Oh friends, I am in tears! I cannot even find the words to say!

We went in today for our follow-up appointment to confirm a miscarriage and dear ones, we saw a HEARTBEAT!! 138 beats per minute – the most beautiful heartbeat I have ever seen in my whole life! All three of us – Jon, me and the ultrasound tech – were just staring at the screen in shock and the tech, bless her heart, finally said, “Well…That is a heartbeat!”

 It is a miracle. I am shaking. I am so overjoyed, overwhelmed, completely and totally IN AWE of our great God. Our great GOD!!!

The baby is still measuring small (though there was 5 days growth since Wednesday!!) and I am still spotting, so we are not out of the woods yet. PLEASE PRAY. Please, please, please pray for our precious miracle baby!!

Our God is the worker of miracles!! He is the creator of ALL! Praise His name forever and ever! Oh, friends, the comfort I have felt from Him this week and the joy I have from Him today! Blessed be the name of the Lord!!

“Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and creates new things out of nothing!!!!” Romans 4:17 NLT (emphasis mine)

“He is the one you praise; He is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes.” Deut. 10:21 NIV

Bless the Lord!! Praise His holy name with me!!!

These last two days have been okay. I’ve been praying hard for God to give me grace and He has given it. It doesn’t mean that everything is fine or that I haven’t continued to cry and grieve, but He has been faithful.

It is hard. It may always be hard in some sense. This morning Nathan lifted my shirt so he could kiss the baby and I immediately started crying and had to try to explain to him that the baby was in heaven with Jesus. Hard for an almost-two year old to understand.

Hard for a twenty-seven year old to understand.

I have heard from so many of you and I’m so thankful for each and every one of your emails and messages. My heart breaks for every one of you who have been here before. Know I am praying for you constantly.

The more I’ve read on the subject of miscarriage, the sadder I get. The odds are one in four pregnancies will end in a miscarriage, particularly in an early miscarriage. One in four. How many millions of parents are out there struggling right now? How many families are heart broken? And how many of them are trying to make sense of it without the knowledge of Jesus or heaven?

It makes my heart ache.

We have been attempting to fill the days with activities to give ourselves a little distraction from all of this. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. We went to a baseball game last night – there is a minor league team in town. Nathan was in heaven – particularly when they started shooting off fireworks after the game. That’s all I’ve heard today. “Beeball? Yay! Wywort? Boom!”

He also had his very first swim lesson yesterday. He did pretty good, but since he was in Gammy and Pops’ pool, he had a hard time grasping that he wasn’t there to play. Afterward, Jamie brought mini ice cream sandwiches for everyone:

Life goes on. Sometimes I have a hard time even with this fact – I want everything to stop until I have come to grips with it and then carry on. I have had my eyes opened though to the amazing miracles around me – my son. My husband. My Savior. My parents and siblings. My in-laws. My wonderful friends.

We are loved. Our house smells like a florist shop. I know my baby – even though their life on earth was so very short – was cherished and loved. That means the world to me.

This has been one of the longest weeks of my life. In some ways, it seems like lifetimes ago that we were blissfully planning a trip to the zoo a week ago today.

We got to see our sweet baby’s heartbeat last week at about midnight on Friday night. I will never forget the relief that flooded through my heart right then – or the terror that washed over me on Wednesday when we couldn’t see it anymore. My doctor’s office has a big screen suspended over the bed in the ultrasound room and I gripped Jon’s hand and fought back panic as the ultrasound tech searched and searched for our sweet little one’s heartbeat and came up with nothing. We could see our baby, but no flicker on the screen to let us know he/she was okay.

It was not how I expected Wednesday to go. This was not how I expected anything to go.

Honestly, I am struggling right now. I don’t understand why we had to wait and pray and hope for a year only to have it end with this. I don’t understand how there could be more glory for God to take my baby than to leave him/her here so that he/she could grow and live and witness to others.

I don’t understand.

I feel like I’m in this tunnel of disbelief at the moment. Mostly because nothing has changed. I barely had any spotting today – I haven’t “officially” miscarried. I feel like I’m suspended in this horrible world where everyone is telling me that it’s over, there is no hope and I’m believing them and grieving for my child and at the same time, I have this tiny, fragile thread of hope that maybe the ultrasound was wrong. That maybe it was all just a terrible nightmare and I’ll wake up tomorrow with a perfectly growing baby with a strong heartbeat inside of me.

At the ER on Friday night, they found several masses near my ovaries and at our doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, my doctor told me that I have endometriosis. She seemed very surprised that I’ve never had any pain with it. I have an almost two inch cyst on my left ovary and another cyst about half that size on my right ovary. She said that this could easily have been the reason it took Jon and I so long to get pregnant and also a probable cause of why all of this is now happening.

My doctor was very compassionate, very sweet. She agreed to let me try to have things happen on their own. After I get my first period, we will schedule a time to do a laparoscopic surgery to remove the cysts. Apparently, a lot of couples are very fertile directly after the surgery, so she has high hopes that we will get pregnant again very quickly.

I don’t know what to think. A very small part of me is relieved to just have a reason of why it took so long. The biggest part of me is crushed that this baby had to die for us to discover it. And as much as I hope and pray we are able to get pregnant again and carry the baby to term, it still won’t be this baby.

That breaks my heart.

I have spent the better part of the last three days in tears. I am so thankful that God gave us this little one for the few short weeks I have carried him/her, but I’m grief-stricken that I won’t be able to ever meet them on this earth. I’ve been asking God why and begging for His grace to handle it. He has been faithful. I have never felt more loved or surrounded by friends and family and prayers than I have in these last few days. Our house is overflowing with food and flowers. My phone and email have been constantly filled with new messages of people praying for me. How thankful I am for each and every one of you. I honestly don’t think I could be doing as well as I am without your prayers.

I am overcome with grief. But I will continue to pray. And pray. I have never in my life been more thankful for my precious, precious son or my wonderful husband or my amazing family.

God is good. I am clinging to that with every last shred of strength I have. Please continue to pray for us. I appreciate it more than I can ever express to you this side of heaven.

My precious baby,

How we prayed for you, how we wanted you and oh little one, how we loved you. You were so, so loved. So precious to us. We rejoiced over you.

I will never know this side of heaven why we weren’t able to meet you. Why I was never able to kiss your sweet face or snuggle with your sweet self. I have so many things that I want to know about you – boy or girl? Tall or short? Dark hair like your daddy or light hair like your mommy? All questions that I have to believe I will find the answers to someday. In heaven.

And oh, sweet baby, how I long for heaven! I cannot wait for the day when I get to hold you in my arms and kiss your little cheeks. Until then, I will have to trust that Jesus is holding you as tightly as I would be. And I know that your great-grandparents are having a wonderful time playing with you and hugging you and telling you all about the wonderful legacy of Jesus that you are blessed to come from.

There are so many things I wish I had the chance to tell you. How much I love you. How much I will always love you. I wish you could meet your big brother who kissed you daily through me when you were here on this earth. I would tell you so much – how loved you are, how precious you are, how much Jesus loves you. Oh how Jesus loves you, little one. The picture of my Savior holding you right now is honestly the only thing that is getting me through this day. That and you being passed around to Tapa, Grandmom and Grandad. I can imagine the joy on their faces at meeting one of their great-grandchildren. Oh how I wish I could see it.

Sweetie, I cannot wait to see you. I miss you so much and there is a part of me I know that will miss you for as long as I’m on this earth. How thankful I am for your big brother to fill my aching arms right now, but you are still missing and that piece will never be complete until heaven.

Oh honey, how grateful I am for our Savior. How thankful I am for this hope of heaven and seeing you there one day. He is good, little one. God is good. I don’t understand why you aren’t here. I don’t understand why we won’t get to experience everything we were so excited for – feeling you kick, finding out whether you were a boy or a girl, holding you in our arms, teaching you about Jesus. But I have to believe. I have to trust. He is good. He is good. He is good.

On the night in the ER, sweetheart, when we saw your tiny heart beating, God gave me a verse. He told me He would never leave me or forsake me. And then I had this wonderful thought – that will be our baby’s life verse. And my precious baby, that is your LIFE verse. Your eternal life verse. He will never leave you. He will never forsake you. You will be in His presence forever! What joy there is in that thought! You will never know pain. You will never know heartache. You are and always will be completely innocent of any of this world’s hurts because Jesus is there with you and holding you now.

Oh how I will miss you.

Your daddy, brother and I love you so much, little one. I can’t wait until Jesus introduces us to you someday.

I love you, my sweet, sweet baby.

Mommy

Yesterday started out well. We had a free day, so we decided to take a little impromptu family trip to the zoo. Nathan LOVED it. And it was so fun – we go often during the year, but Jon doesn’t get to go with us except on rare occasions. I think Nathan was pretty stoked that his daddy was there. 🙂

About 10:30 in the morning at the zoo, I went to the bathroom and found a little bit of spotting. Which worried me to death, but I tried my absolute hardest to not think about it (that wasn’t real successful). We headed home from the zoo about 12:30 and I didn’t spot again until early that afternoon. Then I kept seeing it all during the early evening.

So, needless to say, we were scared to death. I kept praying and praying and I called my doctor’s office and the doctor who was on call called me back around 8:30 and recommended we go to the emergency room.

We spent a VERY long several hours there, first in the waiting room, then in a room. They drew blood and put an IV in, just in case I needed fluids. Then we waited. And waited. And prayed. And prayed and prayed and prayed. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life – except for when Nathan was born and his heartbeat started plummeting right before they decided to do an emergency C-section.

We finally were taken to the ultrasound room and after about ten or fifteen minutes of doing scans, the lady turned the monitor and we were able to see our sweet baby’s heartbeat. I cried and cried. I am SO thankful! God is so good! The baby was so tiny and had the tiniest little heart, but it was beating away perfectly at 108 beats per minute.

We got back to the room and Jon and I just hugged and cried and prayed. There is still a slight chance of something happening since I have had some bleeding, but we are praying and trusting God that His will for this little one is perfect – whatever it is. Since we had a very in-depth ultrasound to check everything, the doctors also found a mass near one of my ovaries. The word “mass” is so scary sounding, but honestly, I’ve never had an ultrasound that examined everything, so there easily could be a fibroid on my ovary that has been there for years and we’ve just never discovered it. I’m supposed to schedule a follow-up appointment with my OB/GYN on Monday. We didn’t end up leaving the hospital until almost 1:45 in the morning.

While I was laying there on the ultrasound table, God totally brought the verse that says “I will never leave you or forsake you” to my mind. Over and over and over again. And I know that promise is for my sweet baby too – whatever happens, I know that God has not left or forsaken him or her.

So…we are breathing deeply and praying hard. We were supposed to be leaving today to go see Jon’s family in California, but with everything that happened, I think we were all in agreement that we needed to stay home and close to our doctor, just in case. We will miss seeing them.

Will you please join us in praying for this little one? Please pray for the baby to continue to grow and develop and for the spotting to stop. I’m going to do my absolute best to rest and not do anything unnecessary over the next couple of weeks. I am so thankful that God allowed all this to happen the month that Jon is off work!

Thank you so much for your prayers!!

Love to all of you,

I was looking through pictures today and realized there have been a few that I’d been wanting to post just for memory’s sake that I haven’t posted yet!

This was me and Leigh Ann on our first Mother’s Day last year:

And we took this one this year!! What a difference, right??? I cannot believe how much bigger Nathan is – he looks like such a little boy now!

Also, a few weeks ago, we threw a Lunch Bunch shower for my sweet friend Eryn. Little Gracie is due the beginning of July and I cannot wait to meet her!

This weekend did not go exactly as I planned, but we made the best of it anyway. 😉

Thursday night, our community group was canceled, so we headed over to Chick-Fil-A after dinner for some drive-thru milkshakes. I craved these SO bad with Nathan, so I guess it’s no surprise that he loves them now! 😉 Nathan thought he was big stuff that night:

Friday, we had a great morning playing with our neighbors and then having lunch with Leigh Ann and Hayley and so I felt absolute terrible when Nathan woke up running a 101.7 fever after nap. 🙁 Lots of sick exposure. This was a yucky virus. He ran the fever for two days and got a terrible rash that went along with it.

 Bless his heart. This was how he wanted to watch his Me Mo that afternoon when Daddy got home:

We took him to the doctor just to be sure it wasn’t anything more serious. Apparently, he had big sores in the back of his mouth and the doctor asked him if he’d like a Popsicle and Nathan said he would like a “puwrpuh” one. We also had to drag Lucky all through the waiting room. At least I talked him into leaving his blanket in the car!

 By Sunday afternoon, he was pretty much back to normal except for the rash which is finally fading today. Poor kid. He looked like he had some awful tropical disease.

He’s also been shortening his naps – I used to be able to set the clock by him. He’d go to bed at one and wake up at four, but lately he’s been doing two hours if I’m lucky. Oy. Add in two deadlines, fatigue and morning sickness and I am SO thankful that Jon has the month of June off!! I have a lot to get done!

I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!! Did you do anything special? Also, question for you: What are some of your favorite summertime dinners?? Particularly for the grill? I am running out of ideas… 🙂

Congratulations, Gabby!! I’ve sent you an email! 🙂

Thanks so much for all your sweet comments! I do hope you enjoy Identical Differences! 🙂

Have a wonderful Memorial Day, everyone!

Just in time for summer reading! (Preferably by a pool or a beach, right??)

Yay!! 🙂 I’m so excited for you guys to meet Lexi and her crazy family. I do hope you enjoy Identical Differences! Here’s a little blurb for you:

Alexia Patterson has spent her whole life waiting to get out of small town Longsville, Oregon. Her twin sister, Rachel, is a completely different story. When Rachel calls to tell Lexi that she’s engaged and asks her to come back for a few weeks before the wedding, Lexi is anything but eager to go home. Add in Justin MacPherson, a guy she’s hated since junior high, and the two weeks are not looking good. Surely God’s plan isn’t to make Lexi insane…right?

This is a Kindle-only release but you can still read it even if you do not own a Kindle! If you have an iPhone or smart phone, you can download a free Kindle app from your App Store. Or, if you have a computer, you can download a free app for your computer (follow the links here!). 🙂

And, to stick with the theme of good summertime happenings, how about a little contest?? If you’d like to win a free copy of Identical Differences on Kindle, leave a comment with your name and email address (if you’d like to avoid spammers, leave your email like this: erynnmangum AT gmail.com)

I’ll draw the winner Sunday night! 🙂 Yay!!!

Today was one of those days where it didn’t go quite like I planned. I was planning on staying home and getting the house cleaned, but we ended up going to the doctors to make sure that a rash that showed up over the weekend on Nathan’s arms and knees wasn’t anything serious. It looks like my sensitive skinned boy officially has eczema. 🙁

Then we came home and I felt so sick the rest of the day, so we just hung out and watched movies and read Go, Dog! Go! about eighteen times. He has been so funny lately – he will just randomly find me in the house and hold my hand for a few minutes before going back to whatever he was doing. It’s so cute!

He really wanted me to take his picture with my phone, so he ran across the room and posed. 😉 Goofy boy.

Jon had Bible study tonight, so Nathan and I entertained ourselves with Photo Booth on my computer before bath time. He kept looking at us in the screen and then turning real quick to look at me like our faces had really turned into that. Ha!

And fun news!! I’ve got a new novella (and a new contest!!) coming very soon! 🙂 Stay tuned!

Have a good night! 🙂

Wow, we have had a busy week!!

On Thursday night, my cousins Taylor and Troy came in town for a long weekend and we’ve had a lot of fun with them – Nathan is very into “Tader” and “Twoy”. 😉

We went to a bounce house with them and it was SO cute to watch Nathan try to fit in with the big boys. He thinks he’s big stuff right now.

We also went to the aquarium with Jamie, Joel, Julia, Hayley and Leigh Ann. This picture is awful – the lighting at the aquarium is terrible, but the kids had a great time.

Afterwards, we met up with my sweet neighbor and her boys at the botanical gardens. I love this picture! They were all watching the miniature train exhibit:

This weekend was probably a highlight in Nathan’s life. He got to swim AND he got his first s’more!! He was SO excited to get in the pool! It is all he talks about now. “Mimi? Pool? Bop? Pool? Daddy pool?”

He was ALL smiles!

Then he had to help Pops grill hamburgers for everyone. This picture just cracks me up. 😉

Afterward, we had s’mores!! 🙂 I love s’mores but I was absolutely terrified of Nathan near the fire pit! Ha! Notice how he’s ten yards away with his hand behind his back?? 🙂

Eventually, though, it did cook and he got to eat it. I think he was a fan. 😉

These last few days I have not felt very good in the afternoons – which is much different than when I was pregnant with Nathan. With him, I had textbook morning sickness. I woke up sick, threw up almost as soon as I got out of bed, was nauseous until about mid-afternoon and then I was usually better by the evening. This time around, I’ve been starting to feel sick about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and just yucky the rest of the day. I’m curious if it will continue like this.

I hope you had a great Monday!