Things will be changing soon in the Bottorff house. Our party of two (plus one furry friend) will soon become a party of three. There is a new nursery coming together in the room that used to be our office/music/junk catcher, and the spare bedroom where four framed prints from the twins’ “things that go”-themed nursery still hang, has become the new office and instrument hub.
Things are different this time around. We have been blessed with a blissfully boring pregnancy. No high risk issues, no biweekly ultrasounds, no looming bedrest. We are pregnant with just one baby, one healthy baby girl. And we are thankful.
We have decided that this little girl will be named Josephine; a female variation of the Hebrew name Joseph which translates “Jehovah increases.” We feel that this is a fitting name for this child of ours as she is a testimony to the Lord’s work in our family. He has indeed been at work in a way that increases…He has increased our joy because of this child. He has increased our understanding of His heart as a Father, of His love for His children, and of the riches of His grace.
As I mentioned above, this has been a medically normal pregnancy. We are thankful that there are no lingering physical effects of our loss from last year; however, this has not been a normal pregnancy on many fronts. It has been hard to walk these many months with so much focus on what is to come while wading through all the memories of what was, and what almost was. Our boys were due December 25 last year and our daughter is due November 12 of this year. The timeline is very similar, only 6 weeks difference relative to the time of year. I found myself comparing the pregnancies quite a bit over the first and second trimester. More nausea with Josie, more fatigue with Phin and Bram. More doctors visits and ultrasounds with the boys, more waiting and worrying with our girl.
The month of August was particularly difficult as we approached the one year anniversary of the boys’ loss. I kept thinking about what I was doing a year ago – celebrating our Phin and Bram with friends at my baby shower, organizing pairs of matching baby clothes, mentally preparing for an extended hospitalized bedrest. I found myself drawn back to the present with the increasing frequency of little kicks and jabs and stretching motions that this sweet little girl likes to inflict on her mama. Precious reminders of the gift that we so anticipate. Reminders of the joys yet to come. It’s a complicated and sometimes confusing thing to live between these two worlds. To have to pause when a stranger sees my ever-enlarging belly and asks “is this your first?” After struggling with what and how much to share, I have found that the response “this is our first take home baby” seems to work to answer their question truthfully and with the least amount of discomfort. Sometimes I will share about our twins who are with their heavenly Father, sometimes I just smile and let it be.
We marked Phin and Bram’s birthday a few weeks ago with a nice dinner out where we shared what we remembered from that week and what we are excited about this pregnancy. We also drove over to our church to see the Linden tree our fathers planted last fall in honor of the boys. We snapped a family photo by the tree and hope to continue that tradition over the years. Those photos will serve as an Ebenezer, if you will, of the growth of the tree and of our family. Just little remembrances of God’s faithfulness. We wrapped up the evening by putting up a crib in our new nursery. One of the two cribs that we had purchased last summer for Phin and Bram, now re-purposed for their little sister. It was a sweet day.
It would seem amiss to me to wrap up this post without mentioning the many dear friends who have blessed us during this time by the outpouring of joy over this pregnancy. I am humbled by the response of our church and our family. So many people have gone out of their way to express their joy at our news. So many have graciously acknowledged that this pregnancy is a sweet gift, while not treating it like a replacement for our loss. We are thankful.
The Lord increases. He is faithful and He continues to be good to our little family. We used a verse from the Psalms at our wedding to sum up our feelings about that day and about what it signified – it seems appropriate here as well:
This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
-Psalm 118:23