1. God is who he says he is. 2. God can do what he says he can do.

Jeremy and I were so excited about our newly discovered pregnancy. We couldn't believe that our infertility journey had ended and our life as parents had just begun. I immediately called to schedule my first doctor's appointment with Dr. Ken Taylor who I have been seeing for several years. Our first appointment was on August 25, 2008. We couldn't be any more excited as we walked into the office that day. Dr. Taylor came in and we answered tons of questions, I gave blood, and urine and he examined everything he needed to examine. Then he asked the question we had been waiting for... "Would you like to see your baby's heartbeat?" OF COURSE we would! We had been waiting to see that little heart beat for years! This would make this dream a reality... we couldn't wait! It wasn't long before they had us back in the ultrasound room and had me hooked up to the ultrasound machine. The radiologist waited a few minutes as she took a closer look and told me that the doctor must have the dates wrong because the baby's heart wasn't beating yet. She said this was perfectly okay for a fetus that was as young as she was measuring. I swallowed the lump in my throat and my heart began beating again. Whew! The baby was okay, just younger than the doctor had thought. When we walked out of the room the nurse directed us back into the doctor's office. She said he wanted to speak with us before we left. He closed the door as he entered his office and he told us that in a "normal" woman, this ultrasound would look perfectly normal. He said that he would chalk it up to the fact that he just didn't have the dates right and this was a younger fetus than he had thought. However, the dates weren't wrong because I was on fertility medications. They had to be right because he had them written in the charts. He told me that this happened in about one out of every five pregnancies and especially in first pregnancies. The baby just stops developing a few weeks into the pregnancy and the heart stops beating. I remember the room spinning and me feeling as if I was going to throw up all over his desk. How could life go from such a high to an immediate lowest of lows? I was a wreck... completely heartbroken. I wanted the pain of the last couple of years to be over so bad... I wanted to move on with our lives, our plan so much. I began to cry uncontrollably and in fact, couldn't even drive myself home. However, between the doctor's office and home I put myself back together again. I called my mom and my best friend and they called everybody they could think of that would pray and believe God to breath life into this baby. I called our friend Paul, because I needed to speak with someone who would understand the anger and sadness I was feeling when I thought about this baby being taken away from me. We were very careful about who we told what during this time. We only wanted those to know whom we knew would spend serious time in prayer for us and no time speaking negative things over us or offering advice because we didn't need advice we needed a miracle. We were quickly overwhelmed by the response we received from our friends and family and even people that were friends of our friends and family. People truly began to seek the face of God for us and believe God for a miracle to occur. The amazing thing was that the more these people prayed and believed, the stronger I felt and the more I believed. To this day, I continue to thank people for their prayers and their faith because it got me through that terrible time. The doctor said we would wait three days and take my HCG levels to see if they are dropping as they should be with a miscarriage. Then, we would do a second ultrasound to make sure that there was no heartbeat before discussing what to do next. The mere thought of going through more pain and loss haunted me. It was the longest three days of my life. So, three days went by and I had my blood drawn first thing that morning. By that afternoon the results were in... DOUBLED! My HCG levels had DOUBLED! This was a great sign! However, Dr. Taylor took the phone from the nurse who was giving me my results and told me that I still wasn't out of the woods. He wanted a second ultrasound in two weeks. Two weeks went by incredibly slowly but it gave me two weeks of the most spiritual growth I've ever had. I fell in love my savior again during these two weeks. I began to know that 1. God is who he says he is. 2. God can do what he says he can do. The morning of our scheduled ultrasound my husband and my mother accompanied me. It seemed like the clock seconds ticked by so slowly as I sat in the waiting room and listened to the nurses whisper "that's the girl whose baby's heart stopped beating." I felt hot all over and tears come to my eyes, but I quickly fought them back and whispered "You are who you say you are and you can do what you say you can do." Soon we were back in the ultrasound room, I was hooked up, and the tech turned the lights down. I waited, and my heart pounded in my chest as she turned the monitor toward me and said "Do you see that little blinking Christmas light? That's your baby." Lots of tears of joy followed. I remember very clearly the text message that I sent out to many of our closest friends who had been standing in prayer all morning long... it read: "We just saw our beautiful, healthy, whole baby with a perfectly beating heart.!"