give it up, man!

this post is the third post in a continuing series.  see my last two posts, are you my mother (surrogacy) and contra seption & ives (birth control).

it doesn't seem that my past two posts have been connected at all.  and they both really just drop off mid-thought.  because that's the way i do things, you know. 

so here's the beginning of a little tie together.

as otter pop and i searched for a means of birth control that wouldn't be a foreign contaminant to my body, we prayed and found peace in God's will.  it ended up being, not the foreign substance in my body as much as what the foreign substance would do to make my body not work the way God made it to work.  otter pop had a deep rooted conviction, maybe because of his first daughter's birth, that babies are miracles and blessings.  to take away the possibility of that miracle, he felt, was just a slap in the face to our creator and who are we to slap Him?! 
when otter pop explained it to me like that, i realized that he was right.  my daddy told me once that if you wait to have a baby until everything is right, you'd never have one.  but you know what?  God knows the perfect timing.  He can make it right! 
together we decided to leave our baby-making decisions up to God.  we both thought that even He would agree that we had our hands full (at four) and were plentiful blessed.  we even got a dog to even our families gender unevenness out for the boys.  we were satisfied.  we were happy.  well, about six months later we discovered that i was pregnant again.  honestly, we were both kinda shocked.  not pleasantly either.  we weren't mad or angry or anything like that... just kinda discouraged that we both "knew" that we had enough children to complete our family and God STILL gave us ANOTHER ONE!

 well, that pregnancy was amazing.  it was wonderful.  ---i've always had easy pregnancies.  i don't get very sick.  i don't get overwhelmingly tired.  i don't get so hormonally imbalanced that i can't function.  really, it's just an amazing experience for me to make a baby and carry it until it's ready to enter the outside world.  i love it.  otter pop does help me acknowledge that i do have some of that disease where you don't remember everything (or the bad parts) of pregnancy... but really, it's just not that much of the pregnancy, so it's not worth remembering the tiny bad parts when there is so much good!---  but back to what i was saying... i had an amazing pregnancy and then birthed the sweetest little boy!!! 

now we both look back and are SO THANKFUL for the blessing God gave us when we thought we were all done!!!  i can't believe how much our family has grown and changed because of another little baby. 

at the beginning of that pregnancy, when i still wasn't thrilled with child #5, we discussed the option of getting my tubes tied afterwards.  otter pop claims that he didn't realize it wasn't a permanent procedure, so that's how he validated it in his head, but i knew.  the WHOLE pregnancy long i was second-thinking the procedure.  and even at the end, decided that i just couldn't do that. 
we had given our baby planning up to God, and i just didn't feel right about taking it back.  so we were back at square one... but with five kids... 
stay tuned...

Try to remember, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." COMMENT! IT SHOWS ME THAT I'M BEING READ!!!