Seriously, this actually takes a lot of guts for me.

I am going to post the last picture ever taken of me while pregnant with triplets.

Why? You might ask.

Because it was one year ago today that my girls were born.

But I’m going to leave you with that tantalizing bit until I first recount this last year. I am going to do a blog for each one of the girls individually, but first Josh has to take some one year old pictures of them..so while I’m waiting I will blog about my pregnancy and their first year of life.

I am actually going to start previous to getting pregnant with the girls. As long as I can remember I have wanted a daughter. When I was in high school, I saved all of my prom dresses, my cheer leading uniform and all of my “fun” clothes from Halloween, and from theme nights at youth group, etc. I did this so that one day I could pass all these things to my daughter to use someday for playing or whatever. This of course is not to say that I didn’t want boys..In fact what I always pictured for myself was having a bunch of boys..but I at least wanted one girl.

I am not much of a journaler. I have gone through some fazes of journaling however. Most of any journaling I did was more of a prayer letter to God. I found this journal entry a while back and it brought tears to my eyes. I thought I would share it: “Speaking of family God you know the desire of my heart. A little girl. The moment Jayden was born- even in that moment of happiness, I still felt as though our family was not yet complete. Sometimes God, I feel like I’m dying inside for lack of a little daughter. It makes my heart ache when I think of the possibility of never having one. I pray God, that you would grant this request. I understand that I may regret asking that. At least from time to time.” =)

Fast forward to the decision to get pregnant. With the boys, I got pregnant right away..first try. We weren’t even trying with Bryce! But when I wanted to get pregnant this last time, I found it to be difficult. I won’t go into all that right now, but God really worked on my heart during that time. The lesson that I learned is that the verse in the bible that says that He will give us the desires of our heart doesn’t mean that He will give us the things that we want. It’s actually the other way around…The desires that we have for things like this were placed there by God. (I’m not talking about like a new car or anything. Desires for things that actually might come from God.)

After several months, I finally get pregnant. Yay! I’m beside myself excited. And I am sick. I know, I know, nothing like what Allison endured in this department, but more sick that I ever was with either of the boys. So I know something’s different.

I go in for my first 8 week appointment. I get an ultrasound to check for the due date. The doctor’s eyes get big the moment she looks at the screen. She is silent but she holds up two fingers. “What? What does that mean?” I say. “I see two babies,” she says “and I think there’s another one.” Immediately I start shaking. This possibility has never in my entire life occurred to me. I had always wanted twins…but I never for a tiny moment had ever thought about triplets.

For the next several days, I was scared out of my wits. I wasn’t sleeping. I was trying to figure out what this “cruel” trick was that God was playing on me. One night as I was laying in bed not sleeping, God spoke to me. I don’t remember the exact wording, but I remember feeling like I had an idea of what Mary probably felt like when she was told that she would be the mother of Jesus. Not that my kids were going to be the savior of the world or anything, but God made it clear to me that He had chosen me for this job. Very few people in the world get this kind of privilege, and He had chosen me to be one of the few. I remember welling up with tears as my perspective changed…I was no longer afraid. I was honored. “Blessed are you among women!” (Luke 1:42)

A few days later, I was trying to take a vitamin. (I have a little bit of difficulty swallowing large pills anyway and being nauseated and having a much more sensitive gag reflex wasn’t helping anything.) I choked on the pill and it made me violently dry heave. I felt something of a pop and a gush. As soon as the heaving was under control, I went to the bathroom and checked. Bright red blood. I tried not to panic. I went to my room to change. As I was standing there, blood started pouring out. I was terrified. I had never seen anything like it. We went to the emergency room and got everything checked out . The babies were fine. They thought I had probably broken a blood vessle.

Weeks passed by uneventfully. Then the day came for us to find out the sexes of the babies. Our doctor told the ultrasound technition that we wanted her to find us at least one girl. She said she’d do her best. She went in order. First Baby A (Ellyanna) She said it was a girl. Tears of joy sprung to my eyes. Actually it was more than tears. I was mildly sobbing. Actually I was sobbing hard enough that she had to stop the ultrasound for a minute while I got under control. I was shaking the moniter. =) Then she moved on to Baby B (Adelynn) another girl. I grinned. Then Baby C (Kynden). I thought for 100% sure the last one was going to be a boy. She started laughing and said that we were going to need a lot of pink! I gasped and squealed with joy and laughed and cried at the same time.

As far as triplet pregnancies go, mine was fairly uneventful. I had no major issues until about the last 4 weeks. I had to have a blood transfusion because I was so anemic. Then for the last 4 weeks I was admitted to the hospital for preterm labor and cervix funneling. Also for those last weeks I was in a lot of pain. Baby A (Ellyanna) was wedged into my pelvis with her little bottom. (She was effectively folded in half) It hurt to stand, to walk, to lay down, to do pretty much anything. There were times when I had to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. The bathroom was literally about 5 steps from my bed and it would take me 5-10 minutes to walk there. I would hold on to the equipment to try and make each step less excruciating. This is when I would break down emotionally. I would pray outloud for God to make these babies come because I just couldn’t take this any more.

The last week of the pregnancy I discovered that there was across the hall from me a large jacuzzi tub that paitents could use. I started making daily use of that. It helped a little. The day the girls came, I was in good spirits until about 2 or so hours before Josh came for the night. (He drove 45 minutes each way with the boys every night to come see me.) I was in a LOT of pain by the time he got there. As soon as he walked in the door, I burst in to tears talking about how much pain I was in. When the nurse came in, he told her that I needed something for the pain because it was getting bad. She said she’d call the doctor. Well, the doctor came in and decided to check my cervix. I had no hope of anything because this was the same pain that I’d been in for weeks. So the nurse helped me get into a compromising position and the doctor checked me. “Well,” he said “Congratulations, you’re going to have babies tonight. You’re dialated to 5!” Literally in less than 5 minutes I had a nurse on either side of me putting IV’s into both arms, a nurse shaving me, and someone making me drink the horrible tasting stuff that’s supposed to not make you not throw up. The wheeled me to the c-section room where another army of people was standing by while Josh was frantically making phone calls. Within a few minutes, we had added 3 new members to our family.

Wow..this is a long post. Now for the last thing. The picture of me in all my glory: