.

Never in those conversations do you discuss "What will we do if our baby or child dies?"  Or, what will we do if we're faced with recurrent pregnancy loss.  And there are two reasons we don't discuss that.  The first being the belief, hope and prayer that it will not and could not happen to us.  The second being that regardless of what you think you would do in that situation, it is nothing at all close to what you will do when you come face to face with that situation.

I had always wanted a ton of kids.  The more the better, there is no such thing as too much or too many to love in a family.  And I wanted them close together.  Dusty always wanted a couple, adequately spaced out.  But, we both agreed, we didn't want an only child.  It seems so lonely.

After Kaitlyn, we were blessed with Matthew.  And all seemed well.  Our family was complete, or so we thought.  While we were graced with 10 weeks with our son, and Kaitlyn with her brother, I also feel as though we were robbed of a lifetime of him.  Not only were we forced to mourn the loss of our much loved and wanted baby boy, but also to mourn the loss of our family, our innocence, our dreams.

They say you are ready to try again when your desire for a baby, your desire to grow your family outweighs your fear of another loss.  We were not there yet when we became pregnant last year.  But, we got there.  And after that miscarriage we had absolutely reached the place where our desire to give our daughter a living sibling and our desire to have new life in the house far outweighed the fear of another loss.

And while there are so many levels of guilt in regards to so many things related to losing your baby (those first smiles, laughs and good times after to name a few) a mother and a father should not ever feel guilty for living their life.  We have been blessed to continue our life on Earth prior to reaching our final destination to spend all of eternity together.

There is nothing we can do to ever replace Matthew or to fill the hole he left in our hearts, in our family or in our lives.

Kaitlyn deserves to be a big sister to a living sibling.  We deserve to have the joy of another baby in our lives. 

And at the end of the day, we're fully aware that we could lose this pregnancy at any day.  Tomorrow isn't promised to anyone, nor is a happy ending.  But, our desire for another bubbling bouncing joyful baby is so much stronger than any of our fears.  And that is all that matters :)