When our son Jonny was around 2 or 3 years old, Erin asked me if we should have another baby. At the time we were living in Gillette, WY, and my job wasn't going so great, so I told her the basic excuses not to. "We don't have enough money", "I don't know what's going to happen with my job", "If we have more kids we won't be able to do as much stuff with our other kids", things like that. So my job didn't work out, and we ended up moving to Pittsburgh. Erin kept asking me about a baby, she said that she knew that we had another baby up in heaven that she was supposed to have. But again, the excuses came up. A couple of weeks before Erin found out she was pregnant, I already KNEW that she was pregnant. The telltale signs of her monthly issues were not apparent, and I remember asking her if she was pregnant. She said, "No, I'm just late or something." So a couple weeks later, on a Sunday, Erin was up at camp with the kids, I was at home sleeping from just getting off of work, and she decided to come home early. So she left, and felt like something was going on with her. She stopped and got a pregnancy test, and came home and took it. She came in the room, jumped into the bed with me, woke me up, and said she had something to tell me. "Aww crap, did you wreck the car or something?" I asked her. She said no, and pulled out the pregnancy test. Man, it hit me then, even though I had a feeling that she was pregnant, that we were NOT ready for this. But at the same time I was really excited. I mean, Jonny wasn't a baby anymore, and I missed having a baby. But we definitely didn't know if we were ready.
So, time passed, everything was healthy, and the other day, on July12, at 4:30, I was playing on the computer, and Erin came in and told me her water broke. I completely freaked out. I was running through the house trying to remember everything we needed to take, and man, my heart was pumping. Now this happened right during rush hour on a Tuesday afternoon, and I was thinking that we were completely screwed, I was going to have to call 911 and get a police escort to the hospital. It was amazing, I literally drove 75 miles per hour through traffic with no issues and made it to the hospital in 7 minutes. We definitely had some help with that. So we get to the hospital, and Erin began the long process of labor.
So 10 long hours later, we finally got to see our little angel. When she came out, I couldn't believe that we were going to do this again, and I was also so happy that we got another chance. She was healthy, beautiful, and a blessing to us. I refused to put her down or give her to anyone, all I wanted to do was cuddle her and look at her precious little face. I again was the luckiest guy in the world.
Since we have been married, I can count the number of times that I have cried on one hand. When I was holding her, looking into her perfect little face, I cried because I realized how lucky I have been. I have an amazing wife who not only gave me the best 3 little babies ever, but she puts up with all my crap. Shayla, Jonny, and Jada are the best things that have ever happened to me, and no matter what anyone says, I know that I don't deserve to have these blessings in my life, but I am forever grateful to Heavenly Father for what I have. I have the greatest job, the greatest family, and great friends. I was overwhelmed by people sending me texts and comments about our new addition, and I thank all of you. I have never been happier than I am now with our perfect little family, and I just hope that I can do everything I need to do to keep them happy.
