Why maddie may be an only child.

If you haven't already discovered C. Jane, please do. She is a mormon mommy blogger, but she is just so eloquent. She is my role model. Her writing has this way of soothing you and inviting her into her life at the same time. I could only ever dream of writing like she does.

Just yesterday she posted about her heart-shaped uterus. I was shocked. Yet another thing I have in common with C. Jane, although, I wish it was something no one ever had to have.

She highlights her miscarriage as a result of her condition. I sat there at my computer desk, just sobbing. I had heard the possibilities of what could happen, the "side effects", of having a heart-shaped uterus, but I have never had to face them. We were lucky. So lucky.

When Maddie was born, the doctors told me that I had the most severe case of bicornuate (heart-shaped) uterus they had ever seen. The odds that maddie had grown correctly with no complications were slim. very slim.

So I went home, grateful for my amazing blessing and tried not to think about it. Which has been easy to do. Babies have this habit of taking up your time so that you don't even want to consider having any more kids. Not that I don't love her, and all babies, really. But when you're sleep deprived, you only want to think about whatever will get you more sleep, not less.

Now that we're quickly approaching maddie's 1st birthday, people are starting to ask "when is maddie going to become a sister?". I don't blame them necessarily. If I were normal, the answer would simply be "as soon as I'm in my last year of grad school." But I'm not normal. and the answer isn't so simple.

How do I explain without horrifying them that another pregnancy puts me and my baby at risk of dying? How do I gently tell someone that I don't have the strength to have a miscarriage? How do I explain that maddie was nothing short of a miracle, and even then it took us a year plus to conceive her?

And there it was. C. Jane's blog. A story about someone who hadn't been so lucky. A baby who never received a spirit. I couldn't do it. Not emotionally, not physically.

So here I am, facing facts. My condition isn't just some medical term any more, and my side-effects aren't just an after-thought.

I, Amber, who dreamed of having six kids, may only just have the one.


Maybe one day we'll be able to adopt, although it's a complicated process that doesn't tend to favor parents who already have children.

But for now, it's just the one. And you know what? We've really come to peace with that. For now, our family feels whole. Goodness knows, she keeps us plenty busy. And we're blessed. So blessed.

I am continuously convinced there is a divine reason maddie is here with us today. The odds were stacked against us, against her, and yet she is with us, continually changing us into better people. Whenever I am tempted to wish that we had waited to have maddie until later in our lives, until after graduate school, a voice in my head whispers to me that there is a reason for her timing.