Lily Jane

Lily’s story began as chaotic as her life has been earth side. She was the addition to our family that truly rocked our world.

I found out I was pregnant for Lily shortly after New Years in 2024. Of course, I was terrified to have another baby because of everything that entails for a Type 1 Diabetic. I knew that my body needed time to prepare in the healthiest state possible and that was not the case when I became pregnant. The initial shock was that I had so many miscarriages previously, that surely this would end in the same way.

As we all know, that is not how Lily’s story ended. At our first appointment, I was given an ultrasound where it was discovered that I actually was pregnant with twins. One was a healthy, growing baby. Whereas, Lily’s twin had not been growing. We were basically told that there was still time for this other baby to grow but most likely, Lily would absorb the other, or I would miscarry. Twins run in my family and have skipped a generation so it was not a complete shock, but again, I never thought this would be my story.

Fast forward about 2 weeks and our whole house had the flu which made my blood sugars pretty much uncontrollable. As you could imagine, I was waiting for the worst. I was waiting not just to loose one baby, but both. We were so blessed that this did not affect the growing baby, but I was still very much in denial that I was even pregnant.

Slowly I began realizing that Jesus had shown up for me because had I continued down the path I was on with my diabetes, it would not have ended well. This pregnancy was a wake up call that I had a family to care for and a husband that didn’t deserve to be left to handle a family alone.

Pregnancy after loss is hard to navigate, even when you have had an earth side baby that is perfectly healthy. I slowly began telling family members and was planning to tell everyone after finding out the gender at our High Risk appointment where they would do an anatomy scan. I stopped taking progress pictures of my belly after that appointment. I didn’t want to hold out hope.

During that appointment, I remember the tech taking a longer time than usual while looking at Lily’s heart. I’ll never forget the doctor coming in and looking at her heart for just as long, but in silence. I’ll never forget when she picked up the doppler and grabbed my hand to inform me that I would need to go get an echo on my baby’s heart because she couldn’t get a clear picture of what she was looking for. I’ll never forget the drive back to work in silence and then having to continue teaching for the rest of that day.

Although our hearts were so heavy we still decided to take our announcement pictures as planned. I am so glad we chose to do this. There was so much joy in this moment.

After multiple echoes and tons of scans, they could only tell us what they thought. Lily had proven to be stubborn way before I asked Jesus to make her an extra feisty little girl. The doctors put her in the category of single ventricle but were unsure of which side was the one in need of fixing. I went in monthly for echoes and ultrasounds where it was later determined that she also had heterotaxy syndrome, making things even more complicated.

During all of these appointments, we were offered termination twice and were told that we would have a decision to make after birth. To perform life saving measures or to let her be.

As everyone knows, our little miracle was born and shocked everyone. Lily’s life so far has been everything but simple. But, she has done so much for us, our family and others that she doesn’t even know or understand yet.

I cannot wait to see what is in store for our little firecracker!