Just four months after Anna was born, I took a pregnancy test. I hadn’t really gained back my cycle, I was on birth control and we were trying to control my cycle with the birth control. I took the test and it was positive.

I literally panicked. I looked at my tiny baby on the floor and thought “how could we do this to her? We are just getting to know her and now this?”

We are not ready for this.

I grabbed a Diet Coke, jumped in the car and drove to the nearest drug store for another test. As I drank my Diet Coke, I cried knowing that it was the last one I’d have for a very, long time. (I thought I was crying about the Diet Coke but in reality, I was crying because I wasn’t in control of this, it wasn’t in our plan and okay, maybe it was a little bit about Diet Coke.)

Less than a year after Anna was born, I had become a stay-at-home Mom and Noah arrived. A ten pound baby boy who spent the first two weeks in NICU, while we had a one year old, who couldn’t even walk, at home.

That first year was so difficult. Who am I kidding? Those first two years were so difficult. I put my interests aside and did my best to focus all of my attention on these two children. When Brian came home from work, I would run all of my errands just to get away. For two years, I was the only one who mowed the lawn because staying home with these two babies all day long, it was a tough job and mowing the lawn was a break for me.

And now, my goodness. We have Noah. This gift, this treasure that melts my heart, who makes me think, who fills my motherly soul with so much pride that I’m not sure I can hold much more. (but I can.)

People would ask how I do it…my response? I just do.

Four years after Noah was born, I laid on the ultrasound table, Anna and Noah in the dark room with me, I watched as the ultrasound tech failed to see two beating hearts that were thriving just two weeks before. These two hearts that we already loved so much. The four of us, Anna, Noah, Brian and I would sit and dream about all of the moments, the diapers, the sleeplessness, the crazy, the crying, the joy.

And in this one horrifying moment. It was gone.

Brian walked into the room, I cried into his chest.

“I can not do this.” and I meant it. I physically and emotionally could not handle this. I wanted to die. or I just wanted the pain to stop and if that meant dying than so be it because that pain…

hurts. so. much.

We did it. We were sidelined from life. We were the focus yet we were removed. Life was quiet after that, so simple. The little joys were gigantic joys; like butterflies and sunshine falling on my shoulders, sitting at red lights were a welcomed pause from the world, not an annoyance.

Slowly, recovery. Life began again, differently, softly. We are still learning to trust, still working on faith, still so grateful for those twins that we held so briefly in our arms on the cold night in February.

I watch people, I listen to conversations, I send quiet messages to other Moms “be still, do not wish away, love it all, even those challenging moments you think you can not conquer.”

Because you will.

We did. We would not have planned Anna and Noah to be so close in age but the day Noah was born, a relationship was born, too, between two children, one that is bigger and deeper and more amazing than I could have have hoped, no, ever have planned. It seemed someone had a bigger plan for us.

I truly believed when the twins died that I would not recover, that I would be forever sad, forever changed, forever lost but instead…the joys, the love, the laughter, the life in our everyday is so much greater because of them. Because we lost.

But yet, we didn’t.

You can’t plan everything and if you do, you could missing out on so much that life has to offer. And that? That is true loss.

I look back on this past year of my life and it feels so vivid and dreamy, you know, like one of those realistic dreams you wake up from and it sticks with you all day long.  That’s how my life feels.

Friday night, I was casually browsing the interwebs, which I rarely give myself time to do anymore and I came across support sites for babies lost, it sent me barreling down that dark place, remembering what it felt like to lose James and Jake.  Reading stories about deliveries and holding still babies.

Part of me wanted to hole myself up in a closet and be totally left alone.  But the other part of me, the stronger part of me, maybe, encouraged me to go to bed and count my blessings, one. two. three.

four + five.

Each one uniquely mine.

I laid in bed and thought about Anna’s hilarious laugh and her ability to act like a teenager when she’s just a seven year old.

I smiled at the thought of Noah holding my hand at church and whispering to me “this is really nice time at church with my family.”

I pictured myself kissing Eli’s chubby cheeks and looking deep into his eyes, wondering what he has seen.

and I dreamed of two angel babies, watching over the family that loves them so much.

I drifted off to sleep.  Happy.  Healthy.  Thankful.

I woke up to a lego trophy for “best Mom.”  And a baby boy with a tiny tooth set to emerge any day now and an monstrous mess of papers, laundry, food, crumbs, with my name on it.

But happy. healthy. thankful.

Nothing else matters.

Elijah turned five months old yesterday.