The home stretch!

Here's Henry!  We got to see him yesterday during our 3D ultrasound.    Seeing his little face on that screen just made me want to hold him more.  We saw him make all sorts of faces and I can't wait to see them after he's out.  I was hoping that we would see him have the hiccups during the ultrasound.  He gets them 3 or 4 times every day and I was curious to see what it looked like.  Sure enough, he got them while we were watching.  The poor thing's whole body jerks and his mouth is forced closed with every hiccup.  No wonder he gets so upset!

My mother pointed out to me the other day that I have been pregnant 10 out of the past 12 months.  No wonder this feels like the longest pregnancy in history.  I'm still not entirely convinced Henry will be okay and I worry when he doesn't move a lot.  Just now I was noticing he hadn't moved in a while.  And then he kicked me.  God's not giving me much of a chance to obsess about it.  Usually when I notice Henry hasn't moved, it only takes a few minutes before he's up and going again.  My innocence about pregnancy was shattered when Nathan died inside me.  Wasn't that supposed to be a safe place for him?  Doesn't it work out that if you get into the second trimester you're home free?  We're told that if you see the heartbeat the chance of losing the baby is small.  Why would anyone think they would be on the wrong end of the statistic?  But, once it happens to you everything is looked at through that loss.  It does put some things in perspective.  After the loss of Nathan, the loss of my church and almost my entire friend base didn't destroy me.  I knew there were worse things that could happen.  Sure, it wasn't easy, but I think I would have handled things quite differently if I had not already lost my son.  I have relaxed with our children.  Some things that seemed like a big deal before don't seem like that at all now.  And I trust God more than ever.  I don't understand why Nathan died but I do know that God has never left my side through this past year of trials and tribulations.  My faith is strong, Henry is strong, and we are moving forward toward whatever God has planned for us.  Hopefully soon that will involve raising Henry to love God as much as we do.