Premonition and Blessings

A lot of women get premonition during their pregnancies. They say that they know they're pregnant even before any tests are taken, they have a "gut feeling" about what gender their baby is and so on. I had none of this with J, in fact, we didn't find out that she was a girl until she was born (though not for lack of trying, she was just very modest in the womb, a total change from how she is now). We went to the hospital with a boy name and a girl name because I had no "gut feelings" about it, or about anything with her pregnancy. This pregnancy has been very different. I didn't know I was pregnant until there were obvious signs, but once that happened, I just had this "feeling" that it was twins. I even kept joking with Erik about it, he didn't think it was funny and it made it so he didn't believe me when I told him when the OB confirmed my suspicions. I'm no ultrasound tech, and the only ultrasounds I've ever had were when I was pregnant with J so I know very little about them, but as I was laying on the table looking at the screen at that first appointment I remember seeing 2 little white spots and thinking there's two of them, even before the OB said anything. Soon after that appointment I was laying in bed one night and I had another "feeling" come to me that they were 2 boys and their names were going to be X and Y (sorry we don't tell names until after the babies are born, something has to be a surprise). At our high risk appointment (12.5 wks) the Dr. confirmed that it was 2 boys. Erik and I both like the names and haven't even looked at other possibilities. I think its great that sometimes these "warnings" are given to us to help us to prepare and to lighten our load.

As many of you know, we've had a long hard road to get to where we are now and are no where near the end of our struggles, however as time goes on, we are starting to see the Lords plan, and His hand in all of this. While it was VERY hard and trying to have to go through 2 miscarriages and wait so long for a successful pregnancy, we can now see the purpose in it. Without those 2 miscarriages my "disorders" (antiphopholipid syndrome/Hughes Syndrome and MTHFR gene mutation) never would have been discovered. Unlike other blood clotting issues that affect pregnancy, antiphospholipid syndrome is not limited to pregnancy, it is something that I will have the rest of my life and because of it I will most likely have to be on blood thinners and under the watchful eye of a hematologist for the rest of my life. Having it go undiagnosed could have put me at an increased risk for blood clots, stroke, and a number of other serious problems. Having to wait for almost a year to have a successful pregnancy is also turning out to be a blessing, especially since we're having twins. Now, J will be in preschool 2 days a week and have gymnastics a 3rd day to help give me a break (and her some time without the babies), also, my MIL is retiring at the end of this school year and since she lives close she'll be able to help with J and with the little ones (don't worry, I'm not just assuming that she's going to help me out a lot, she's already volunteered and is planning on taking J quite a bit this summer). Don't get me wrong, we don't know everything, in fact, there are a lot of things that we went through and are still going through that we don't have answers for and we may never know every thing, but we do know that the Lord is in charge and that He knows what we're going through and we know that if we trust in Him everything will work out in the end. This doesn't make things easy, but it gives us the strength to keep going, and that's something we all can use! When times get tough, I'm reminded of an article in the March 2010 issue of the Friend magazine (a magazine that the LDS church publishes for young children) that I read to J, it was entitled, "I can do hard things". I have learned, especially over the past year, that I too can do hard things!