Baby update #2

Our special Christmas gift

I had my 20 week ultrasound last week and got to see our baby again on the big screen:) It is amazing how much it has grown since our last ultrasound which was only three and half weeks ago. Everything is looking good and baby is measuring normal from what they can see. The baby is also measuring a week ahead so my due date was showing up as April 29th, so not sure if this is going to be a May baby or an April baby. I am now officially past the 21st week mark of when we lost Faith. It is a little bittersweet. I am thankful to be where I am at in this pregnancy but I do wish Faith was still here too. From now on this pregnancy will be new things for me, I haven't been 21 weeks and two days before so I am excited to keep getting to experience this amazing miracle of carrying a baby. I can feel the baby move all day long and makes me smile each time, I don't think this could ever get old. Bryce got to feel it kick for the first time last night and he got so excited, it was cute! God has really humbled me through this. Not a minute goes by that I am not thankful for this baby and don't want to take any of it for granted. My belly maybe growing faster than I want it to, I may not be able to sleep through the night anymore, and my legs may be starting to bother me but all of this is so small compared to the blessings that He has given us.

Baby Update

I had an ultrasound today and just wanted to share with you all that everything is looking great so far! I am 16 weeks and 2 days. The placenta is right where it should be and baby was moving all over the place! I would share a picture but we couldn't get any that weren't blurry:) Just another reason to be oh so thankful!!

Forever Grateful

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days throughout the year! This year I have so many things to be so grateful for. Bryce and I have started a list and I will share a few with you:

• Jesus Christ's sacrifice for our sins and the eternal life we have and the country we live in that allows us to openly praise Him.
• Our marriage and the bond that we have
• Our daughter Faith and what she has taught us this year
• My pregnancy 
• Our house that has heat and food.
• Amazing family and friends
• Brown Water Coffee
• And lastly but very important-Our men and women serving our country 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and won't be distracted by all the Christmas shopping craziness that is already going on and enjoy the day with your family and friends. 

A Brother or Sister for Faith

I have been so horrible at updating my blog but I just had to wait because I just couldn't keep this news in, so I avoided blogging.Yes, I am pregnant again!! It is really no secret but most that read this live away from us and may not know yet. I just started my 2nd trimester and I am really starting to feel good. I made it past the week that I started having complications with Faith, so that feels good too. We feel so blessed to be able to try again and pray everyday for this baby and my pregnancy to go well. God has taught Bryce and I so much this year about His will, timing, and love for us. We will never understand the "why's" in life but we know that God is good and that He loves us so much. We trust Him with this pregnancy and know that this is His child.  So that is what is new in our lives. This summer was also the launch of Brown Water Coffee! Our best friends Tana and Ricky have had a vision for this business for over a year now and they launched the business in August and it has been amazing! Ricky came to Bryce in February asking if he wanted to be apart of it to do the financial side of it. Bryce had been praying about it since we first heard their vision in December of last year and felt God was calling him to be involved so when Ricky came to him, Bryce knew he needed to do this. It has been a lot of work for them, especially Ricky but we are confident in God's will for this business. The website is www.brownwatercoffee.com For every bag sold Brown Water will give some of the profit to clean water projects. Most people ask where the name came from and it is drinking brown water(coffee) so others don't have to. It's brilliant!!

First Belly pic of our little pumpkin

Italia

I am finally posting about Italy! Not much I can say but AMAZING! If you have not been there, GO, you must!! After 24 hours, four plane changes and one train ride we made it to the most beautiful place in the world, the Cinque Terre. The next six days were spent eating, site seeing, laying in the sun, browsing the little shops and more eating. We spent a few days in Florence, but not much to report there. It was great and a place you should go if you are in Italy but I recommend finding a more remote place to spend most of your time (unless you are wanting to spend all your money, the shopping is incredible). The trip was too short, I admit I cried when we boarded the plane back to the states. Bryce and I are so grateful we were able to get away and focus on ourselves and each other for a week. Our favorite part of our trip was our room in Vernazza, one of five villages in the Cinque Terre. It was right above the Mediterranean Sea, our balcony over looked the sea and we woke up and went to sleep listening to the waves crash against the rocks. We are convinced it is the best room in the whole Cinque Terre.  That pretty much sums it up.

Honoring our baby girl

Yesterday we had a burial for our baby girl. We decided to have it this weekend because May 30th would have been my due date. I am so glad we did the burial it was very healing for Bryce and I, and now we have a place where we can go and family can go to talk to her. I talk to her all the time so I don't know how often I will visit her at the cemetery.

Tomorrow will mark the end of my pregnancy and what it could have been. I know it will be a very hard day but I am almost a little relieved too. I have spent the last four months wondering what my belly would have looked  like as we got closer to this day or what life would have be like if instead of making arrangements for a funeral if we could be making arrangements for the arrival of our baby.

We love Faith as though she were here with us. It is hard to move on from something like this but we can move forward in knowing that we will see her again.

We love you Faith, rest your head on halleluiahs. 

Finding Contentment

Wow, in less than a week Bryce and I will be on a plane heading to Italy! I have been probably at my lowest time since loosing our baby and I keep thinking to myself we just have to make it to Italy and everything will start to get better. Well God decided that the way I was thinking was not ok and He made it very apparent that I need to learn the secret of contentment like Paul did. It all started on Friday evening with a much needed talk with my most wonderful husband and my attitude and view on life is being completely transformed. Thanks to God telling a good friend that she needed to share a book with me, The Power of a Whisper by Bill Hybels, I am understand our God in such a life changing way.  I am learning to shut my mind off and just listen to God's word. Right now He has been giving me the sweet whispers of encouragement and guiding me on how to cope with this grief. Instead of laying in bed crying I get down on my knees and cry out to Him. It's amazing how fast He picks me up! I am also learning that in any situation I need to find contentment. It is still a work in progress but I am working on stopping to think things like, I need a baby to feel content again. I know that it would maybe help, but it isn't going to make everything all better. Unless I give God control of everything I will never feel content. So I can now say, as hard as it is, I am grateful for what God is teaching me through loosing our baby. If it had not happened I wouldn't be in place I am today. It doesn't mean I am not sad or not still fighting this grief, because I am everyday. Bryce and I both are and it is ok. I have finally came to reality that I am not going to pretend to be something I am not. I cry all the time and I will cry anywhere. My really good friend, who is pregnant and is due a week after I was supposed to be, got to see that the other day in TJ Maxx. I was having a very sad day and cried in every store I went to that day (my pride is gone) and she happened to be at TJ Maxx and I just cried to her. At first I was upset that out of all people she had to see me like this, I didn't want to risk loosing our friendship because I couldn't keep it together(that is just my irrational thinking). I wanted so bad to put a smile on my face and suck it up but I just couldn't. Luckily I have the greatest friends a girl could ask for and she listened and talked with me and got my mind off the pity party I was having. I know that I can't rush this grieving process, I just need to let it happen. I am so thankful for the people around me who just let me cry and listen, they don't look at me like, "wow Sara it has been over two months, let's get it together about now." I will get it together, and I am. Everyday does get better and each day brings a new opportunity to make it better. My sweet dear friends in Washington just lost a friend who they were so very close to. I talked with my friend yesterday and she is just starting this grieving process but she already has seen good come out of it. The darkest moments are sometimes what is takes for us to see the light. She is learning that everyday is precious and to take advantage of each day with people you love. That does sound cliche, as she said to me over the phone, but it is so true. Always tell the people around you that you love them and give hugs without thinking twice about it! I know a family that tells everyone "love you" and they do truly mean it and when you are around them you can feel that love they have for others and eachother. I am over the American standard of living: getting married, buying a house, having kids, retirement, work hard to make good money. Bryce and I's new standard of living: love everyone, be the best wife and husband that we can be, buying a house is overrated and can keep you from hearing from God when he says GO(wherever that may be), working over 40 hours a week and sometimes on the weekend is no future for us  no matter how much money you make, living each day with contentment, stay out of debt, and the most important let God lead you and transform your inner most core.

A Taste of Italy

In not much more than a month Bryce and I will be boarding a plane to Italy! Our wonderful sister-in-law told us of a place called Cinque Terre. She spent a semester in Italy and this happened to be her most recommended place. It is right on the coast of The Mediterranean with a cluster of five villages. The pictures are amazing! We were able to find really cheap plane tickets. With money we saved we can now spend more money on food and wine!! Now we just have to figure out where we will be staying when we get there.

Ciao

Choose a Life of Faith not Worry

Bryce and I were out shopping on Saturday and came across this saying :Choose a Life of Faith not Worry." I just love it and had to share it with you all. I feel after our loss I have been able to control my worrying. Most of you who know we well know that I worry about everything, seriously, everything. It was always something I didn't like about myself but just thought it was my nature. I knew that it was wrong, worrying about everything was a choice, I chose to feel that way.So I now choose Faith and I can feel so much peace now. I still have moments of doubt and worry but they don't last as long. So I challenge those of you who also spend a majority of your time worrying like I did to choose Faith and see what peace God will give you.

It has been almost three weeks since loosing our precious Faith. Bryce is back at work and I am working only a couple days a week. I am enjoying having some free time to meet with people and get some house work done. We are trying to make a new normal in our lives right now, trying to get used to living each day with this grief. It has only been three weeks, but it is still frustrating how hard this is. Everything I do reminds me of her, I go to the store and everywhere I turn is pregnant women and babies, being at home I think of how empty our house is and how I long for it to be filled with cries of a baby. I don't want any of you to think that when I see a pregnant girl or a newborn baby that I am bitter, it just makes me sad and I think of Faith. I am very happy for everyone who gets to experience the joy of parenthood and I know that God has a plan for everything and His plan was for Faith to not grow up in this world but in heaven with Him. We are moving along everyday and keeping a hope in our hearts that someday we will get to have a baby. We will never, ever replace Faith she will always be our firstborn and our hopes is that she is the firstborn of many younger brothers and sisters.

Faith Marie

I have been wanting to start my own blog for awhile now but I haven't made the time to do it. Now that my life has taken a sudden 180 degree turn I feel now is as good a time as any. Most of you know that Bryce and I were expecting our first baby in May 2011. Having a baby was something I had wanted for awhile, Bryce on the other hand wanted to wait. It was our 3rd year anniversary that he presented a book to me called The Best Foods to Eat When You Are Pregnant. God was tugging at his heart to rethink starting a family. We started trying the end of August and it didn't take more than a month to find out we were expecting our first baby! The joy was indescribable. Things were going along as they should, I was sick pretty much everyday for a month in the beginning and my belly and appetite started to grow. I was about 13 weeks when things started to turn. I started having signs of miscarriage and was in and out of the doctors for two months. It was Christmas Eve that things were really bad and I was finally diagnosed with Placenta Previa. After that visit to the doctor I decided to cut my hours at work and start taking it really easy. And a week later I would find out after another doctor visit that my water had broke and that I could go into labor at any moment. Fear had taken over Bryce and I. We were devastated, why was this happening? I was put on bed rest and just had to pray and hope that I didn't lose what little fluid I had left and that I didn't go into labor. Two weeks passed and on Monday January 17th I went into labor. I lost all my fluid and I was starting to get an infection in my uterus and if the baby didn't get delivered soon I could lose all chances of ever having a baby again. Faith Marie Bennett was born at 8:42pm that evening weighing 14oz and 10 inches long. Being in labor with her is something I will cherish for the rest of my life. I was supposed to have a c-section but God allowed me to deliver naturally. We didn't know what we were having so it was so exciting to find out that for 21 weeks I was carrying a little girl, she was perfect! Bryce and I got to spend about 10 minutes with our angel before she passed. Those 10 minutes were truly unforgettable. Bryce and I have learned so much going through this. We have learned about God's control and His will for our lives. We are still very much grieving losing Faith but we know that we will see her again in heaven. Pastor Steve Strutz did her memorial and gave us three things we need to do through this: lean into the suffering and embrace it, lean into each other and most important lean into God. I couldn't agree with him more. And we are doing just that.  We are so amazed at all the prayers and support we have received through this. We are getting cards in the mail constantly from friends and family but also from people that we don't even know but have been through this similar situation. We have had meals everyday for over two weeks, we are getting phone calls and text messages of encouragement, we have flowers brightening every room in our house and we have had company come and just be with us to listen, talk and laugh. We have felt every single prayer and have seen God in every blessing given to us. We are so grateful for everything, no words could be enough to express that.