the journey to three

Throughout this pregnancy and even before, I've had this distinct impression that this pregnancy is different. Not different like "pregnant with a boy" vs. "pregnant with a girl", but something that's far deeper and significant than gender.
I've wanted to put it into words for quite some time and so I find myself unable to sleep and why not write it down?

When Jamie first proposed to me the idea of moving to Uganda and I knew in my heart it was something we should do, a lot of dreams died within me.
Namely, the dream of trying for a baby several months before we would be leaving. I knew I did not want to move to a different country while pregnant. Moving to a different house (with both pregnancies) was crazy enough, much less to a different continent.
And so I surrendered that dream to God's timing. I knew I wanted more kids and entertained the "crazy" idea of having a baby while in Uganda, but didn't put any stock in it as I knew I needed to allow myself time to adjust to moving our family overseas and didn't want to commit my heart or my head to any set "schedule" of when we'd start trying for a third.

Within a couple months of arriving in Uganda, I felt the desire to start trying for a third. Jamie and I talked about it briefly and then a couple of weeks later in more depth and prayed about it and agreed to start trying.
(If you are a guy, you might want to skip this next part...)

Now I'm usually a 28 day cycle kinda girl. My periods are regular and dependable. But until November, my cycle was all over the map - and only getting shorter and shorter so that at one point it was only 21 days long. Which makes trying to conceive very difficult, if not near impossible. So after trying for a few months and many more cycles than that (5 or 6?) I was feeling discouraged after every cycle.
I started to feel (after about 3 cycles?) that something wasn't right and maybe it just wasn't God's timing for us. So I prayed. And I started feeling more peace about it. I stopped trying to read my body's "signs" (I don't really get any pregnancy symptoms so it was ridiculous each month trying to tell if I felt sick in the mornings or my breasts felt tender, etc.) and just left it with God. Then in November I had a 28 day cycle and the next month (December) I got pregnant.
I felt the most peace during December before I even knew we had conceived.
When I didn't get my period on Boxing Day I knew. I didn't even have to take a test. In fact, I didn't take a test for another couple weeks!

I know my story is nothing compared to the women who have waited and tried and researched and cried and begged and have been desperate to have one child, let alone be trying for number three! But it is my story. And with Noah and Jude I got pregnant pretty much right away so this was a different sort of journey to expand our family.

I know that "children are a gift from God" but I think this journey to three has been unlike the other two - perhaps because I feel it's my last time being pregnant, perhaps it's because God's been doing something in my heart so painful and real that it's unlike entering motherhood for the first time (which was a scary and painful thing on its own) or for the second time (where the challenges came a little later for me) but  that this baby and this pregnancy are unique and for that I am so thankful. Each child different. Each journey different.

I still struggle to claim this peace. I still worry. I've worried in each of my pregnancies. It's a continual "handing over" I find myself doing of worries and things out of my control. It begins in pregnancy and I don't think it ever ends. But there is a peace to be claimed - regardless of the outcome.