Today, my son is the exact age his older sister was when he was born.
20 months and 8 days old. I did the math.
The news of my pregnancy with him was shocking.
The journey to have our daughter lasted four aching years. During that time my body endured invasive infertility testing, multiple medications staggered throughout each cycle, blood-draws twice a month, two pregnancies, and two subsequent losses. Every month I would struggle to work up the gumption to hope, yet couldn’t resist taking the pregnancy test I knew would lead to tears.
There was no rush to board the nightmarish rollercoaster of battling infertility again. I was grateful for the rainbow in my arms, and shot horrible death-glares to any prying family member who dared ask when we would “go for number two.”
She was enough.
And then one day, my fatigue and dizziness turned out to be more than a sign of a (likely) caffeine addiction.
I grabbed Vera to go to the store to buy a fancy pregnancy test, because surely the one I had on hand was a liar. (It was cheap, bought in a bundle of 60 on Amazon during the Infertility Era.) I remember jamming her tiny shoes onto her 12 mo. old feet and thinking, “These are baby shoes. She is a baby. How can I have another baby when I already have a baby?” I am not eloquent while panicking.
I walked through Target in a total daze, randomly grabbing items to prove I was NOT PANICKING and totally didn’t drive there only to buy a pregnancy test.
Carter was on the phone when he got home from work. Luckily, he got off just quickly enough to save his phone from going through some drywall. I shoved the pregnancy test at him.
“Is this yours?” He asked. I stared at him blankly, unable to conjure a quippy joke about having stolen another woman’s used pregnancy test from her purse at Target.
“Um, yeah. I’M PREGNANT.”
His face broke into a smile and he laughed. I tried to echo his enthusiasm, but my smile crumpled.
Overwhelming gratitude and sheer terror dueled for dominance and they both came spilling out as giant, sploshy tears.
The living room where we stood suddenly seem so small. We had moved here on a prayer that we could fill the extra bedroom, and now we were suddenly at maximum capacity. We would need a bigger vehicle and another set of carseats and a double stroller.
And how would my body handle this? My pregnancy with our daughter had been very challenging, underscored by intense nerve pain caused by my Ehlers Danlos Syndrom. There hadn’t been enough time to recover—I had only stopped nursing one week previously.
The pendulum had swung from infertility to the exact opposite and it was causing me whiplash. Our daughter had filled a yawning gap we built into our life for a child. Our family fit together just right after all of those years, and now we had to stretch.
God wanted to bring us from enough into abundance.
We didn’t know it yet, but we needed him. We needed this beautiful boy with the most brilliantly blue eyes and a show-stopping, radiant smile. We needed his content heart and loud, exuberant demeanor.
I need the way he jumps up in the morning and gleeful spits out his paci, shouting my name. My husband needs the way he speed-crawls to the kitchen and shoots up on the stool to see him walking inside from his car after work. Our daughter needs him as her playmate, best friend, and occasionally her worst enemy with whom she needs to learn to share.
My love for him was a slow burn, and it made me feel guilty. But sometimes, slow coals light the fires that shine the brightest.
My son, I am so glad you shook my world, shocked me to tears, burst on the scene, and stole my heart. You are my abundance.
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