Happy 3rd Birthday Sweet Shelby Lyn

We are celebrating Shelby's third birthday today and it has sent me down memory lane! She has filled our life with smiles and joy, tears and tantrums, Princesses and ponies, and laughter from her winning personality. Shelby is quick to call you a "Mr. Potatohead" if you call her a ham, which she very much is! Never the less, her entrance into this world was as attention getting as her smile is today. I went back and found the letter I wrote to put in her birth announcement.....here it is.

"Shelby's story is especially remarkable and I wanted to share fully with our loved ones the journey our family has been on the past few months. Around Valentines Day we knew we were pregnant by the clammy complexion on my face and lack of appetite. Our first 12 weeks were pretty normal, and by now we just expect for me to be super sick! At 16 weeks we breathed a sigh of relief thinking we were past the worst of it...how wrong we were!

I got up one morning to make the kids breakfast and was stunned with blood that ran down my legs. I called immediately and the doctor sent me right up to the hospital. I called Mike at work and tried to prepare him and the girls for the worst. I remember thinking that there was NO WAY a baby could survive with the amount of blood I was losing. To my shock, (and everyone else's as well) all the tests and ultrasound showed a happy and thriving baby. My doctor said she could see the blood pouring from the placenta and she was sure it was an abruption. She prepared us that we would not know if the baby could survive or it the placenta would start unraveling for at least 2 weeks.

I was put on complete bed rest and stayed in bed until the bleeding slowed and finally stopped 6 weeks later. It would occasionally come back for a few days at a time, off and on the rest of the pregnancy. When I was doing well, I felt confident. When I had a bad bleeding day or week I worried that I would lose her. I had weekly appointments, stress tests, and ultrasounds to watch Shelby's progress. Every time to my amazement, she looked great and even seemed to be developing at a faster rate than normal! I spent most of my days in bed praying, for Shelby, everyone and everything I could think of. I had a lot of time to think, wonder, and wait. (It was a time of depending completely on God and looking back on it all now, it was a precious time.)

At 35 weeks and 5 days my doctors decided that she was ready and they didn't want to risk it anymore. They sent me up to the hospital around 2:30pm, broke my water and I was holding her at 8:50pm. My delivery was normal, calm, and a joyous end to a very long journey. All are things we prayed for faithfully and hoped on daily."

So here I am in 2010 and we know now that I have a blood clotting disorder. We think that Shelby's abruption was caused by a clot that burst a vein in the placenta, and because the placenta cannot heal it stayed an opening that bled off and on the entire pregnancy. God used that journey to draw us closer and closer to Him. She is here in all her glory and is a constant reminder to me and all who know her story that miracles really do happen.

Happy Birthday Shelby Lyn.....you are an AMAZING gift!!!!