When you were a child, did you ever plan out how your life would be?
I did.
I’d go to college, get married, teach school for a couple of years, then be a stay-at-home mom to three kids, two boys with a girl in the middle.
That’s exactly how it all unfolded….at first.
I married my husband the summer after college graduation and we both started teaching in a Christian school. Four years into our marriage, we decided it was time to start a family.
[Isn’t that cute??! We decided. Yes, in our naiveté, we just assumed it would happen. Only it didn’t.]
After a year of not getting pregnant, I went to see my doctor. He asked that we wait a bit longer before doing any testing. When we approached the two-year mark with no child on the way, he agreed to run a test, which showed that everything seemed normal. He prescribed a medication that he thought might help things along. I was supposed to start taking the medication the following month, but before I did, I found out that we were expecting a baby.
By this time, most of the couples our age already had babies. We were thrilled to be on the road to joining them! We were so excited – as was our family, especially since this would be the first grandchild on my side. It was fun to finally start looking at baby things – thinking about how I’d decorate the nursery, which brand of stroller we should buy, what name we should choose.
All of this happened in the spring of 1997, so I let our school administrator know that I wouldn’t be coming back to teach in the fall. Since the beginning of our marriage, we had planned and saved so that I would be able to stay at home with our children.
While teaching, I had always gotten office work through a temporary employment agency during the summers. I did the same this year, intending to keep the temporary job until the baby came. I got a wonderful assignment working in the administrative offices of a hospital.
As the weeks progressed, I was healthy and felt relatively good. All of my prenatal visits went well. We had decided not to find out the gender of the baby, but were still very excited about my 18-week ultrasound appointment. The doctor’s office said we could bring along a video (yes, this was in the old days!) to record the ultrasound and show it to our family later.
Our appointment was on a hot Friday afternoon in mid-August. We walked in to the office, so excited about “seeing” our baby for the first time.
To be continued next Monday…
Your plans were a lot like ours: to be married for a while then start a family. I praise God that He allowed things to happen the way we wanted them to. And I look forward to reading more of your story next week.
Thanks, Nikki! Hope y'all have a great Labor Day!
Very smart start. We also planned early for me to stay at home, so it wouldn't be a struggle to go down to one income.