Life After Holding an Angel: Today is my due date

Today is a day I have been looking forward to for such a long time, well up until my world turned upside down. Now I just want to erase today off of the calender and out of my brain. I actually started looking forward to this date on September 2, 2013.

That was the day I got this:

What a shock that was. Oh, and not just just a little shock, or a bitty surprise a whole OH MY GOSH IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING kind of surprise. Sam was born October 8, 2012. Less than a week later Drew had a vasectomy. We were done having kids. Actually we had decided on two and Sam was a surprise but after Sam we thought well three is the perfect number so we decided that permanent birth control was the best option for us. So you can imagine our surprise when I found out I was pregnant again. I was still nursing Samuel and wasn't having any regular cycles so I had no idea until those lines popped up on the test. I couldn't believe my eyes and neither could Drew. I started to cry and he started to laugh. Dobson Baby #4, Holy Moly! So about a month later, 12 months after his first vasectomy Drew had another one because we definitely agreed 4 children was plenty for us!

As with each of my pregnancies I had horrible life altering morning sickness. Not the "oh, I feel crummy and might get sick" type of feeling the "I think I might be dying", "Is it actually possible to puke this many times in one day" sickness. I lost almost 20 pounds the first trimester. Besides that my pregnancy was fairly uneventful. I was not considered high risk this time because Sam's pregnancy was complication free. I loved being able to go out with the kids and not worry about my blood pressure, not be nervous the entire time that I would be put on bed rest and to have a "normal" pregnancy.

When the ultrasound showed that the baby had passed away my mind went crazy. My first reaction was "This is a mistake! God wanted me to have this baby! I shouldn't have even have gotten pregnant but I did so why would my baby be taken away." It is something I have been struggling with. Yes I do have other children and I am thankful for them every single day BUT that doesn't change the fact that I was supposed to have another baby and now I don't. I likely will never feel a baby kick inside my body again. Something that I had spent 9 months preparing for, dreaming about, talking to, sleeping with, causing me pain and joy all at once was gone. I felt like the world was being so cruel, here you are going to have a baby, no just kidding. I sometimes wonder if I will ever be at peace with not carrying another baby, nursing another little one, staying up late at night and being the exhausted new mom. The past almost 7 years of my life has been consumed with being pregnant, having a newborn, having a toddler, and then repeating. I have been instantly thrown into a new phase of life of raising and maintaining my family and not adding too it. I was not prepared. I didn't get to enjoy every last "first" like I had been imagining.

Our Facebook announcement