5...FIVE...five...

so i'm a big blog reader. it's true. if you write a blog, it's possible that i read it. i love love love it. i just find people to be very interesting...which makes sense, considering that some of my favorite reading material has always been biographies. fascinating! call me a dork if you want to...but i know you have a hidden dorky hobby, too! and i also just realized that i made myself sound like a creepy stalker...i promise, i'm not a creepy stalker. :)

in my blog reading adventures--see, it's so exciting to me!--i find myself constantly inspired and uplifted by other women...everyone has a story to tell, even if we think we don't. some of the most touching to me (lately) have been mother's sharing their stories of how their families came to be. you know, life doesn't often turn out the way we plan...

so anyways, i have been thinking long and hard about whether to share "my story"...the one about how in the world i came to be a mother of 5 kids in 7 years. and i think it's time to get it out there...for those of you who don't already know. :) i will try to keep it short(ish)...but 5 kids sorta makes for a long story...

once upon a time, dave and amy fell in love. that's a different story, though, so we're going to skip ahead just a little bit...

"the plan" was to wait a while after we were married to begin our family. not a long time, probably a year. we wanted 8 kids...sounded like the most perfect number to both of us! we even put 8 little diamonds in my wedding band to symbolize our 8 little babies. 2 days after our wedding we both felt very much that we should start our family soon. we talked about it, mulled the idea around, and decided that "soon" meant less than a year. we also decided right away that there were a bazillion worse things that could happen to us than to have an unexpected baby join our family... okay, we'd settle into life and take it from there. 9 months and 6 days after the wedding...baby #1 joined us! we were not even done with the honeymoon phase and we were dealing with cravings and morning sickness and ballooning weight gain. nice. i got right down to the business of being a mom. joseph was a blessing and a joy, and i wouldn't change a thing.

joseph was almost a year old when we started talking about when we wanted to add to our family. no sooner had the discussion began than, voila! we found out we were expecting aubrey when joseph was 11 months old. we told everyone at joe's first birthday party, that was fun. it was even more fun that aubrey was due right around my birthday! this pregnancy was physically easier than the first--i was so sick with joseph--but emotionally exhausting. my mom passed away when i was 8 weeks pregnant. my dad remarried soon after and we made a sudden move from utah to missouri with only 7 weeks left until my due date. aubrey was born on my birthday...and we fell in love with our little baby girl!

everyone we met...walmart, church, the park, dave's work...told us how lucky we were to have our boy and girl...now we could be done! it always startled me a little bit, i guess i hadn't really thought about that. of course we knew we weren't done growing our family, but the first year of aubrey's life was difficult for me as i battled severe post-partum depression. we weren't ready to jump back into it as quickly as we had before.

little gracie was born just a couple of weeks after aubrey turned 2. it was a joyful time in our family...we had "planned" this pregnancy, and life in all other respects was good. we didn't talk to a single person who didn't tell us that "3 kids is the killer"...so we were prepared for all heck to break loose! thankfully, 3 was the easiest transition yet. dave and i were both worried about the depression returning, but thankfully we never saw that yucky stuff again!

although 3 children was not a difficult transition, neither dave nor i felt that baby-hungry feeling for quite a while. we made a new "plan". :) i had abandoned the 8 kids notion shortly after having joseph...it was just harder than i thought! we were going to wait until gracie was 3, then get pregnant again and have 2 children close in age. and then be done! awesome plan, it would work very well into my life...

spencer came out of left field and was born when gracie was just a few months past her 2nd birthday...no big deal, i'm easy! we'll just get a new "plan"...which happened to be that we were done. 4 was perfect! 2 boys, 2 girls...no big spaces, i was done before i was 30...yes!!

i was so sure that we were done that i was making "plans" to get that taken care of. you know...i really did feel like i had reached my capacity. spencer was a good baby, but 4 was tricky and i felt like i should quit while i was ahead, you know? no need to go crazy...

what happened next is personal and spiritual, probably not blog material. but i will just say that when spencer was only 7 months old, dave let me know that we needed to hold off on the permanent stuff. i couldn't argue it...but i was not thinking about having a baby. i thought we'd revisit the issue when spencer was in school? or not...9 days later i got a positive pregnancy test.

i cried. and cried. and cried. it's awful to admit, but i really struggled with accepting that last pregnancy. i felt like a victim. please don't hate me...i have repented and in no way do i feel that way today!! but it took longer to get excited for baby #5...i had to remind myself many times over of our original decision, the one about having an unexpected baby not being the worst thing that could happen to us.

my 20-week ultrasound revealed some cysts on the baby's brain. the doctor let me know that although the cysts are usually harmless, they also are an indicator of chromosomal abnormalities. we had to wait 4 weeks for a follow-up ultrasound...and in the meantime, i worried and prayed and realized that i loved this baby so much. all i wanted was a normal and healthy life for her...it was the little jolt i needed to be thankful for healthy children and the blessing of adding to our family.

things turned out fine...the cysts went away and little elizabeth hope was born happy and healthy just a few days before christmas. that year had been a hard one, and little ellie was the perfect bit of hope and happiness i needed to keep moving forward...

so in a big, fat nutshell...that's how i became a mom 5 times over. in hindsight, i see where each of them came at the perfect time for our family, even if it seemed off at first.

you see, things don't always turn out the way we plan...sometimes they turn out better!