I am officially pregnant

Tonight Greg and I went out to dinner and roaming around Effingham for a couple of hours without the girls. While I love them dearly, it has been a long winter! This is the first winter I have been officially a stay at home mom and the togetherness was beginning to weigh me down! Thankfully I have a wonderful mother in law that was more than happy to spend quality time with Makayla and Hannah. We were only gone for about 2 1/2 hours but it was definitely re-energizing.

After dinner Greg and I went to K-Mart. After waiting an extended period of time in the checkout while another poor customer had to have items price checked, we finally were able to purchase our items. One of the cashiers, who had an obviously difficult evening, looked at me cheerfully and asked when I was due. This threw me off a little bit since it is the first person that does not know me that has openly acknowledged that I am pregnant. I just told her June without dropping the baby bomb on her. She told us how exciting this is and asked if it was our first. We told her no, it is our third. She just said, "that is so exciting" and went back to her register. Instead of completely breaking down, which would have been easy to do, I pulled my inner God given strength and acted as if everything was normal.

On the way back to home I almost completely broke down. I told Greg that I could probably cry my eyes out but I just do not feel like it. We talked about how much I am really going to have to start answering questions from strangers, this is not going to get better, only worse as I continue to grow. I wish I could stay in my bubble. There are many people who know what is going on, that allow me to talk about being pregnant and all the pains that come with it (i.e. HEARTBURN! and feeling fat!!!) I can handle talking about Olivia with people I know, it's strangers that I have to fight back tears with. Greg told me he is glad I have not stayed in a bubble and continue to live my life. I am too but I also acknowledge how easy it would be to hide myself.

I have been feeling the pain for quite some time of the "joys" of pregnancy. With Makayla and Hannah I knew it was worth it in the end but now I'm not feeling the same sentiments. I do however enjoy the kicks and movements so much more this time around. I take the time to stop and feel the movements and have been known to interrupt conversations to announce them (I apologize in advance if I do this to you!). I wish this pregnancy really could be as exciting as the innocent cashier thought it was. I wish I could announce from the rooftops that we are having another little girl and cannot wait for Makayla and Hannah to be big sisters. Instead I know that the larger I get, the further along I get, the closer I get to my daughter dying. I hope and pray that I get time with her alive. I pray that she will live an hour or 2 hours. I also pray for the miracle that she will be able to live for a few days. How wonderful it would be to get to hold, feed and bathe her. I know that I cannot keep her but just to have a few days to be her mommy would make all of this worth it.

I would not wish this never ending roller coaster on anyone but would give anything to take this pain from my life.