One in a Million, Baby

Well friends, remember when I told you the story of Micah?  About how God defied the odds and brought him into this world despite our best attempts to remain a family of four?  Would you believe me if I told you it has happened AGAIN?!  Because it has.  On November 1, 2014 I am expecting Baby Mountain #4.  Number FOUR.

What?!

Pick your jaws up off the ground and keep reading.  It’s even crazier than you think.

You may remember with Micah that we had an unexpected birth control fail.  {Read the full story here.}  The odds of that happening were about 1 in 1000.  We all know how the story ends – we beat the odds and have a third born!  After he entered the world we weren’t messing around with a birth control method that didn’t work for us.  This time, Dan had a vasectomy.  Maybe that’s too much information but it’s what makes this story so ridiculous.  A friggin’ vasectomy.  And yet here we are – me hugging the porcelain throne, Dan going to the store for emergency cracker runs, the two of us holding hands as we nervously sit in the waiting room of the OB office…again.

How does this happen?!  Apparently the odds are 1 in 1000 that a couple can conceive a child post-vasectomy, the same odds as if I was on an oral contraceptive.  I feel like I did not know this.  Or if I did, I didn’t really think about it.  Maybe I just figured, “What are the chances it would happen twice?  I mean, really?”  Welp, we beat the odds.  Again.  It begs the question – if the chances of conceiving Micah were 1 in 1000 and the chances of conceiving this child were 1 in 1000 then that makes our family 1 in 1,000,000 right?!

If you had told me when I was 19 years old and crushing hard on the cute boy in Speech Comm class that I would someday have his fourth child I would have spit my drink in your face.  Then I would have taken another sip just to spit it on you again.  Seriously?!   Four kids?!

One translation of Isaiah 14:27 says: Nothing can stop God’s plan for your life.  Amen, brother.  And as my brother-in-law Eric said, “Not even a good pair of scissors!”

In my heart I know that this is an incredible blessing.   I do not jest or take lightly what is happening in our life.  I know there are many wishing and hoping for a baby to call their own.  I know that pain.  Dan and I struggled with back-to-back miscarriages before having our first born.  I was completely broken hearted and in ruins during that time, sure that I would never be a mother.  In those dark hours I started thinking terrible things.  I was sure that God somehow saw me unfit for the job of motherhood.  That was back in 2007-2008 when Britney Spears and her little sister Jamie Lynn were having a babies out the wazoo.  I remember thinking, “Really?!  They can be moms and I can’t?!  This sucks.”  And then when we were trying for #2, things took awhile.  So much so that I had entered into talks with my doctor about starting Clomid, the widely prescribed fertility drug.

I know {a teeny-tiny bit about} the pain of families who are longing for a child and I’ve witnessed the pain.  We have loved ones and good friends who struggle with infertility and my heart breaks for them.  Their stories astound me.  I am in awe of what they’ve endured — the appointments, tests, procedures, treatments, injections…it’s nothing short of exhausting.  I see the hope that rises with the start of a new month only to come crashing down.  I want this so badly for them yet here I am with an unexpected pregnancy.  And while I don’t take it lightly, I seek humor desperately, looking for ways to offset the fear the grips me.

I’m completely overwhelmed by it sometimes.  Fear about what the next few months mean for me personally and physically.  Fear about what the future means for us logistically and financially.   “We need a bigger house!  How are we going to fit in a car?  How will we ever go on vacation?  Or out to dinner for that matter?  How are we going to keep four kids’ school work in order?  How will we ever keep all of their games, recitals, and concerts straight?  Oh dear God, college?!  How will THAT happen?  And weddings?  Forget it.”

I am completely overwhelmed.  But I must keep calm and carry on.

There’s a song by Hillsong called Glorious Ruins.  The chorus goes like this:

Let the ruins come to life
In the beauty of your name
Rising up from the ashes
God forever you reign

And my soul will find refuge
In the shadow of your wings
I will love you forever
And forever I’ll sing

I love how it speaks about how God can take times in our life when we were broken or ruined – maybe by a relationship, maybe by a job loss, maybe by the way things in our life were (or weren’t) going, maybe by an addiction – and out of those ruins He brings glory and life.  He did this on the third day when Jesus, who was ruined on the cross, was made glorious as He rose from the dead.  And He’s doing it daily in the lives of those around us.

I am clinging to this song and its promises for many reasons right now.  The biggest reason is for those in my life that are praying against all odds for something big to happen in their lives.  Our story is a testimony as to how God can defy any and all odds to make ANYTHING possible.  I am living proof that out of a time in my life when I was ruined – when I was crushed, broken-hearted, and sure I was unfit to be a mother – God brought those ruins to literal life four times.

I am humbled by this.  I am honored.  And I am pregnant.

—

UPDATE: In October 2014 we brought home a healthy baby boy.  Dan went back to his doctor in January 2015 who confirmed that his vasectomy had indeed been unsuccessful – the doctor’s ONLY failure in over 5,000 procedures.  Now Dan gets to boast that he is one of very few men who have had two vasectomies {yowza} and now I need to change the title of this post to “One in FIVE Million, Baby”…