A Box of Chocolates

It's hard to know where to start. Those of you who know me, know that I've been wanting and waiting to have a baby for several years. Up until last summer, John's reply was always "I am a kid, how am I supposed to RAISE kids?" I finally convinced him that we'll always feel like kids and that this might even help in trying to raise them. We started "trying" to get pregnant at the end of last summer shooting for a late spring, early summer baby that would fit well into our schedule. I got pregnant really quickly only to suffer a miscarriage at 7 weeks. After a couple more failed attempts, I made an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist and we decided to take it easy for a couple of months. The following month, just after John's birthday, we discovered I was pregnant yet again. This time, everything progressed normally and I experienced the full range of pregnancy symptoms from extreme exhaustion to neverending nausea for the first 12 weeks. Around 16 weeks I began to feel pretty great and started getting a bit of a belly. It grew quite quickly from that point on and I absolutely loved it, especially around 20 weeks when I could really feel the babies moving (though at that time I thought it was just one baby). John and I had talked extensively about the type of birth experience that we wanted to have, and did a lot of research, before deciding that a home birth was the best option for us. We went to New Moon Midwifery and saw midwives, Mickey, Merilynne, and Amanda, for excellent prenatal care. I excercised and ate right and took very good care of myself. Throughout it all I suppose I thought I had things under control. Guess I have learned quite a lesson since then. It's just like Forrest Gump says, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."