melted smoosh

{ part one } we were home visiting family the week after Christmas when i took another pregnancy test. the very faintest shadow of a line appeared. i remember staring at it and saying "no freaking way!" quickly, i calculated my due date to be September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which seemed fitting since i had been praying the Memorare prayer in addition to my usual prayers for God to bless our family with another baby. i tiptoed back into the bedroom and whispered the good news to Nick. but i was already holding the idea of this pregnancy loosely, afraid that we would lose this one too. we flew back to Pittsburgh the next day, and in all the chaos of traveling, i didn't take another test until the following morning. two days later, the line should have been noticeably darker, but it wasn't. no matter how i squinted at it, there was just no way to convince myself that things were progressing normally.  the same pattern continued ov...

i'll never forget that first, super-faint line that popped up on the pregnancy test in May 2015. after four months of trying to conceive, it was such a relief to finally see that we did it! i had to laugh, too, because it took exactly four months to get pregnant with Greta too. that evening, after Nick got home from work, i pinned a "Big Sister" ribbon on Greta, gave her a book called The New Baby , and told her to go ask Daddy to read it to her. we laughed and cried, and started dreaming of the baby we'd be holding in January 2016.  except that just 6 days later, something went very wrong. i began having cramps that continued to increase in severity, and on a Monday afternoon at work, i began to bleed. lots of women bleed during pregnancy and everything turns out fine , i told myself. my midwife ordered bloodwork and an ultrasound, and we scheduled it for the next day. every time i used the bathroom, i prayed that the bleeding would have stopped, but it just contin...