First Comes Love…Then Comes Marriage…

When Abbie and I got married back in 2010, we made a promise to each other, God, and the Church community there that we would love and honor each other.  We also promised that we would lovingly accept children from God.  It was more than a promise, it was part of a covenant.  One we intended to keep.

Because Abbie was born with some colon issues, yes I know she has spelling and grammar issues, but not that kind of colon.  I’ll spare the details, but let it suffice that she was born with an oversized colon.  It was something she had to deal with her entire life with diet and medication, but we finally got a surgical fix.  Problem was that we had to make sure we didn’t get pregnant before and soon after the surgery.

We are both against any kind of artificial birth control for many reasons, so we knew that was out of the question.  We had both heard of Natural Family Planning (NFP) but didn’t know much about it.  We learned a little more while on our Engaged Encounter weekend in Cullman as we prepared for marriage.  After that we decided to give it a shot, because it used the natural fertility cycle God created.  We also knew that once we were able to start trying to get pregnant, it would let us know the easiest times for that.

Fast forward a year to the middle of August in 2011 and we decided to go to dinner with Jeff and Kristen Belcher at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Sol Azteca.  For some reason, all Abbie could taste was salt.  We had gotten a few “Not Pregnants” already, so we didn’t really think this was a sign of pregnancy.  We were even out of pregnancy tests and were waiting on new ones to come in the mail.  Shout out to Amazon Prime.

Here comes Monday, August 15th, and Abbie really just wasn’t feeling all that great.  We didn’t really think we were pregnant because of all of the tests that came back negative a day or two before.  But wouldn’t you know it, UPS delivered a brand new box of Clear Blue Easy, a day before it was scheduled!  We took that as a sign from God and decided to give it another try. 

Let it be known that it has been my self-imposed job to read these tests, because I wanted to be the one to let Abbie know, not some little battery-powered wand.  I had gotten quite good at looking at it, and then saying “Not Pregnant.”  Well, this time around there was only one word in that little window.

What were my words to Abbie?  Nothing.  I said nothing.  I had gotten so used to looking at it and then saying to her, “Not Pregnant.”  This time I couldn’t say that…so I just went silent.  I showed it to her and we flipped out with excitement.  We had to make sure though…

So, we tried another one.

There was a third one in the box…so we decided we’d go for the hat trick.

So…there was a good chance we were pregnant!  We couldn’t control our happiness.  We hadn’t really thought of a plan on how to tell our parents, so Abbie just called her mom.  She was so excited to hear the great news.  Next, I called my mom, and she was at work.  So, we had to wait on her to get home so she could be with my dad when we shared the news.  They were both extremely excited and were so happy for us.  We also called Abbie’s dad and we called Sandy, who was asleep in Kuwait.  I think he was excited, but it was hard to tell given the fact we woke him up in the middle of the night.

Because Abbie was craving Papa John’s pizza, and those are only $8.99 on Mondays, we went and got pizza for dinner.  It was delicious. 

We called the doctor the next day and scheduled an appointment.  We had to wait over two weeks before our first appointment, which was agony, but probably a good thing in terms of getting a good ultrasound. 

We’ll pick up with that on our next post…