Eleven

I am humbled and amazed to be here today. January 8th is always a strange day for me. We celebrate our lives together, but we also agreed 11 years ago today that we wanted to start our quest for number three immediately after "I do". If only we had known then what sort of journey we were in for! We have celebrated ten bittersweet anniversaries marked with disappointment that we were still only two.

This year there will be no tears behind closed doors. Our day will not be shadowed by another 12 months of disappointment. It will instead shine with hope and overwhelming love! There were so many times I wanted to give up and let the heartache swallow me up, but now, finally on the other side of that broken rainbow, I realize that I would do it all a hundred times over for both of my guys!

Our little fella is such a miracle. My body was in no shape to have a baby and emotionally we had just experienced the biggest heartbreak of our lives when we lost Espe. Charlie made it though and we celebrated every single day I carried him, always with caution and fear in the background. In the end, the fear was overwhelming. The contractions I was having brought up terms like uterine rupture and decelerations. Cholestasis tacked on diminished fetal movement, stillbirth, meconium distress, and fetal demise. Every moment was terrifying and the closer we got to his arrival, the more I was afraid we would never have the opportunity to share our lives with the little person in my stomach.

His arrival was miraculous and the next few days were the happiest and the scariest days either of us have ever faced, but we had each other. The three of us clung tightly to one another and hubs and I prayed and fought hard to help our little guy adjust to the big world outside my belly.

God has blessed us abundantly.

Today we will not have a fancy dinner. Hubs will go to work and I will stay at home with Charlie providing spa services and an all you can eat buffet. We are not giving each other gifts this year and we won't mark the occasion with any special traditions or rituals. We both agree we have already received the best possible gift and celebration of our lives together and it's enough today just to be three.