New Book, Pregnancy, Lupus, and God's Will in Our Lives...

This is a link to the book I am currently reading about St. Basil of Ostrog.
So far it is very good and not too difficult a read. I am on the second introduction which is an article be St John of Damascus titled God's Miracles: The Foretaste of Eternal Goodness. If anyone knows where I can find a link to the article on the internet, please, let mw know because I would like to provide that link to you, my faithful readers, because it is such a beautiful article:)

Obviously I have lots of thoughts regarding the last few weeks. I realized that out of the last three weeks, i have spent 11 days in the hospital (two separate visits). I have received 8 blood transfusions (please, please, please... go give blood. I'm going to find out if I can give blood after this is all said and done and I have a normal hematicrit and am not pregnant... I am deeply indebted to the anonymous person who gives blood that exactly matches me... so go give blood).

I am learning to appreciate the two miracle babies in my life... Pavlos and this baby who we will God-willing meet soon. I had always pictured myself having three or four children. I don't know why, really, maybe because there are three children in my family. And I realize that with what I am going through now, that two children may be what we have in our family. And that's ok. When I was 25 (eight years ago), I was diagnosed with Lupus. My rheumatologist told me that I would/should not/never have children. I was single at the time, just finishing up grad. school. Not even dating anyone. Talk about a blow. I walked out of that office and thank goodness my mom was there because I cried all the way home. I had always pictured myself married and having a family. And now this doctor was destroying my dreams. Eventually, I met Paul and he knew that us being able to have children may not ever happen. And yet, he loved me enough to marry me and see what God's will would be in our lives. And here we are on the verge of our second miracle. The first pregnancy was very low key, not too many problems. And so we thought we would try again. And, well, you can read about what we've been going through in my previous entries or go to my mom's blog and read her updates on my health. That doesn't mean that we haven't struggled even in other areas of pregnancy... our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage at eight weeks. Our second pregnancy is Pavlos. Our third pregnancy ended in miscarriage at ten weeks, and this is our fourth pregnancy which is a little rough, but at this point, the baby is weighing in at over 4 pounds:) Definitely survivable. And it actually just dawned on me... I have four babies... just not all here:) Maybe that is God's plan for us.

I realize that this blog entry is a bit disjointed, I'm still really tired and I am finding it difficult to do much more than sit in my dad's lazy boy recliner and surf the net on my dad's laptop:) Today was a difficult day because I had a doc. appt. early, early this morning (thank goodness we were able to drop Pavlos off at a friends house so he didn't have to sit through the long appt.). After the appt, my mom and I stopped by the soon to be new church site because neither of us had been there in months. Then, we picked up Pavlos and went to get lunch. Then we went to Babies R Us because the only thing that I really need for the baby is a new diaper bag (which I found one that I liked and that Paul will not be embarassed to carry around). Then we headed home... and it took us over an hour to get back to my parents home because of all the traffice. I think we were gone for 8 hours today. I am tired. So forgive the disjointed-ness of this blog entry:)