A Brief History...

I found out last Tuesday that Eric and I are expecting our second child. We are excited, nervous, scared...

We were blessed with a daughter in 2004, who - due to pregnancy complications - came into our world 5 1/2 weeks early. Pacey had minor complications of her own, but was healthy and has grown into the sassy little girl who is asleep upstairs. I am diabetic- have been since age 16. When I was diagnosed I kept picturing that awful scene in "Steel Magnolias" where Julia Roberts blood sugar drops and she messes up her hair that Dolly Parton had worked so hard to perfect for her wedding day... anyway, Julia Roberts plays a diabetic who gets pregnant against her doctors advice and ends up dying of kidney failure...yikes... that is a lot of anyone to handle but even at 16, I was concerned about whether or not I would be able to have children...

Due to our complications with Pacey, Eric and I were reluctant to have anymore children. I was never told that we couldn't, I just always felt that we were so blessed with Pacey, when so much could have gone wrong, that why should we even risk it... but we both wanted another child. Neither of us had ever pictured our lives with just one child but we couldn't get past the fear of what could have gone wrong. Don't get me wrong, we didn't dwell on it, we celebrated Pacey and loved every minute of being a family of 3 for nearly 4 years.

Almost 2 years ago, I found out that friends of ours were expecting their second child. Their first had been born 6 days after Pacey. We had planned our pregnancies together and knew that our little girls would grow up together. News of their conception made me realize that they were growing as a family but we weren't. Up till that point I had been fine with only having one child, I had told people (you know the ones that ask you everytime they see you "So, when are you going to have another child?" or "Pacey really needs a baby sister or brother!" or "You don't want her to be an only child, do you?") that sometimes you just need to count your blessings and be greatful for what you do have, a wonderful, perfectly healthy baby girl. But the truth was, that I did want another baby, I did want Pacey to know the joys and pains of having a sibling, I did not want her to be an only child... that night I did an internet search for Pre-Eclampsia or PE... that was the complication that led to my emergencey C-section with Pacey. I could not believe the horror stories of mothers who lost their babies to PE and the fathers that had lost their wives... I was devestated, heart broken, and blessed all at the same time.