Jacob's Story ~ Chapter 1 ~ The Pregnancy

~ The Pregnancy ~

With each of my pregnancies I have always tried to figure out the personality of my babies.  Adam was my first and he was great…I craved English muffins with butter and salt while pregnant with him, he was just perfect, pleasant, liked to stretch and push with his foot; something that can be VERY uncomfortable 9 months in.  With Allie, I knew she would be feisty, she kicked my ribs, pushed all kinds of ways, and came out as soon as she decided to.  With Adam I’d pushed for almost 4 hours, with Allie, less than 10 minutes, maybe less than 5.  With Jacob, he was kind. I knew that.  He just didn’t want to be a bother. I always felt that he, when he did stretch or push, wanted to say, "I’m so sorry mama, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable."  He just didn’t want to be a bother, I knew it.  I know it.  That was Jacob.  He didn’t want to leave me either.  Somehow I believe this little sweet person, my Jacob, knew that he would not live and so he didn’t want to leave.  He’d heard his sister and brother for 9 months, he’d been to church every week, except till the end of the pregnancy, he’d prayed evening prayers with us, morning prayers, been sat on multiple times by his sister….and brother, been kicked by his sister, talked to by his father and caressed by me.  He was a part of our lives from the day we found out we were having him regardless of our surprise at his existence. 

With both Adam and Allie we tried to get pregnant and we did, first try, both times.  Jacob was a different story.  At the point we got pregnant with him I had a 2 year old and a nursing 8 month old. I was working part time to make ends meet and my husband had literally JUST launched his website for his business, making Orthodox coffins, something rather ironic considering what would come over the next year of our lives.  I knew I had about as much as I could handle on my plate…maybe more if I admitted it.  I was ready for a break, or whatever that looked like with all of the above going on non stop, every day.  But as many nursing mothers can attest to, I was severely sleep deprived.  Allie was a comfort nurser, a snacker, I suppose which meant she woke up to nurse throughout the night, several times, which means I never slept more than 2 consecutive hours. Add up about 8 months of no real sleep and you get a mother who thinks she can count late at night, and accidentally forgets how many days are in June…turns out you only have to be about two days off to have the calendar method fail you.   So on August 2^nd, while at work, joking with Adam’s Godmother over email about how I would not be that crazy to have another baby…as I typed the “y” in baby it started to slowly dawn on me that I had #1 suddenly lost weight that would NOT come off in the previous eight months #2 my milk seemed to be drying up and #3 I had not started my period….humm…when did I start last???? Wait a second, when I got pregnant with Allie I suddenly lost a lot of weight and was not able to nurse Adam anymore because my milk dried up….Nooooo…oh my God….oh crap….I think I might be pregnant.  

It was the summer of 2011, we were literlly scraping by each month, living without health insurance, we had a home that we had renovated and had been trying to sell for the past eleven months, Dan had been laid off along with many other architects the year before, 2010, in April, in July of 2010 his Grand Pap had died, and 4 months later Dan's mom died after fighting a 3 year battle with cancer just 11 days after our daughter Allie was born .  We were struggling to keep whatever sanity we had with so little sleep, while handling all the additional stresses of the above. A baby? NOW? This was not good.  I never thought we’d be surprised by a pregnancy.  We were always so careful.  But there I was, sitting at my desk, stunned and incredibly anxious to get home and take a pregnancy test.  That night as SOON as the kids were down to bed I sat down with Dan on the couch and said I had to tell him something, I was smiling, a nervous smile I do sometimes when I am really uncomfortable…was sweating like a dirty sailor as I explained that I had miscounted my days and when I had told him we were “good” I had been wrong… "honey, we’re having a baby”.  To my husbands credit and my relief he smiled and was so happy.  I remember that. He put me at ease immediately, until I tried to explain all the reasons this was a bad time, but he said it was a blessing and it would all be okay.   He was right about Jacob being a blessing…I hoped he was right about the okay part but as I’m writing this now, okay seems far off from what happened. 

From that moment on I tried to wrap my head around the idea of having three children under the age of three. If our baby was born next March that meant until Adam turned three in June, I would have three children under the age of three…that is just crazy!  But to be honest, I was so happy…terrified…but happy. It is what I had always wanted, but I never would have had the courage or guts to do intentionally.  We had planned to just wait a few years.  At the very minimum at least until Allie was one, we could get Dan’s business going and sell our house.  After all, Dan was the oldest of four children and there was a four year gap between the second and third child in his family…after having Adam and Allie so close, I realized why there was a gap…Dan’s mom had been a sane woman!!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking having children close together, like I said Adam and Allie were both planned, we wanted to get pregnant when Adam was 9 months old. We wanted our children to be close in age but that does not make it easy. As truly wonderful as being a mom or dad can be sometimes, there is a reason it’s so rewarding…it’s so hard.  The best things in life are not free and they generally don’t come very easily.  It is with hard work and sacrifice...more sacrifice than I could have ever prepared for prior to having children. But they are our greatest blessings and what have kept me alive in spite of losing Jacob.