Looking back while we are Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

Today marks 5 days until Little Miss Marlena Irene-Rose Flood is due. We figure she will come any time between right now and the next 19 days. This has definately been a whirlwind pregnancy and we believe our baby has been given to us straight from God's hands. Adam and I have been together since 1996 and realized very soon that we were meant for each other and not too long after that we realized we would love to have a baby together and give Afton and Alexandra another sibling. Through the years, we have had many ups and downs with seeing doctors and being able to afford the the medical procedures to have a baby. I think we had pretty much come to the conclusion that it would never happen when it seems that almost overnight we found the ability and the doctor to give us a chance. Everything moved so fast. We found one opening a month after we decided to go for it and jumped at the chance. The surgery was scheduled on May 27th and we were pregnant on our first try in July. It was pretty surreal to go 13 years of only "hoping" to someday have a baby to being pregnant within 3 months of visiting the surgeon's office for the first time. We knew we only had roughly a 60% chance of getting pregnant and were fully prepared to go for fertility treatment 6 months after the surgery. Imagine our surprise 2 days after coming back from renewing our vows Jamaica and finding out Floodlette existed! It was meant to be. We had finally taken the vacation we always dreamed of and renewed our love for each other and recommitted to being together forever and this was our gift. We had a lot of fear and a lot of hope in our hearts and souls that the pregnancy would be blessed and the baby would be healthy. At that time we didn't know what the coming months would hold; me losing my job and a large chunk of income, Adam's crazy schedule with projects in law school and work, having our daughter and grandson move in with us... we were just in shock, full of reserved joy and hope. I think we held our breaths for the first trimester with all of the testing. We were told my hormone levels were low and the doctor didn't know if the pregnancy was viable. We went through 3 rounds of testing and finally my levels came up enough to perform an ultrasound. I can't describe the feelings of the first ultrasound and seeing that our baby was in the womb and she really existed, to the next ultrasound in a week when we saw her heartbeat, to the next seeing that she was healthy and low risk for most birth defects because of my age, to the next when we found out that we defied the odds of having another boy Flood and conceived a girl (there's hope), to the next where we were able to see her organs and her face and so far she has been nothing but healthy. Actually, she has been quite healthy and we are told that we are having a pretty big baby girl. The pregnancy has been tough on my body at times, but it has never been without total joy and love. There was morning sickness and evening sickness and in between sickness, there was many food aversions and gagging over smells and brushing my teeth (which Adam will miss, I'm sure), ligament pain, back outages, bed rest, pre-term labor, early labor, torn muscles, very long bouts of baby hiccups and more things I won't mention... but, through it all there was complete amazement and awe of the miracle growing inside of me; the little girl we never thought would happen for us. MIRF will be here any day now.... I think...