My Three Sons

Last March, about two months after my grandma had passed away, life was of course moving on and we were all gathered at one of Elliott's indoor soccer games.  As we mingled at the end of the game and everyone started walking out of the gym, my mom pulled me aside, towards the two remaining folding chairs in the gym, and sat me down, knee to knee.

She looked me in the eye and told me that she'd had an inspiration to tell me something important.  She told me, as well as I can remember, that after a conversation with my grandpa a few days before, she'd felt a prompting to tell me that I needed to have a big family.  I was taken a bit off guard because two kids was pretty much all I could handle at the moment.  And, even though Ross and I had at one time discussed that when the Chick was three, we would have "the talk" about adding a third (seriously, I mean we'd just start talking about it.  No action, lots of scenario planning), I was pretty content.

I immediately asked my mom, wanting to keep things fair, if she had a prompting to tell my sister the same inspiration.  She said that this didn't have anything to do with my sister, just me.  My next question was, how many kids constitute a "big" family.  She said she didn't know, but that it was more than two.  She had a strong feeling that my grandma was in heaven lining up spirits to send down to earth and that at least one or more of those spirits were intended for me.

Gosh.  Thanks mom.  No pressure, right?

Well, I proceeded to do what I do best - put the idea out of my head and ignore my mom and her impression.  Another baby was not something I was ready to consider at the time and I wasn't really sure if ever.  Did I want another baby?  Sure.  Who doesn't want a cuddly, squishy ball of goo to love and dote over?  Unlike a lot of people, I absolutely love newborns.  I could hold a baby all day long.  Mobile squirts stress me out but little balls of squish?  They melt my heart.  But last March, a baby was the last thing on my mind.  Instead, it was full of thoughts of moving, my husbands overwhelming job, the upcoming trip to Disneyland and, well, laundry of course.

As with all things like this, I kept my conversation with my mom between me and Ross, and did my best to put it out of my head.  We probably had more preliminary conversations leading up to "the talk" than we would have otherwise, but by the beginning of the summer, the thought was completely out of our heads.

In August, I had a momentary lapse and thought - "Oh no!  I have to have a baby right now!"  There were a few weeks of panicked and calculated discussions but you don't see a baby in my arms right now so obviously, I backed myself off of that ledge.  Instead, I thought that if I were going to have another child, I needed to get healthy.  This was the spark that got me started on my exercise and healthier eating kick - 3-5 days of exercise a week, lots of sweat and sore muscles saw me drop 10 pounds and a bunch of inches really quickly.  I liked seeing results, even if I wasn't really losing any weight, and felt that this was the right track for me.

Both of my grandmother's celebrate birthdays in September, five days apart.  My Grandma Huber's birthday is September 13th.  The days leading up to her birthday saw me as a very emotional and totally depressed and distraught grand-daughter.  I was so sad that she was gone from the earth.  I visited her grave, taking some beautiful flowers from my yard.  I cried myself to sleep at night, just not sure where the overwhelming emotions were coming from.  It made sense to be sad, but it didn't make sense to me to be THIS sad.  Once her birthday passed, the emotions lingered, but were manageable.

September however marked the beginning of the holiday season, a time of year that was terribly important to my grandma because she loved to throw parties and every month in the fall and winter proved the perfect opportunity for all of us to get together to eat and hang out.  I completely avoided Halloween and all the potential emotions surrounding it, but could not get out of Thanksgiving.  This was to be a Thanksgiving were we were present.  It was at my grandpa's house.  Everyone was stressed out because we didn't know how to feel or act or be.  There was just such a hole where my grandma should have been.

I spent the week leading up to Thanksgiving with terrible insomnia.  I was sleeping a solid hour or two a night and the intense emotions of September were back.  I was exhausted and sad and just felt so overwhelmed.  There were long tear filled conversations with my husband at night but I just couldn't shake the sad.  Of course the holiday was great.  We had fun.  The food was good (as good as Thanksgiving food can be).  I brought crafts and projects and all of the grand kids hung out in the basement playing and laughing and beading bracelets and playing drawing games.

But, I just couldn't shake this lingering feeling.  There was a big gaping hole and without the knowledge of how to fill it, or how to make the feelings go away, I was really struggling.

As November creeped into December my nerves got the better of me and the anxiety hit strong.  There were a couple days that I popped 1/2 of an old xanex because I couldn't calm myself down.  As best as I could, I kept all these feelings to myself, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get my grandma out of my head.

Then one morning, a clear morning, I awoke calm.  After months of blocking it, the thoughts of my March conversation with my mom returned to my head and no matter what I tried, I couldn't stop thinking about babies.  Not just babies, but that my mom was right.  My grandma was lining up spirits in heaven and that my indecision, or ignorance, or both, was preventing a person from getting to this earth.  Then, as if an anvil had been dropped onto my head, my emotions of the last few months became clear.  It was my grandma trying to talk to me.  She was flooding my brain and my thoughts, helping me to find my path to the inevitable.

My mom has always told me that when you are thinking about someone who has passed away, that at that moment, they are with you.  They are holding your hand, in your presence.  That their spirit is with you.

Well, if that's true, and I believe it is, then my grandma was spending months of her valuable time in heaven trying to get through my thick skull something that had been so clear.  Once I figured it out I had to work up the courage to tell Ross that our plan to wait until Wyatt was 3 to have the discussion about having another baby was moot.  I had made my decision and it was time to get our act together.  In our ordered, organized lives, that was the most "throw caution to the wind" I had ever been.

The week after Christmas I didn't feel well.  We had been out returning Christmas gifts at some local stores and ended up at Wal-Mart.  While the boys were in the return line and then wandering to get a few items, I headed to the drug store section and bought myself a box of pregnancy tests.  If I remember, Ross wanted me to take one that night.  I didn't.  I did however wake up that morning to use the bathroom, probably around 5 am or so and decided to take one then.

It was positive.

I left it on the bathroom sink for Ross to find when he got up in the morning.

After the initial shock of the whole thing wore off, and I took a couple more tests I did what I've done two other times....I pretended it wasn't happening.  My husband was out of the country and I didn't have time to be sick or worry about the whole thing.

But, after Ross was gone a couple of days, as I was sitting alone at the computer waiting to skype with him, I went to babycenter.com and looked up a due-date calculator.  I entered all the numbers and dates the calculator asked for and when my due date appeared on the screen I burst into tears.

September 13, 2012.

My Grandma Huber's birthday.

This baby boy is a confirmation that blessings are sent straight from heaven - and in my case, as a direct message from my grandma that she loves me.