The "Adoption, then Surprise Pregnancy" Phenomenon

You hear stories about this phenomenon all the time. You know...that couples adopt and then unexpectedly conceive within a short time before or following the adoption. In fact, after months and months of infertility, a friend of mine was recently matched with a little girl in China. Within the same couple of weeks, they found out they are expecting a baby!! So they'll travel to China in February or March to bring home a sweet toddler, and then welcome a baby in April.

Well folks, the phenomenon has struck the Brown household. It is with glee and giddiness (and still some shock) that I announce we're expecting a miracle baby on June 16, 2012!!!

While conceiving has never really been our problem, sustaining the pregnancy has. At nine weeks, we've seen the heartbeat 4x and even saw our little bean moving yesterday. We are in awe! As one friend pointed out, this is our 7th pregnancy, and the number 7 is a heavenly and significant number according to Scripture. :) I hope our unexpected blessing will be encouragement to any of you who've experienced multiple miscarriages... a healthy pregnancy can happen! Don't give up hope. And for us, it was even earlier than we ever dreamed, expected, or planned. How's that for God surprising my pants off? (no pun intended) I usually feel like I'm waiting on His timing, but this time, He beat me to it! Ha! I love it.

All 3 kids are super excited. Hence why we're announcing earlier than we planned to. They've already made announcements to their school classes, babysitters, grocery store clerks, you name it. So we decided we might as well let everyone in on our sweet news before you hear it randomly through the grapevine.

We welcome your prayers as we continue through the pregnancy, particularly the remainder of my 1st trimester. We're not out of the woods yet, but the doctors feel very positive and have been monitoring me very closely. At this point, I'm finally experiencing a release from fear that has felt paralyzing at moments. I know God is good, even if we still lose this baby. But I'm choosing to enjoy every moment with awareness that this little bean is bringing us joy each day of its already precious life.