Rewind.

This whole post is all very personal for me. Too personal, probably.

I don't know why I feel compelled to share this, but as I said before, we both feel like we need to tell our story.

And it hurts our hearts to be so open, but we can only hope that whatever the reason is for us to feel this way, the purpose is obtained...

At the beginning of this year, I was so conflicted, and those feelings pulled at my heart. We had just gone through our ectopic pregnancy in December, and we had no intentions on adding to our family any time soon. I remember crawling into bed with Chris one night, with tears rolling down my face. I had been dealing with hard, hard, hard conflicting feelings.

I have always wanted a million babies. I wanted to loose my mind, in the flood of children running around my home. I wanted it all! All the chaos, all the noise, all the love. Chris and I said we wanted 12 babes from the beginning. Each pregnancy, each miscarriage, we kept the goal in mind: one million babies. One million!! We can do it.

But the night I came to husband, I was weeping. We felt that two was our lucky number. Our two, wonderful, beautiful, miraculous two boys, were our family. Our family could be complete with two. And for the first time in my whole life, something inside of me was accepting that. And the turmoil began! As my understanding husband held me, I only felt sorry for my "former" self; the one that never wanted to give up, and wanted to have those million of babies No. Matter. What. I felt like I was doing her such an injustice, by even acknowledging that a family of four could be just as beautiful, plentiful, and perfect as a family of 14.

And then the conflict doubled over. I wrote in my journal, which rarely happens:

"I keep having this overwhelming feeling that we are missing someone... It's unnerving. We sit down at the dinner table, who is missing? We load the kids into the car, who is missing? We tuck them into bed, who is missing? All day, all week. And each time, I have actually stop myself, and count. One, two, three, four. We are all here.

We are all here."

I found out I was pregnant a month later.

..

Yesterday I got a phone call from the lab with some news on Walt: his perfect little body was a full month older than we had estimated during my pregnancy. He was, in deed, 22 weeks old. It was not a total surprise; when he was born, the doctors mentioned he was much larger and far more developed than the 18th weeks he supposedly was. He was a perfect, perfect, perfect little baby. So handsome! And smiling! He was born smiling, and breathing. Ah, balm for my heart.

And then it all made sense.

I was pregnant a full month before I physically ever knew, but my heart knew! Heavenly Father was preparing us for our most wonderful little spirit that will forever be in our family. I had to know this spirit was meant for our family: that we were missing someone without him. But, I also had to feel so blessed, and adore my small perfect the way it was: our family of four is as perfect as anything else.

We have been blessed a bounty to have been given so many pieces to "the bigger picture". It helps to compound the conflicting feelings of all this, to wrap up our beautiful, heart breaking experience with our little Wally boy. I'm thankful that we have had such intense, fulfilling experiences, making us know that we are not alone at this; that everything is in order. We are not alone, our lives are not on accident, and our son was meant to be in our family; he is the happiest baby in heaven.