NO, we are NOT pregnant (ask me how I know…and I’ll tell you, lol)
However, Marcy suggested I write about how we knew it was time/how we decided to have children. For fun, I decided to tackle this tonight because there are two really simple easy answers – one for each child.
Let me start by sharing our “birth control.” Before we got married, March to be exact, I started on the pill. I never had any of the side affects that many people experience. In September of ’05, I started getting really bad migraine-like headaches once a month (wink wink, nudge nudge) – so bad that I couldn’t go to work. It was awful. In Feb. of ’06, I had my ‘yearly’ and talked to the OB about it. She decided that it was an estrogen overdose- she checked what I was taking and found out that I was on the lowest amount of estrogen possible. So she put me on a higher dosage (ie: different birth control). this only made things worse. The head aches weren’t “once” a month, they were almost everyday for about 2 weeks (the time frame I took the new birth control). Finally one night, Zach came home and decided for us that I was no longer taking the hormonal birth control (this was a decision made not only from my “side affects” but from a class we were taking, “Ethics in Marriage and Family”). We decided that Natural Family Planning (NFP) was the way to go (I can discuss this more in the future if anyone is truly interested). We used NFP from March – May to prevent a pregnancy….
Keaton’s story (he is now 20 months) – Zach and I were married June 4, 2005. We agreed from the start we’d wait at least 2 years before trying to have children. Shortly after (and I mean like MAYBE 2 months) we got married, we made the decision to move to NC to start Seminary. In this planning, we agreed we would wait until Seminary was finished, we each had our Masters (mine in Biblical Counseling, his M.Div.) and he was in a full time ministry position. “No way” could we do Seminary AND have children. Imagine our surprise upon moving into our apartment and finding neighbors with children…and I don’t mean 1 or 2…I mean 4, 5, 6, one neighbor 8 children! Granted these people had been in Seminary for EVER, but, they had beautiful families! Par for the course, I got baby fever. BAD. I kept my wanting at bay. On June 3, 2006, my room mate from college got married. We attended her wedding and came back home. We decided, on a whim that we would go out to eat that night to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. We got home from the wedding and had some down time. We were watching TV and talking. Zach got very serious and said, “So I’ve been thinking…” (NOT a good thing…usually…) “I think we should try to have a baby…” Imagine my surprise! I just looked at him and said, “Reallly?!” We talked about it for a few minutes, I of course was all for it. We decided to make a go of it and see what would happen. We were truly blessed with no fertility problems and 6 weeks later, I was holding a “stick” with two lines on it! In April of ’07, on Easter Sunday morning, we welcomed Zachary “Keaton” into the world after 36 hours of labor and an emergency c-section. I honestly couldn’t tell you what we talked about that June afternoon. Zach said, “baby” I said “OK!”
Benjamin’s story (he is currently 4 months old) – I was still nursing Keaton at the time. We were again using NFP (for the record, NFP is super hard whlie breastfeeding, I’d just like to say!) I had one cycle in October and at the end of November, after spending the night in the bathroom sick to my stomach after spaghetti, I tested. I was indeed pregnant. That’ss how we decided on having Benjamin! 🙂
Were we scared? I think I was more scared than Zach. He was pretty excited. I was worried what I was going to do with 2 under 2! I was also very concerned because I had a c-section with Keaton and desired a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) for my next birth. The “desired” wait time is 18 months between births.
What are we using for birth control this time? You guessed it…we’re rolling the dice again 😉
Sorry, Marcy. I wasn’t a lot of help 🙂 I guess I can say this, in response to your comment. We knew that if we waited for the “right” time, that time would never come. There would always be something that made it the wrong time.
We’ve had to sacrifice some things. I’m no longer in school working towards my Masters. I miss it so much, but I can’t imagine doing anything else right now, other than staying home with my sweet boys. I’m also not “working” (not getting paid – you bet your sweet bippy I’m WORKING, lol) so we don’t have all the luxeries we’d LIKE to have. Do we have everything we NEED? Yes. We are not WANTING for anything. Are there things we WANT (ie: desire) that we can’t have/can’t do? Absolutely, but those sacrifices have been totally worth it.
Was that a bit better answer? 🙂
musings from a mom 