on my mind

When I got married and started having babies I totally started making all these plans in my head...

like how many kids we'd have,

how far apart in age they'd be,

how many boys and how many girls we would have,

what their names would be,

and what they'd look like.

We got pregnant with Madden ridiculously easily, and so I thought I would be one of those girls who had the luxury of planning out all her babies exactly the way she wanted.

Its hard letting go of that plan and opening my mind to a completely different plan.

And its hard to make plans for the future for your family when you suddenly feel like you have no idea what your family IS going to look like.

Am I really only going to have one kid?

Will I have another one soon or will it still take us years to come?

Will they seriously be like 10 years apart?

Will we spend so much $ on fertility treatments that we will only be able to afford one more kid?

And will it take us so long to have one more that I will only be able to have one more, and be done at 2 kids because I'll be too old?

I grew up surrounded by siblings.

Randy and I both come from families of 5 kids.

My older sister is only 18 months apart from me.

Randy's older brother is only 15 months apart from him.

I just never intended for there to be this big of an age gap.

Madden wants a sibling so bad and when I watch him playing alone sometimes I get hit so hard with this pang of sadness and guilt that I haven't been able to give him a sibling yet.

When Madden was younger, he could play on his own for hours and be fine, but lately its like he HAS to have a playmate.

CONSTANTLY.

And mom and dad aren't good enough all the time.

I try to fill up our week with as many playdates for him as possible, but there are still bound to be hours of the day when he is left to play on his own.

And it makes me sad for him when he is sad about that.

He says things out of nowhere like,

"when I have a baby, I'm gonna share my toys with it, but not my little tiny toys, cuz I don't want him to put them in his mouth and choke"

or

"when I have a baby, if its a nice baby, I will let it feed my fish, but if its not a nice baby then I won't"

At christmas time I even caught him one afternoon balancing on his bathroom stool in front of the tree, moving alllllll the ornaments from the bottom branches to the highest branches he could reach.

When I asked him what he was doing, he said,

"I'm just moving the ornaments up high so when I have a baby it won't get them and put them in its mouth"

Yeah.

Heartbreak city.

I know that even though I'm comparing his childhood to mine and Randy's, its not like Madden knows what he's missing cuz he doesn't know anything different than this.
But it still makes me sad that he is missing out on the experiences that come with growing up with siblings close in age to you.

However, if I was ever going to have to experience infertility, I am extremely thankful that it is secondary infertility.

That I am already a mom.

That I have a constant miniature companion to keep me company and cheer me up when I'm feeling sad.

He makes it all so much easier than it would be if I didn't have him and had to go through this childless.

My heart aches for women who experience infertility without having any children.

I can't even imagine it.

On the sad days, he makes me laugh.

On the days I just wanna stay home in my sweats all day, he gives me a reason to get out of the house.

On the stressful days, he keeps me busy and takes my mind off of things.

And on the really hard days, Madden is the only reason I get out of bed.

Ya know how they say every cloud has a silver lining?

Madden is my silver lining.

And I'm so thankful I get to be his mom.

At first, I was convinced there must be some very specific reason why it wasn't in Heavenly Father's plan for us to have another baby when we wanted one.

I thought maybe we weren't supposed to have another while Randy was still in school because it would be too much of a financial burden.

Maybe my schedule needed to be free to work part-time our last year in Chicago.

Then I thought maybe Heavenly Father knew our cross-country move would be hard and that Randy and I would have to live apart during part of the transition when he started his new job in Az.

And maybe He knew throwing a baby into that mix would've been too much.

Sometimes I even thought, maybe our next kid is going to come with a lot of challenges or we are going to have multiples or something crazy like that so Heavenly Father is spacing my kids out a little more to make it a little easier on me.

I thought of every possible logical reason why this would be His plan for my family.

But lately I just feel like there may not be any reason for this trial other than simply to test my faith.

To humble me and teach me that I am not in control, He is.

That I can make all the plans I want, but He is the one who knows best.

And if that is what I gain from all of this, then I am thankful for this trial and this lesson.

The other day I stumbled upon this quote below:

“Most of my major disappointments have turned out to be blessings in disguise. So whenever anything bad does happen to me, I kind of sit back and feel, well, if I give this enough time, it’ll turn out that this was good, so I shouldn’t worry about it too much.”

I don't even know who said this, but it rang so true to me when I read it and I just loved it.

I'm not saying I am glad this hard thing is happening to me, because no one wants to experience pain and heartache.

But I do believe that when we are tried and tested and going through some of our most bitter trials, it is then that we grow the most, that we feel the most love from our Father in Heaven and that we are able to count our blessings and find joy in the simple things.

I have so much to be thankful for and I do believe that everything works out, eventually, for the better.

Sometimes its just hard to understand when "the better" isn't what we hoped it would be or imagined it would be.

But I do know that Heavenly Father is in control.

That He knows me and knows my family.

That He knows our trials and our heartaches.

And that He does have a plan in store for our family.
And that, in the end, it will be even better than the plan I had planned for myself.