My story of Abby begins when I was young. I had a dream of my future. A dream so dear that it is hard to express. I dreamed of my life filled with children. Many children. When we met, Aaron and I determined that we wanted a big family. We quickly chose enough names for six children. We dreamed of the possibilities before us. I imagined blissful, happy days full of laughter. Rearing those children with love. There were many days early in our journey when such a future didn't seem possible.
There are now many of these moments throughout my days. We do rear our children with love. We laugh and sing and talk together. I live in awe of the blessing of being a mother to my kids. They are each one an amazing miracle, unique and precious in our lives. I take nothing for granted. I know how hard it was to get them here and keep them here. I share this story as a way of healing for myself, as a way to help others that might find themselves in a similar circumstance and also as a way to share the ways in which our children have so richly blessed our lives and the gratitude we feel to our Heavenly Father for their lives. This is our story.
Aaron and I met after returning from our missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I served in Tokyo, Japan. He served in Mexico City, Mexico. We had both lived in two of the biggest cities in the world and we both liked little old Spokane and chose to make it our home. We fell in love quickly. We were crazy about each other and some people thought we were just crazy. We had a lengthy courtship and engagement of two months before marrying on December 15th, 2001 in the Spokane Washington Temple.
I am not ashamed to say that we didn't know everything about each other back then but we spent every day of that two months getting to know as much as possible. I am also not ashamed that after eleven years of marriage we know each other really well so maybe that makes up for those early days. We've always been able to talk about everything. Finances, kids, what we wanted our family to be was the focus of our discussions. It was a very happy time for us both. The bliss of these happy times were soon to be interrupted by some times of trouble. Life has a way of giving us bumps in our road, hurdles to jump, and gauntlets to conquer. The next bump would throw us off track for a few months and give us a new perspective on our future life.
We had a wonderful wedding celebration in December and I found out very quickly that I was pregnant. It was a honeymoon baby and we were very excited about it. There is something about finding out that you are pregnant that brings an excitement like no other. I felt like my dream was coming true. A great husband and a baby to boot! What more could a girl want? We were soon to be disappointed by the loss of that pregnancy. I was barely pregnant when I started having trouble and after being checked we found that I had a blighted ovum, an egg that is fertilized but does not form into an embryo. Most women don't even know when they occur. We had a positive pregnancy test but no baby. I miscarried with no complications.
This experience was a wake-up call in our lives together. Those first few months together we floated somewhere in the clouds and falling back to earth hurt. It taught us quickly that our life would not be only sunshine and roses. Heartache was also a possibility. It might sound naive to say but we were young and in love and unaware of many of the realities and difficulties life can bring. It taught us that we might have trouble keeping pregnancies, a thought that hadn't really occurred to me until that time. I knew everyone had the possibility of pregnancy loss. Many people I know have experienced it. My two sisters had also experienced it. I just didn't consider that this would be one of our problems or more specifically, my problem. I had always just assumed I would have no trouble having as many children as I wanted and reality of loss really hurt. The worst part of it was the day of the miscarriage was also Aaron's birthday. I remember feeling terrible for him. He had a very hard time with it. But we could only move on with our lives and get back to business. We decided to wait a while before trying again.
I'd like to say a word here about miscarriage. I know that many women experience it and that it is not uncommon but for the woman going through it can be really difficult, if not devastating. It is an exciting thing to know that you are pregnant. You can't help but imagine the baby that is growing inside you unseen. It is hard not to put all your hopes and love into that precious little bunch of cells. The more I have found out about embryos and fetal development the more I am amazed that it doesn't happen even more often than it does. Life in this early form is a wonder to watch. It is a miracle in and of itself.
For me the loss of that pregnancy was very difficult. I felt numb about it and sad about it. Aaron and I had a hard time talking about it. I closed my heart against having another baby for a few months. It is a very personal and private pain for a mother. I didn't talk about it very much but I was struggling. I think I was mourning that loss and the loss of my own innocence to such pain.
I was only 24 years old and hadn't experienced a lot of loss in my life. I had lost all of my grandparents and a dear friend's mother but those experiences were not as close a hurt as a parent or a sibling. They were not my own child. This loss was closer, a part of myself. I also felt responsible like if I had done things differently it would not have happened. I knew it was irrational and untrue but in my case it was more a matter of the heart. I knew that miscarriage happens all the time intellectually but when those times come it can feel like you are the first and the only person to ever go through it. Gradually the pain of that loss subsided but from then on I knew that my life was not a fairy tale and that hard things would come our way. Looking back on it, I see how that early loss prepared us for what was to come. We were being prepared for the more difficult days ahead.
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