My last post I mentioned we had bought a few things for Silas’ grave. I wanted to share a few pictures. I had mentioned before I associate cardinals with Silas due to at his funeral a vibrant, beautiful red cardinal flew over his grave as I was trying to make myself leave. The first few weeks after he died a cardinal would sit in a tree right by our dining room window while we ate dinner together.  Ever since then we have had cardinals show up at just the right times, particularly at family outings we take when I wish he was there to enjoy it with us. God sends that reminder that Silas is always with us. We also added some dwarf Christmas trees that holds a guardian angel ornament.

As we were hanging up his cardinal the old song “I’ll fly away” kept playing in my head. We sang it the next day at church.

Today the awaited call finally came. I am overjoyed to say that all the genetic testing came back normal!   At 20 weeks I will get a fetal echo to double check the babies heart for any issues.

When I received the call Boyd was gone.  As I got the news my body felt limp. Then when she told me the gender I began to cry. I had know idea how much that would affect me.  We are having a little boy❤️.  Not too long after I hung up Boyd came home.  Once again I began sobbing when I told him the news. Before Silas we had three girls in a row. Having another little boy makes me soooo happy, but I also had  an emotion I can’t label knowing it was another little boy.  I guess that emotion of knowing I have a little boy I won’t see grow up. We held each other tightly for awhile feeling the relief of receiving such good news. Feeling God’s arms around us. Resting in Knowing that this little blessing is healthy. Knowing I WILL see you again Silas💕

Here are some fun pics we took while sharing the news with the kids. 

Sine we became pregnant with our new little one at almost the one year mark of getting pregnant with Silas, all the milestones are coinciding at the same time. It makes for a lot of mixed emotions.   

This Friday we will have the nuchal translucency screening on the new baby. It will be one year that at the same test we found out that Silas had something extremely wrong with his heart and possibly some form of trisomy. In the CHD community the questions and worries that come up a lot are “will my next child be heart healthy?”  As the time approaches I find myself getting very anxious to make it past this point. Praying our little one will be healthy. I catch myself reliving over and over that day that was suppose to be a happy day-getting to see our growing child, turn into something so overwhelming and lasting hours as we discuss what all the testing meant and where we go from that point. I can remember every tiny detail.  I can still feel the raw emotion of the expected diagnosis and the uncertainty of the prognosis.   It will be hard walking into those same doors, hallways, elevators, and offices of the specialist that we visited several times until I delivered Silas. I don’t mean to sound so depressed and hopeless as I am also filled with joy and excitement at seeing our newest blessing. I just want to be real. This is what is going on and it is ok!  Between now and January 15th there will be several other  one year marks that I am sad to see approaching, but behind that sadness God has brought joy right along with it, my gift from God, new life.  

We recently purchased a beautiful leaded stain glass cardinal to hang at his grave. I will post pictures once it is up.  We also bought his ornament for our Christmas tree. It is a tradition that each of our children get a first Christmas ornament that marks their life. Of course our stockings that will be hung would not be complete without one for Silas. His came in the mail yesterday with his name stitched onto it(for the life of me I can’t remember what that is called). Etsy has been my friend lately:)