Before I continue on telling the story of our tragedy turned triumph, lets not forget how it all started.

I used to be so impatient about getting pregnant. Like a child being told they can’t open their presents Christmas morning, I was chomping at the bit for years for my turn. We were married when I was 23 and Jake was 24, which in most opinions is fairly young. Having been together since my senior year in high school, we always knew that we wanted a family together. For me, that family could start as soon as May 25th 2008 (the day after our wedding). But, out of general good judgement and my decision to return to school to become a teacher, we decided to wait.

I decided I needed a plan in early 2011, when I first started hearing my “clock” ticking. People laugh when I say that, but my 26 years of age felt like 46 to me. I had been ready for children since I was a child, and I had decided that my waiting was over. Jake and I talked, planning out when and if we got pregnant. We came up with a small window, between August and October 2011 to get pregnant; this meant that the baby would be due anywhere from April to June. Perfect planning for a teacher, I was thrilled that I would be finishing my degree and having our first child in the same year. To put this in “normal people’s” terms – it was like being told you’re going to win the lottery. Each day until August felt like a month, but it finally came sooner than I thought. Then we had a crazy thought..
One day in early August we got the itch for a new home. We started looking on the internet, driving around neighborhoods, trying to find something we could afford while still living off only one salary. The next thing we knew, we were putting the house on the market and scrambling to give our little house a mini facelift to entice buyers. It must have worked, because our house sold in three days. Eight years of our life was about to be gone, and I had no idea that an entirely different life path for us was already in progress. We found a perfect little neighborhood in city limits and within the school district I wanted a job in, so we decided to build. This would mean three months living with my in-laws, which was a small price to pay for a new house in such a short time. We packed up and headed out and into the next chapter of our crazy little story called life.

Three weeks after moving out, I fell in love with a piece of plastic. It had not one, but TWO lines in the little round window of hope; I was pregnant! Of course, just one test is never enough evidence for a woman. So I took three more tests. All positive, I set an appointment with my family doctor and spent the next three days thanking God for what he had given me. I had to pinch myself, literally, to make sure that I wasn’t in some sick, never ending dream. The positive was finally confirmed by my doctor, so I started planning how I would tell Jake. Who am I kidding?! I knew all along how I would tell him he was going to be a daddy. I found a card with a baby on the front, holding a book that read “How to Parent”. On the inside was a special message from “baby” to daddy, saying it would be here in late May of 2012. It was tradition that Jake always got cards on occasions from our dogs, er, children; so this was no different in my eyes. It was the first of many special hand-written (forged by mom) cards to daddy; I gave it to him on the foundation of our new house on September 15th 2011,christening our new home with its very first special memory.

I was looking so forward to Christmas this year. Hopefully I would be out of the morning sickness phase of my pregnancy, and starting to finally really “show” my baby bump. I knew that my family had already bought some baby-related Christmas presents, and I couldn’t wait.

But mostly, I couldn’t wait to find out what Baby P was. I had laid everything on the line that there was a little girl inside me, and just about everyone else agreed. There were a few times when I would daydream about “her” and I would stop myself and think – but I know it’s not a girl. I felt like I was debating or reasoning with myself; I felt so strongly that it was a girl, that something inside told me to doubt myself. I also thought God knows how stubborn I am when I think I’m right; I bet this is a boy just to show me to stop trying to plan every detail of my life.

So we decided to go ahead with the 4D ultrasound, just to find out the gender. Our appointment was set for Monday December 19^th, and I was counting down the hours. The plan was to have a copy of the ultrasound picture with the baby’s name on it for each of our family members, as our fun little way of announcing the sex. I was so excited to see the look on everyone’s faces; they all thought that we were waiting until after Christmas to find out.

Just a small hurdle, the only thing standing between me and Christmas break was a few final exams. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the start to what would be the semester when I was due to have the baby. Of course, a few final exams meant late night studying and increased stress. So I decided to space out my exams, which initially were scheduled all on one day. My body could hardly take being at school for 9 hours at a time, let alone braving 3 or 4 exams in one day.  I spaced them out, one a day that week. Thankful for such understanding professors, I didn’t mind that kind of schedule.

Monday morning I woke up around 5:00 am with the strangest sensation. My stomach was rock hard on the left side, and I could feel a rounded object up against my abdomen wall. My heart stopped beating for a second, unsure if what I was feeling was normal or not. I woke Jake up, and told him that I was scared something might be wrong. At the same time, I was excited that I was most likely feeling our baby for the first time. Just to be safe, I called the doctor that day and described what had happened and how it felt. Sure enough, they reassured me that I was feeling our baby, despite me only being 16 weeks pregnant, due to a full bladder and my petite body frame. I was ecstatic!

I went to sleep Tuesday night with mixed emotions; it had been a long day. Tuesday included an exam, a stressful situation during my toddler class at Acro which required me to diffuse a furious father, and trying to study for my next exam on Wednesday morning. I was also happy, because I had woken up again Tuesday morning feeling the same thing I had experienced Monday morning. I couldn’t wait to see if I would feel it again Wednesday morning, and throughout the rest of the week.

I got up Wednesday, threw on some sweats and headed to take one of my last exams for the semester at UNCC. I was chipper that morning, especially when normally I felt like I had been drug up a mountain in the mornings. On my way to school, I made sure to text message Jaime Gatton and get some details squared away for our “gender reveal” photoshoot. We had decided to allow Jaime and our photographer Pam to surprise us with the baby’s gender: the doctor’s office would call Jaime with the baby’s gender, and she would then fill a big box with either pink or blue balloons. Pam would capture the moment that we saw the balloons on camera, and we would always have the emotions of the moment we found out our baby’s gender on a photo. I was so excited, and surprised that Jake was going along with the idea. It was only 5 days away, but I was prepared with a to-be-embroidered stocking that would be our baby’s first personalized possession.

Time pressed on as it always does, but somehow it seems to morph into “slow-mode” when you’re pregnant. It’s probably because from the second you find out that test is positive, you want it to be 40 weeks later with a baby in your arms. Naturally, I was no different. Like a child marking off the days to Christmas, I kept the weeks logged in my planner and every day was one less day until May 27th.

Those days were long days, however. I started getting sick the weekend that I was 6 weeks along. I thought I had the flu, I remember thinking there’s no way this is pregnancy related, it can’t be this bad. Oh boy was I wrong! Every day from there on would be a gambling game called “What smells will make Jamie sick today”. It ranged from meats (very common, I know), to perfumes and spices – but the worst smell of all was cinnamon. The one and only time during my pregnancy that I ventured into Walmart was the final straw for me. It was a good 2 months until Christmas, but you know they had cinnamon covered pine cone potpourri lining the front of the store. As if it were a “Jamie barrier” to prevent me from coming any further into the store. Point taken, and I did not set foot in Walmart again.

I remember making deals with God, bargaining and pleading to not throw up as I walked into classes at UNCC most days. It did no good, as I wound up spending about half of each class running to the bathroom. Thankfully all of my professors understood and were more than gracious when it came to my daily 30-minute late tardies. I didn’t know it then, but these same professors would wind up having a much larger impact on my life than just turning a blind eye to my attendance record.

Thanksgiving came finally, and guess who didn’t partake in any turkey? This girl. It was a sad story, but chicken and turkey were not my friends at this point. I was okay with that, I always wanted to be a vegetarian anyways but never had the willpower. As any mommy-t0-be would, I started to worry about eating enough and getting enough protein; so I found other means of nutrition intake. Cottage cheese and cereal became my best friends, and nightly dinners. I still had hope that once I passed that threshold into my second trimester that the sickness would magically disappear and I would be able to eat again. I had no idea that crossing into my second trimester was about to mean a whole lot more than losing the morning sickness.