The Story of Benjamin Thomas Love

This is really long. I have never recorded this story so I'm taking the opportunity to do so now.

Two years ago, this week, I was very, very pregnant and wondering when my little Ben would decide to make his entrance into this world. My pregnancy had been smooth and uneventful, but the actual pregnancy itself, had been quite an unexpected event in my life. After 8 years, lots of doctors, hormone pills and injections, money and lots and lots of faith, Lizzy was born. According to our infertility docs, my chance of getting pregnant without their assistance, a petri dish, microscope and an Embryologist, were pretty much non-existent. In fact, when getting ready to do in vitro for Lizzy, the doctors tried to talk us out of it because our chances were so low that it would work.
For this reason, I did not let my hopes get high that we would have another child. I didn't want Lizzy to be an only child but by the time she was about 17-months-old, I had resigned myself to the notion that we would need to adopt if we wanted to have more children.
Then, late one night, July 1st, 2006, to be exact, I was walking in Wal-mart doing some quick grocery shopping when I started to feel very queasy. Nothing on my shopping list sounded appetizing, in fact everything made me want to puke everywhere.
I hadn't been feeling very well for about a week, but I never throw up, so I knew something was wrong. The thought occurred to me that the last time I had felt that kind of queasy was when I was pregnant with Lizzy.
Eventually, I found myself standing in front of the pregnancy tests. I literally stood there for at least 10-15 minutes debating about buying one. Some of you will understand...after years and years of negative pregnancy tests I banned them from my household. Why waste the money? Why pay money for another heartache? But there I stood, that fateful night, wondering if I should buy one and take it home. Against my better judgment I bought one. My rationalization was that I wanted to rule out a pregnancy so that I would quit wondering.
I went home and with great trepidation, took the test. It was positive. It was positive. It was positive. I am being completely honest when I say that my only thought was, "I would get the one defective test!"
I almost threw it away but then I slowly walked into Troy and showed him the test (he hadn't known about the test in the first place.)
He said, "What's that?"
"It's a pregnancy test. Look at it."
"Oh, it's positive? Does it work right?"
"I think so."
We sat on the edge of the bed in silence for about 2 minutes. Finally Troy said, "Are you sure?"
"Well, I have another one, I'll take it in the morning." That was the conversation - we went to bed.
The next morning...it was still positive. I felt numb. Not the feeling I thought I should have been feeling. It was Sunday. I went to church and looked around at all of the other women who were pregnant or had new babies. I felt incredibly...normal. I was just like all those other women. I didn't have a $25,000 baby growing inside of me that had been cultivated in a petri dish for three days. I knew what it felt like to be surprised by a pregnancy and wonder how far along I was. I knew what if felt like to know something that not a single other person on the planet knew (besides Troy). But I was still not jumping up and down for joy yet.
I called my doctor the first thing Monday morning. After Lizzy had been born the infertility docs noticed something they thought would be a problem if I were to ever get pregnant again. My local doc wanted me to see him asap to check it out. I tried to be patient as I lay on his examining chair, waiting for the sonogram to begin. Finally he began and immediately we saw on the screen what he called, "the pregnancy". I thought, "Yeah, we shouldn't get too excited yet." I was only 5 weeks along, he said, so "the pregnancy" was really just a blob. He wanted me to go back in a week to check it out again.
I don't think we told anyone that week - the longest week of my life. Some days I was sick and some not. On the days I wasn't sick I would think, "See, you're not really pregnant. It is just some weird growth" The week passed and I found myself, once again on that same wonderful examining chair, waiting to see "the pregnancy". We saw it. It was a little bigger but no heartbeat yet. He wanted me to go back in two weeks to find the heartbeat.
Two weeks later, we found the heartbeat. I was still so numb. I just couldn't believe it was happening. For the next few appointments, until I knew for sure there was a baby inside of me, I fully expected the doctor to say, "Why are you here? You're not pregnant." But there was a baby inside of me and on February 22nd, at 11:45am, Benjamin Thomas Love entered this world.
During the first couple weeks of his earth life I had the strongest sensation that I had been missing him my whole life but hadn't known it. Not that I hadn't felt similar feelings with Lizzy, but these feelings were very strong with Ben. Even at that young age, he filled some part of me that must have been sealed shut so I wouldn't notice it was empty. A place in my heart came alive. I needed this little boy in my life. Maybe I felt this way because I hadn't pleaded with the Lord for him to come. I just assumed no one else was coming and so to have him there the "normal" way, when the "normal" way wasn't "normal" for me, was a testimony that the Lord knows what - or who- we need more than we do.
My little Ben is such a blessing and I will be eternally grateful and honored to have the opportunity to be his mother.