2 Shades of Pink Story: Part 7

Two lines?

Am I jet lagged from a 2 hour flight? Am I seeing things? No way. It was the faintest line I had ever seen. Like I told you before, you stare at it long enough and ...POOF...you see a second line. I mean, do you see a second line?

My point exactly. So I ran into the bedroom and show hubby.

"Do you see a line? DO YOU SEE 2 LINES???!!!!! ANSWER ME!!!!!! DO YOU? DO YOU?

He looks and then looks at me with a sweet, crooked smile. "I see two lines."

OMIGOODNESS! OMIGOODNESS! OMIGOODNESS! I start running around the house and grab the phone as I frantically and aimlessly walk into each and every room of the house. I am dialing Kelly's number and it is late. I praise God that her hubby is out of town on business.
I hear my tired BFF (who had fallen asleep on the couch) answer the phone with a sweet "Welcome Home!"

My response? No time for pleasantries here. "I see a line."

My pregnant best friend shoots straight up from the couch with a "WHAAAAT??"

"Kelly, oh my gosh? Am I pregnant? Could I be pregnant? No. No way. Really? I mean, really?"

Kelly says, "OK. What happened?" And I tell her everything. From the weird cramps over the weekend, a light spotting that I thought I had hallucinated, the fact that it was night time and only 9 days past ovulation, yada, yada, yada.

Her response? Um, the one that only your BFF is supposed to say.

"Jess, you are soooo pregnant." And we chic scream and get all excited.

Meanwhile, hubby knows me well and gets dressed and goes to Walgreen's for another test. He comes back with it and ice cream too. Because he is just too cute. I am all excited until he tells me I need to wait until morning to do it. Just to be sure. Of course, this is wonderful wisdom but I thought I was going to burst. But I submitted for once and went to bed.

7:00 am. I pop up like its Christmas morning more excited to pee then I have ever before...

++++ IT'S POSITIVE!!++++

The line was oh so obvious. I am pregnant!!!! Oh my word, I wish I could type the elation that I felt in that moment. I take a flying leap onto the bed with my sleeping husband and said, "WE ARE PREGNANT!" He hugged me and said he was so happy.

Then my next thought became a prayer...Two, Lord? You are giving me two children? Not just the one I had been praying for? Two? Oh, the sweet love I felt from my King in that moment. In that instant, I knew. I truly believed, on a cellular level, that I just experienced what it means when His word tells us how God longs to be gracious to us. In a precise moment, the timing that is in His hands, the pain, the journey, the growth, the sifting, the agony, the bitterness, the sin, the hopelessness...became pure joy. And my God patiently anticipated that moment. He delighted in my joy and basked in the praise He wholly deserves.

Funny how I initially had a plan of how I was going to do tell hubby I was pregnant. Years before I had purchased a pair of newborn yellow booties in this clear, little box. I was Super Wife then with no children and always made dinner each night with it waiting for him when he got home. I am peeing my pants at the moment as I recall my past idealism that I could do this once children came in the picture. I don't mean just cook dinner. I mean have the table set with cute little dishes on the table and candles, nice music, and a spotless house. Now the food sits on the stove in the pots I cooked it in and I bellow a "COME FIX YOUR PLATE BEFORE THESE KIDS HAVE TO GO TO BED!" Ah, how times have changed.

Anyway, these booties would go in one of these covered dishes to surprise him. That was what I planned. But I did not get voted Biggest Mouth for high school senior superlatives for nothing...How could I wait? I had been waiting 5 years for crying out loud!!! So I cried it out loud...of course.

Then what do I do next? Well duh. I bought 10 more tests to pee on. And took pictures. All those one lined tests I had to endure, take apart, take back out of the trash can all day long juuuuust in case it changed results while I was not looking...now I could get excited because there it was...

Is this not the most glorious and beautiful pee covered stick you have ever seen? I would hang it from the Christmas tree with ribbon if it was not...well...nasty. And yep, the top one is from Dollar Tree. I bought like 10 of those. And peed on every.single.one.

And of course, I purchased the creme of the crop, the candid, tell-it-like-it-is test that you only buy if you are darn tootin' sure it will say...pregnant. Oh, glory. Bummer that the word eventually disappears, though.

So let's pause to recap the miracle of all of this by seeing God's hand upon every intimate detail. Because of course, this is when any uphill journey makes sense. This will be fun...

• God spoke to my heart that I would conceive naturally...and I did.
• The call for the IVF study came on October 24th. After figuring out the dates, we conceived Ella 1 week later following us turning this incredible opportunity down.
• The prayer card we filled out at the church on Christmas Eve, 2006 was to see three things happen within one year's time... to have radical faith (like turning down IVF and believing God through a hopeless time), to overcome infertility, to adopt Cati). These 3 prayer requests culminated within a two week period. 1. Oct 24, 2007 we got the call, prayed, and turned IVF down the next day believing God for natural conception. 2. November 9, 2007 the adoption process begins. 3. November 12, 2007 we have a positive pregnancy test. All occurring less than 1 year later.

I so have goosebumps even though it happened to me. How can we not give glory to such an amazing, merciful, grace abounding, infinitely wise God? I so can.

Another thing that became incredibly obvious to me. As someone with PCOS, you are pretty much subfertile rather than infertile. More specifically, it is difficult to become pregnant but not impossible. And statistics become such a discouragement. It is lovely to hear how someone with normal cycles or typical fertility odds have only a mere 25% chance at becoming pregnant due to all that is involved in the process of making a baby. And yours is less. Well, yippee for me. Always makes you look at the glass half full side of things, right? Especially since we got like 6 billion people roaming the earth. Clearly procreating is not this rare endeavor as stats like to make it out to be. Considering all the intricacies with timing and one sperm and one egg...I am sure you do not need this lesson. But. How can we get wrapped up in stats with the kind of God we serve? Because this is what I have concluded. With God, I have a 100% chance of getting pregnant. Not 25%. Not 73%.

100%.

Because it is God who gives and takes away. It is our glorious, mighty King who stitches a baby together. He still could have given us a pregnancy that may not have gone to term. But He deserves my praise and complete submission regardless if the outcome is not parallel to my heart's desire. So I had to realize it was He who decided to bless us with Ella. Only He. Not stats. Not my weight loss. Not throwing your legs up in the air like my grandmother told me to do. (I did do that but whatever). Only God.

And I praise His holy name. He made me a mother...again. He rewarded our faith. He heard the cry of a mother who wanted to carry a child within her. And He not only gave us one...He gave us two...