Trying to Conceive our second child

My husband & I love our children and are thankful they have been given and entrusted to us. When we dated, my husband had jokingly said he'd love to have eight children and I was still trying to find my ground and wasn't really sure how many, if any I wanted. I am the oldest of three, with a seven year age gap between my brother & I and nine years between my sister and I. My husband is the oldest of four, with seventeen to two years between each sibling's birth. As we started planning our family we thought four would be a nice round number and we thought it would be best to have them within two years of each other.

As we all know, things don't always turn out the way we plan. Matter of fact, it seems the more we plan things, see I am the organized planning freak, the more they go astray or at least have some kinks. Our oldest was born in March of 1995 and I went off birth control when she was eleven months. We started trying to conceive after her first birthday. We figured it would take a few months since I just came off birth control, but we did not think it would take us twelve months, one long year to have a viable pregnancy. Being only 24, the doctor didn't seem too worried and said to just be more conscious of my fertile time of the month.

In August of 1996, I went to the doctor complaining about heavy bleeding and the fact that my previous cycle was so light and short it just seemed weird. Well, since I did menstruate, even though it wasn't anything like a normal cycle, I never thought to take a pregnancy test. So the doctor ordered some blood work. Well, based on the results, his diagnosis was more than likely I had an early miscarriage, but not true confirmation just suspicion. He said there were minor traces of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in my blood, but it was so little that there was no way to confirm that I had been pregnant without a previously positive pregnancy test. So one might say that was the first of many losses we would bear.

Trying to conceive is suppose to be a joyous time, but when you are to the point of month after month planning when to have sex, the joy of trying becomes obsolete because now it's work, a chore. It took its toll on us and actually became very stressful and put a strain on our marriage. Finally, in April of 1997 we found out we were expecting our second child. The pregnancy was pretty uneventful other than having a kidney stone, which I apparently passed, in the third trimester.