Our Story "Part One"

So here is how it all started. I have been wanting to catalog where our journey through grief and the lessons God has taught us in life began, but it has been too painful. I may not get too far today, but this is a start.

March 2007

Tom and I had the wonderful opportunity to go watch the KU mens basketball team play the first round of the NCAA tournament in Chicago. Since my brother lives there, we stayed with him and his wife and were able to get pretty decent seats close enough to see the faces of the players. For those of you who don't know, Tom and I are huge basketball fans, and we both have been watching KU for a long time.Shortly after that trip, I started to get sick. I thought it was just a flu bug that was going around, but it seemed to last for a really long time. I decided to take a pregnancy test and was in complete shock that it was positive. We were not even really planning to try to have kids until later on. We had one conversation about the fact that maybe we were ready to pursue adding to our family, but didn't think it would happen so quickly.We ended the school year with me still being quite sick and nauseaous, but in good spirits. I was kind of glad that I had the summer to rest and relax.



At that time, I wanted to spend the entire summer getting ready and making sure that everything was perfect for the arrival of a new baby. We decided that Tom would paint the nursery that summer and we would get some clothes and a crib. So that is what we did. I found a really awesome picture of how I wanted the room painted at Lowes or somewhere like that and wanted Tom to do that. He spent an entire weekend taping the walls and painting. It looked so great, just like the picture. I was so proud and excited to put a new baby in that room.


The rest of the summer was spent just traveling and getting ready for the new baby. I have to admit that I was quite obsessed with making sure that everything was just right. It kind of makes me wonder why I felt the need to be that way. I had a couple of appointments that summer, but nothing out of the ordinary.When the summer ended, so did my rest and relaxation.


Back to school I went teaching 3rd grade. I had an appointment a couple of days before school started and didn't think anything about it. One of the first days of school, I got a call from my doctor saying to call at my earliest convenience b/c of some test results. That was the start of where all my worries came from. One of the tests was for birth defects and down's syndrome. This was my first time doing anything like this, so I didn't even know it was an option to not take that test. I worried for 2 weeks and we had to go see a specialist.


This is when I believe that God was maybe preparing me for what was to come ahead.


Stay tuned for part two.