Six years ago today was the first time we got a glimpse of our growing family.

I remember about 6 weeks into my pregnancy with C I woke up in incredible pain. It was a sharp stabbing pain in my lower abdomen that didn’t relent no matter what I did. By one in the morning I was convinced that I was losing the baby and I asked Tim to take me to the hospital. I even yelled at him for stopping at the red light in front of the hospital in the middle of the night when there wasn’t another car to be seen! I could barely walk to get myself inside. So much pain. They got me into a room and I told them I was pregnant. After a moment of looking at me they said they thought the baby was fine, but I definitely had kidney stones. (Wait?!? Don’t only old people get kidney stones? Apparently not. They are actually kind of common in pregnancy.) Having lived through labor twice since that night I have to tell you that labor pains have nothing on kidney stone pain. At least during labor you get a break between contractions! It took two doses of morphine to bring the pain under control. They told me it could take up to 72 hours to feel better, but fortunately we were walking out of the hospital within a few hours.

That scare had me shaken for a few weeks and when we finally got to our sonogram day I was excited and nervous. I didn’t really know what to expect, or what I’d be able to see so early on.

Yup, there’s my girl. She didn’t look like much but she wiggled around and had a steady heartbeat. And I knew, like so many women before me, that as I stared at that screen I was witnessing a miracle.

That was the day that the pregnancy really became real to me. I’m a mom! There is actually a baby growing inside me!

Six years and three kids later, when I look at this image, I still see a miracle.

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My littlest savage is under the weather this evening and went straight to bed when we got home. I let the older kids watch a movie while I prepped dinner, which was turkey burgers, sautéed mushrooms, and avocado. We sat down to eat and they promptly removed the turkey burger from its bun and announced they would not be eating that! Instead, they requested ranch dressing to be poured on the inside of their hamburger buns. And that’s what they ate for dinner. A hamburger bun with ranch dressing inside. No turkey burger, no mushrooms, no avocado. Just bread and ranch dressing. *sigh* Meanwhile C kept urging me to partake in this new delicacy, but I politely declined. I stuck to my guns about not letting them have any other food but what was put in front of them for dinner, so I think they are going to be pretty hungry in the morning.