Now that the “cat is out of the bag”, so to speak, and we have announced that we are expecting baby number three, I felt like I should explain why we've chosen to have another baby after what we went through with Attley. (If you aren’t familiar with Attley’s story, keep scrolling)
To explain why we made this decision, I want to take you back to 2010 when Matt and I first started dating. I met Matt through my best friend Lauren, and her boyfriend, now husband, Mathew. They invited me to a “Do Nothing Day” party where you sit in the front lawn, drink beer, and essentially do nothing. Matt and I spent 15 minutes talking at the party and a few days later he had tracked my phone number down and asked me out on a date. On our second date, I told Matt, I wanted to get married, have three kids- one named Emmett, and be a stay at home mom. I tend to just lay things out there, rather than maybe waiting the appropriate amount of dates needed to until you share more “serious” information with someone you are getting to know. But it must have worked because Matt kept dating me, we got engaged, and then married.
Fast forward eight years from that point and we are on our way to having baby number three. And to be honest, we almost didn’t get here. Everything that happened with Attley changed myself, Matt and our relationship. You can’t go through what we went through and not have lasting effects that ripple into your everyday life.
This Fall, as we approached Attley’s first birthday, I spent a lot of time in my head going back and forth on whether our family was complete or if we should start trying for number three. All of my life, I have wanted at least three kids. (Possibly four hint, hint Matt) However, the unfortunate thing about PPROM (preterm premature rupture of the membranes aka water breaking early) is that doctors cannot pinpoint the cause or explain why it happened. If you ask me, it was due to extreme stress but we will never know. Along with not knowing the cause of PPROM, it is also common for consecutive births to be early as well.
It pretty much came down to weighing out our original plan to have three kids and the possibility of a recurrence of what we went through with Attley. So why did we decide for three??
Because I refuse to let fear of “what if” dictate our future. This pregnancy has been hard. Mentally, emotionally, and physically and I would do it all again. I don’t know how the next 24ish weeks are going to go, but I do know that I will not let the fear of the past decide our future. I think sometimes in life we can be ruled by fear, by the game of “what if” when really we just need to have faith. Faith in God, faith in ourselves, and faith that everything happens for a reason.