Here is a little sneak peak of what we were doing yesterday as a family! We met up with Heather and Bernie from Captured Memories Photography at Haney Heritage Park in Salmon Arm to take pictures of Krahn Baby #3 - also better know as Hayden Ezra! They also took pictures of our kiddos too.
I am just over 37 weeks now with 15 days left to my induction date of August 20th. Hayden seems to be very comfortable and I have a feeling he is going to stay put until he no longer has a choice to come out! I look at the collage above and am reminded of how amazing my life is. I have a husband whom I love and adore and who loves, cherishes, and adores me. I have two healthy adorable children, with an ever growing tummy holding #3 inside. This picture sums up everything I need and will ever truly want. A family!
There was a summer many years ago that all I longed for was a life partner to share the ups and downs of life with. It was the same summer that I had 12 weddings to attend in 12 weeks. I think I was able to go to 8 of them. I was so happy for my friends who were getting married, and at night though I cried because I wanted some too! Little did I know that a year later Jeral would come into my life. I will never regret waiting for him. We do not have a perfect marriage, we have a work in progress, yet one in which we know we love each other. Then after getting married we had to journey the who fertility road, talk about testing a marriage. As friends and family were having kids we were excited for them and privately we ached for our own. We had our close friends who we trusted with our tender hearts in this area, and well my then counselor Joy witnessed the gut wrenching tears and sobs many times.
Then came the road to adoption, and road we held off on until I was read to handle someone asking deeply personal questions. We had decided that being connected by biology and DNA was not what would create a family for us. We knew the love in our hearts would created a bond with our children that would be stronger and longer lasting than any blood ties. And I was ready to walk away from every carrying a child in my womb, after all carrying them in my heart was and is way more important in my opinion.
While on the road to adoption Jeral decided he really wanted us to give the fertility clinic a try, thus the second road/journey came about, and on the same day we signed off on our home study we did the simplest procedure and least costly one that we could do at the Kelowna Regional Fertility Clinic. I never expected it to work. After all I have friends who have done the same procedure many times over and it has not worked for them. So I busily kept getting our profile ready for the Adoption Agency we were going through, and did not clue in that I was more so than normal hormonal and grumpy. Well it worked and Jaris was created. Looking back if we would not have traveled the fertility clinic road we would not have MacKenzie. If I would not have gotten pregnant we had been picked like 8 weeks after we gave the adoption agency our profile for a baby boy, and if we had not been honest about my being pregnant then we would have two boys.
So back to the adoption road, after we were picked and then unpicked for the little baby boy we closed our profile. My heart just could not handle all the ups and downs. And I was almost in the second trimester so it was time to shut it all down anyways. So a side not while I was pregnant with Jaris God kept telling me that my daughter was safe inside her mother's womb. I naturally thought that meant I was pregnant with a little girl. When we found out we were having a boy I was first and foremost happy that we had a healthy little boy, and then just thought well I heard wrong and that is okay I am human and fallible. Two weeks later while I am in Abbotsford I get a phone call from the adoption agency about meeting a birth mom who had our profile and who really wanted us to considered adoption her child. I immediately emailed Jeral as I was at a silent retreat and asked him to pray about it and we could talk about it when I got home on Sunday. While praying and asking God for clear direction I felt as thought God was saying that we got to make the choice, he was not telling us what to do. I got a little mad I wanted to go home to Jeral and say God told me this is the door we are supposed to walk through. Instead I kept getting you and Jeral get to make a choice and either choice I will bless. However one day as I was showering I did feel God tell me that if we chose to adopt this child this was the daughter he had told me about. I told one person my spiritual director for the weekend. Well December 21st MacKenzie Joy Krahn was born, our daughter.
Then 3 months and 6 days later Jaris Zachery Krahn was born, and at the time we thought those were our two roads/journeys to growing our family and we were done.
Well 15 days (or maybe less) from now road number 3 will come to and end of it's own and join up with the other roads into the road we call our family. Never did we think I would conceive a child without any medical intervention. Well I actually have conceived 3, two of whom are in the loving arms of Jesus, and shortly we will get to hold our son Hayden Ezra. I won't lie these last days feel as though they will take forever. I just long to hold him in my arms, to look into his sweet face and say I am your mommy and I love son! For me carrying my babes in my womb is not as big of a deal and a long as it is to hold them in my arms.
Three roads/journeys converge into one to create our family. I have more than I could ever have dreamed of!
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