Thankful...

Monday, I flew to Dallas, rented a car, and drove 2.5 hours to Wichita Falls, TX. We are planning for Ivy to deliver the baby there because it is the closest major hospital across the TX line from her (she's in OK). We need to deliver in TX from a legal standpoint. It was her first appointment with her new OB and they did an ultrasound. Here is our sweet one...

I don't care how long I live and how many prenatal ultrasounds I see...they will always amaze me. Ivy is now 12 weeks along and baby is measuring 12 weeks 2 days. Heart was pounding away at 169bpm and looked perfect. The nuchal fold looked great. We saw the chambers of the brain and even fingers :) It was so amazing to watch that screen. I was just overwhelmed with thankfulness. 

Then today, Blaine came home from school and told me that he was given an assignment to write an essay about a person who changed his life. He chose to write about his little brother, Abram. I cannot really describe what hearing that felt like. Sure, they fight like cats and dogs and have all the normal sibling angst, but at the root of it all even Blaine knows how fortunate we are to have Abram in our lives. 

Too often I go through my day to day and don't reflect on what our journey has been like since I lost my ability to carry children. When, Blaine was born, Aubrey was 14 months old. My sole focus was survival and any spare minute of sleep I could find. I was not thankful. I loved my children, but seriously, I was not thankful. Brandon and I both made a conscious decision to cherish every moment with Abram and enjoy him...something we didn't do with our first two. With all that infertility and April 24, 2004 took from me, it gave me something far greater...thankfulness. I now know what it's like to long for a child and dream every night for years of their face. The longing and aching for a little head to smell. I don't know if I would have ever gotten to that place had I not been forced there. I know it could have happened; I just don't think it would have. I don't know if my older children would have gotten to that place either. They have something their friends don't: a greater appreciation for their younger brother, an understanding of the trials we sometimes have to walk through to get something far greater than we could have imagined. They have learned much younger than most that sometimes in life you have to make sacrifices, pray really hard, and be willing to do whatever it takes to see your dream come to life. And, for that, aaallllll that, I am thankful.