Mother's Day

With tomorrow being Mother's Day, I've been thinking a lot today about how thankful I am to be a mom, how thankful I am to have my mom as one of my best friends, and how thankful I am to be able to be close to my birth mother. My mother is the one that taught me how to be a Christian wife and mother. And even though there were probably MANY times that she would have loved to have strangled me for whatever stupid thing I was doing at the time, she never did. She loved me through it all, and I'm so thankful that God chose her to be my mama. I also feel so blessed to be such good friends with my birth mother, and I know I've written about her before, but I don't take our relationship for granted at all. I spent so many years wondering who she was, and now I just know her as a great friend, and I am so very grateful for that.


And now my journey to motherhood begins.

Robbie and I decided we wanted to start a family in 1999. We had been married for 2 years and all I had ever wanted to be was a mom. I say the only reason I even went to college was to meet and marry a Christian man that would allow me to stay home and raise our babies. When you want a baby so badly, it's all you can think about, and that's where we were in 1999. We had just moved to Texarkana from Searcy and it was just the right time. My first pregnancy was in May '99, and was very short-lived. If I hadn't taken a pregnancy test, I would've never even known I was pregnant. It was a very early miscarriage, and while it was very sad for us, it was early and I didn't even have time to get used to the idea of being pregnant. My second pregnancy was November '99. I carried that baby for 11 weeks before I lost it. It was the darkest time in my life. I was convinced I would never be a mother and I lost all hope that it would ever happen. No one could tell me a reason this was happening, and I was so sad and frustrated. Seeing a pregnant woman would make me hurt so much. I was jealous of women that were able to carry babies, and I was mad because there were girls getting pregnant that didn't even WANT a baby.

I had a D & C done on December 13, 1999, just before Christmas.  A month later, I went to my family doctor because I thought I had the flu. He told me was going to go ahead and do a pregnancy test while I was there, and I was like, umm no, that just can't be my problem. It had only been a month since my second miscarriage, and I was not ready to be told I was pregnant. I knew that I absolutely could not go through another miscarriage at that point. When he came back in and told me my test was positive, I actually argued with him. I just knew that my hormones were probably just still there from my last pregnancy that was making my test positive. He assured me that that was not possible and that I was definitely pregnant again. I just cried and cried. I so badly wanted a baby, but I could not bare to lose another one at that point.

Well, this baby ended up making me throw up almost every day for 9 full months, but I made a deal with him the entire time he was in my belly that if he would stick with me, I would stick with him. If he could just keep his heart beating, I would keep throwing up for him. He took the deal, and 9 months later, our dream of being parents became a reality. Aaron Neil Barwick was born on October 12, 2000, and he was perfect. I quit my job and stayed home with him just like I had always wanted to do, and I've been home ever since.

When Aaron was 3, we decided that he needed a brother or sister. And again, I got pregnant. And again, I miscarried and was devastated. I always felt like the only reason I was able to carry Aaron to term was because of the pregnancy I lost just before him, but I couldn't explain why. When I told my doctor that, she stopped me mid-sentence and told me that she thinks it was that my progesterone was too low to sustain the pregnancy. And the reason I was able to carry Aaron was that my progesterone was still raised from the previous pregnancy. She said that next time I got pregnant, all I needed to do was take progesterone and the baby should be fine.This was a HUGE revelation for me, and we were ready to try again.

In February 2005, I got a positive pregnancy test, and immediately called to get the progesterone. I took it the first 3 months of a much easier pregnancy, and on November 23, 2005, Austin Lane was born, beautiful and healthy. And here we are 2011 with a 10 year old and a 5 year old boy, and I don't know what I would do without them.

My handsome boys

I want to wish a very HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to my mom and to my birth mom. I love you both so very much!