The Pregnancy School Part I

Last week my youngest child turned six.  We got to reminiscing about his birth and, well, him in general.  Later on I really started thinking about all of my pregnancies and first few months of babyhood and I realized that God has used that time with each new baby to teach me A LOT!  Each time was a different, but equally powerful lesson.  I thought it might be interesting to put it all here so that I can have a record of it for myself, as well as for anyone else who likes to read these kind of stories.  

As an introduction, my husband and I were both cradle Catholics when we first got married.  We went to Mass on Sunday most of the time, and if we didn't make it, at least I still felt guilty (I know, pretty pathetic, huh?).  After a year of being married, we decided that we were ready for kids.  God, however, must have decided we weren't because we tried for almost three years before we finally conceived.  Our first pregnancy, so much anticipated by us, ended after a few short weeks in a miscarriage.

After trying for so long, we were devastated to see it end this way.  At that time I knew nothing of suffering or of perseverance.  I didn't know how to "offer it up".  I looked at others I knew who were conceiving children out of wedlock and was mad.  Here I was doing it the "right way" and this is what happened!  No matter how I looked at it, it just didn't seem fair.  That, unfortunately, was the lesson I was learning then...life isn't fair.  You can do everything right (which of course I really wasn't :) and still life will deal you an unfair hand.

That was a very difficult time in our lives, but what could we do but pull up our bootstraps and try again. Shortly thereafter, we conceived again...