a person's a person. no matter how small.

I was reading Horton Hears A Who (Party Version apparently) to Tobey that we had gotten from the library recently. I love reading Dr. Seuss, and I think Tobey really likes him too. I pretty much have One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish memorized.

The famous line from Horton Hears A Who is "A person's a person. No matter how small.", and it got me thinking about Adrian. I would be about six and a half months pregnant with Adrian now if it wasn't God's will to take him/her to heaven early. It's not something I talk about a lot, nor do other people talk about miscarriages, but Adrian was a person, no matter how small. He/she deserves to be talked about, to be loved, just like Tobey is and just like any of our future children will be.

I got pregnant with Adrian the first time I ovulated after we had Tobey, who was 12 months at the time. It was kind of funny because I knew I was pregnant at 3 weeks because I saw the evidence of implantation and I started to feel pressure in my lower abdomen, just like I did with Tobey. The date was April 8th, and since I had no period before nor was I tracking my fertility, April 8th was the only date we had to go off of.

Okay, so that last part wasn't the funny part. Here is the part that was funny: So we knew I was pregnant, but we needed to confirm it with a test. Since we are on a tight budget, I got a $1 test from the dollar store. It was a few days early to get a positive test, but we took it anyways. Adam and I looked at it for a few seconds, declared it negative, and threw it away. The next day, I was laying in bed trying to take a nap when I had the thought that you are supposed to wait 3 minutes after you take those tests to get an accurate reading. I ran to the garbage, and wouldn't you know! It was positive! When Adam got home, I showed him the test. No words could describe how excited we were.

I didn't want to go back to my old ob that I had for Tobey's birth for a variety of reasons. So I went to my gyn who I love but doesn't deliver babies. She recommended a midwife at Emory John's Creek. While I feel like a traitor going to Emory because I love Northside, I knew this midwife was right for me. With my gyn, we came to the conclusion that December 22nd should be the due date, but when I went to the midwife, she did an ultrasound which showed me measuring a week behind so the due date was tentatively changed to December 31st. Right then I knew something was wrong. It would have been impossible for me to be 5.5 weeks pregnant instead of 6.5 weeks pregnant. But the midwife said that the ultrasound looked good. The sac was nice and round; it would look like a prune otherwise.

Two weeks later I had another appointment so we could see the heartbeat and get more accurate dating. This time Adam was able to join me for the appointment. When the tech did the ultrasound, all I saw was a prune on the screen. Remembering what the midwife had told me during my last visit, I knew what that meant. The midwife was called in to give us the bad news. She was wonderful in how she talked to us. She said that it isn't over until it's over and to not loose hope, but brace yourself for what may happen. She talked us through how to prepare for a miscarriage and said she would let me go as long as possible to pass the baby naturally. (Had I been with my old ob, I'm pretty sure she would have scheduled me for a D&C the next day.)

A few days later, we had the miscarriage. It was only physically uncomfortable for a short time. My friend Abbey came over to be with me and help with Tobey during the worst of it. A couple of my friends brought us meals during this time which was so unbelievably helpful. I really didn't want to do much of anything. But then, it was all over, and my body was normal again.

Adam and I were sad by all this, but we see God's hand in all that has happened. Adrian has brought us to a better place in our marriage and in our lives in general. The little boy or girl made the world a better place in the short 9 weeks that he or she was on this planet. God just had better plans for Adrian than we did.

We had different names picked out for this child, but we wanted to have a gender-neutral name. Adrian seemed to fit the bill quite nicely. We picked out the middle name of Esme, which is a French name that means loved, but I am thinking we should change the middle name to Julian because my miscarriage occurred on May 22nd, which is my saint's day, St. Julia of Corsica. May 22nd was also exactly 40 weeks until Tobey's birthday, a very significant amount of time when you are dealing with life and pregnancy.

In a way, I feel as though I desire heaven just a little bit more knowing that Adrian is up there. Adam and I say that we accomplished our mission of getting our children to heaven, at least with one child so far. We plan to have a Mass said for Adrian, but we are not sure when yet. Hopefully before December 22nd which I still consider to be his/her due date.