{"id":20321,"date":"2012-08-10T03:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T03:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20321"},"modified":"2012-08-10T03:00:43","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T03:00:43","slug":"four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/four\/","title":{"rendered":"FOUR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m the oldest of three. I have a sister and a brother. Growing up &#8211; someone was ALWAYS left out &#8211; usually me or Derek. I always said that I would never have an odd number of children &#8211; cus someone is always left out!<\/p>\n<p>When Jared and I were first dating &#8211; I made some smart remark about how I would NEVER have an only child. His mom &#8211; who is sweeter than candy &#8211; set me straight. She said &#8211; oh we wanted more &#8211; and tried &#8211; but God only gave us Jared. I was quick to not make that remark again.<\/p>\n<p>You never know what people are going through. You don&#8217;t know the story behind their lives. But the grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side. No matter what.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always wanted 4 kids. I even had names &#8211; of course it would have been 2 boys (Christopher William and Andrew Scott) and 2 girls (Bailey Russell and Sierra Alexis) &#8211; yea &#8211; I totally remember. But I was totally gonna start having them RIGHT after high school &#8211; with my husband that I met in high school. Right. That happened. After having Fitzy &#8211; I rethought my 4 kids plan. Dude &#8211; it&#8217;s hard work. FOUR? All by myself during the day. Heck. That&#8217;s crazy! And I am starting at 30 and not 18 like I planned. So in my current reality &#8211; 2 is a great number for us. But in my dream world of being a mom at 18 and done at 24 with 4 kids &#8211; heavenly!<\/p>\n<p>I realized today as the doctor told me there was no heartbeat for our little baby &#8211; our number four &#8211; that I am a momma of 4. I&#8217;m just gonna have to wait till heaven to meet the other 3.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the thing. I&#8217;m tired. We are tired. I&#8217;m broken. I feel defeated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>INSERT WARNING &#8211; if you don&#8217;t want to hear me whine a little (or a lot) stop reading. If you don&#8217;t wanna hear me say that I am doubting a few things &#8211; stop reading. If you insist on telling me that God does have a plan for my life and He IS in control &#8211; I KNOW THAT &#8211; stop reading. This blog entry isn&#8217;t gonna be about soft kittens that poop rainbows. It&#8217;s gonna be about raw hurt and emotions. So if you can&#8217;t handle that &#8211; seriously. Stop reading.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Anyway &#8211; I feel defeated. Like I said in my previous post. It&#8217;s not fair. I&#8217;m sad. It&#8217;s not fair that we don&#8217;t get to enjoy pregnancy. It&#8217;s not fair that I&#8217;m always wondering in the back of my mind if something is wrong. It&#8217;s exhausting. I see my friends have baby after baby and talk about how babies are fruit of the womb and gifts from God. Why are our babies being taken away? Am I doing something wrong? Cus then I get all judgmental and think &#8211; well I know what this chick does in her free time and she&#8217;s got 5 or 6. How on earth does God&#8217;s plan include losing babies &#8211; what good is that gonna give me? Like I said &#8211; I know that His plan is perfect and wonderful. But tell me how THIS is perfect and wonderful. And yes &#8211; I know that we can&#8217;t see it. But you can&#8217;t tell me that you don&#8217;t want to? That you don&#8217;t want to know?<\/p>\n<p>Why is it that 2012 has already SUCKED bad enough and now this? We started out the year losing a baby &#8211; which would have been born next month &#8211; and in that span have already lost another? Why is it that we can&#8217;t sell our house? Why did we have to go through the roughest patch in our marriage? We could have bought &#8211; but we didn&#8217;t. It would have been foolish &#8211; so we listened to God. And here we are &#8211; still stuck. We forgave and loved &#8211; to be welcomed by this hurt? I know &#8211; I know &#8211; WOE IS ME. Yes. I have a BEAUTIFUL baby boy &#8211; an absolute miracle (which if I never thought he was &#8211; I sure do now). I have a great husband who loves me and cries with me and puts up with me and puts up with me &#8211; did I say that? I have a family who is awesome &#8211; a roof over my head &#8211; a great job that I&#8217;m great at.<\/p>\n<p>BUT &#8211; dang it &#8211; I&#8217;m mad. And sad. And angry. And jealous. And forgotten. Have you ever felt forgotten? If you are a girl and you were a teenager at some point &#8211; I KNOW you have. I just feel shoved to the side. I feel like I am watching all these people around me &#8211; revel in their blessings and happiness and here we are &#8211; barely hanging on.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t doubt that God loves me. I don&#8217;t doubt for one SECOND that Jesus died for me (and you). There are a few things I&#8217;m unsure of &#8211; but I just don&#8217;t know if this is the place. I&#8217;ve got enough stuff going on right now. And I don&#8217;t doubt His plan for our lives. I&#8217;m just not sure what the WHAT He&#8217;s thinking.<\/p>\n<p>When we lost Enoch in 2009 &#8211; it started a connection with people I would have never met. That was beautiful and I now see the beauty from pain. But couldn&#8217;t it have happened another way? Did I have to lose a baby for those connections to happen?<\/p>\n<p>What the heck &#8211; I&#8217;m just gonna say it. Sometimes &#8211; I think it&#8217;s useless to pray. I&#8217;ll get crap for that one &#8211; don&#8217;t worry. But I&#8217;m serious. Here&#8217;s the thing. People &#8211; LOTS of people prayed for our little baby this week &#8211; prayed for a MIRACLE. And it didn&#8217;t happen. Our little babe didn&#8217;t hold on and beat the odds &#8211; despite HOURS of praying.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011 &#8211; I prayed for 5 certain families to get pregnant and have babies. All 5 of them did. Within two months of each other. I just looked up the meanings of their names &#8211; this is crazy.<\/p>\n<p>A &#8211; fiery. C &#8211; from the heavens. E &#8211; the Lord is my God. J &#8211; fire of the Lord. E &#8211; the Lord is my God. See the similarities? I don&#8217;t believe in coincidences.<\/p>\n<p>Did my praying aid in all that? I&#8217;m not saying &#8211; oh look at me &#8211; I&#8217;m magical and have a special connection with God &#8211; cus He totally answered my prayer and then blew my mind about it. But guess what &#8211; I am His child and I do have a relationship with Him &#8211; and in that &#8211; the power of Jesus. So if you give me this situation &#8211; I would argue that prayer KICKS BUTT.<\/p>\n<p>Why not in ours? Why are we grieving. Again. Why have 3 out of my 4 babies been taken to heaven? With other miscarriages &#8211; I was so thankful that I never had to see a baby on a screen and see a heart beat and then say goodbye. Why did that happen this time? Why did I have to see that sweet one and see it&#8217;s heart beat only to find out that it&#8217;s not meant to be?<\/p>\n<p>Ugh. So many emotions. I could type all night.<\/p>\n<p>I leave you with this. Jared and I had agreed before we got pregnant this time that the next time would be the last. We couldn&#8217;t go through another miscarriage. Just couldn&#8217;t &#8211; and here we are. Going through it. I can&#8217;t do this again. I feel like &#8211; I can take a hint. It&#8217;s not working. I asked for a baby. God &#8211; please give me a baby. And I have one. He is gorgeous and amazing. When we were trying for 18 months &#8211; I was MISERABLE. I was angry and preoccupied. Babies were ALL I thought about. I buried myself in my work. I don&#8217;t want to be that person again. I have a sweet boy to love and enjoy and I don&#8217;t want to miss out on that because I&#8217;m so consumed with wanting another baby. Our doctor asked if I wanted to be referred to the fertility specialists in Danville &#8211; cus now they can say something is obviously wrong that I can&#8217;t carry a baby past 8 weeks. Even though I did. Once. So please pray for our happiness. That I would be happy in knowing that Fitzy is our only one. I want to be happy in that and enjoy this miracle we were blessed with. While we wait to see the other 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m the oldest of three. I have a sister and a brother. Growing up &#8211; someone was ALWAYS left out &#8211; usually me or Derek. I always said that I would never have an odd number of children &#8211; cus someone is always left out! When Jared and I were first dating &#8211; I made [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,8,11,14,17,21,24,26,30,33,58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bardenphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}