What a year!

Well as most of you already know Spencer and I are expecting again and we couldn't be more thrilled! Life has definitely taken some twist and turns but it has all happened for a reason. Never in my life did I expect to go through what we went through in the last 4 months, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

Life is full of curve balls. One minute you think everything is going as planned and the next you are walking down a completely different path. This last little bit has been a huge growing experience for Spencer and I. Our testimonies of our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ and his plan have matured dramatically. Life truly is a test and our success is not measured by how hard we fall rather how high we pick ourselves back up.  What a blessing it is to know what we know. I can't imagine not having the knowledge that I do of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. IT IS TRUE! The knowledge that Spencer and I both have has helped us get through what we have had to go through. How grateful I am!

As promised, although we will struggle in life we will be blessed beyond measure. Miraculously after we miscarried we got pregnant again right away. Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways and I am so grateful that Spencer and I had the courage to take this journey again. I won't lie though, at first I didn't want to get pregnant again. I didn't want to have to go through what we went through the first time but I knew my primary purpose in this life is to be mother. Quickly our fear was replaced by faith and we picked ourselves up and tried again. All it took was one round of clomid and we were instantly expecting. What a blessing! The Lord knows me so well and knew that for some reason 3 months had made a difference. All though I don't understand why (and maybe I never will until the next life) this baby was supposed to come 3 months later I know the Lord has a reason behind it.

Words cannot describe how blessed we feel. This pregnancy has been completely different. Don't get me wrong I have been constantly nauseous, tired, and low on energy but every second has been work it. Last time I was so nervous but this time I feel at peace and know that the Lord's will will be done.

Everything has gone perfectly so far. We are now 15 weeks along and from what the doctor can tell we have a completely healthy baby. We even get to find out the sex of our baby next month. Time is really just flying by. People ask me all the time is I want a boy or a girl. Every time I say all I want is a healthy baby. Working where I work I see a lot of sad and scary things. Although it does give me some anxiety about what can happen I think in the end it will just make me that much more grateful to have a healthy and strong baby. I honestly wouldn't even care if we had all boys or all girls. I will take whatever I can get.

Life is good! We have had so much fun lately with all that has been going on. With my cute sister being on the Murray High School cheer squad we were able to attend a lot of football games this fall. It has been so fun to spend time with my family.

We also had a really fun Halloween party with our good group of friends from high school. I know I don't say it enough but I am so grateful to have such great friends. We have so much fun together and I know that we will be friends for years to come.

                                                 

                            Can't wait to meet this little one! This was our 10 week appointment.

"The Lord will shape the back to bear the burdens placed upon it." Thomas S. Monson

I have debated over and over again whether or not to write a blog post about this. I am the type of person that tends to keep things private and to deal with things on my own. For some reason I have had the thought maybe I should blog this experience. So, if this post is not just for me to cope with what has happened more than anything I really hope maybe someone out there will benefit from it.

At the beginning of the year Spencer and I really started to throw around the idea of when we wanted to start a family. Quite honestly, we both have been a little petrified to make this change. We love our life. We love our freedom of being able to do what we want when we want. But we both knew that the time was coming and that we would have to rely on the Lord and have some faith; so we did just that. At the beginning of May we went on clomid (a fertility drug- we were blessed to know before had that I had some issues and it would take a little extra help to get us pregnant). Two weeks after that we went back to the doctor and he checked to see how things were going and was pleased to see that one egg had matured. He prescribed us a drug that would help me ovulate the egg. That night I gave myself a shot and literally the next day I ovulated. Instantly, my body was changing. Not trying to get our hopes up we both thought that the symptoms I was experiencing were from the shot of hormones I gave to myself. We also thought there is no way we are pregnant because the doctor said it could be anywhere from 3-6 months before we might get pregnant because my hormones were so out of whack.

Two weeks after the shot we took a pregnancy test. For all of you out there that have never taken a pregnancy test I was a little naïve to the whole situation myself. Devastated, we were convinced that the test was negative because there was only a slight second line. Well, on my way to work that night I called one of my really good friends Lisa and told her what happened and she brought me up to speed that even a slight line is a positive test. After getting over my blonde moment I was ecstatic! All of those feelings of fear had disappeared and were replaced with excitement. But just for my own piece of mind I took another test the next day after waking up and it was definitely positive.

Being the sneaky wife I am I decided that I wouldn’t tell Spencer yet and I would figure out a way to surprise him. I called the doctor’s office and told them the good news and they said they wanted to verify the results with a blood test. This was a nerve racking experience as I waited for a nurse to call me back with those results. Luckily enough the nurse delivered the good news that Spencer and I were pregnant.

Now that I knew it was really for sure I started devising a plan of how to surprise Spencer.  That week we were leaving for Tennessee to visit Spencer’s brother and his family. All of the sudden it hit me; I would have one of the flight attendants announce it on the plane. It was all arranged- I wrote a note to the attendant and gave it to her. You can see how this all went down… What a priceless moment!

Once we hit six and half weeks the doctor wanted to do a viability ultra sound just to make sure that the baby was growing properly. For some reason I was really uneasy about this whole situation. Even as we sat in the doctor’s office Spencer looked at me and asked “Aren’t you excited?”. No matter what he said I couldn’t shake the anxiety I felt. They finally called us back to the exam room and it seemed like hours before the doctor actually came in. As the doctor performed the ultrasound he was being really quiet. Not being able to stand one more second of silence I said “Ok so what do you see”. The doctor then replied “I am so sorry Nicole but I am having a hard time finding the baby. I can see the amniotic sac and placenta but I just don’t see a baby”. My heart dropped… No baby? What? How is that even possible? Well, believe it or not it really happens. It is called an “anembryonic pregnancy.” What this means is that the fertilized egg attached to the wall of the uterus, and while it may have begun to develop a placenta, it didn’t develop into an embryo.

Words cannot describe how Spencer and I felt. When the doctor left the room so I could change, we both burst into tears. We definitely experienced all the stages of grief. First we were depressed, then just straight up mad. Once we started to come to terms with what had happened we reflected on other people on our lives who had gone through the same thing or worse. We decided to follow their amazing examples.

This experience has changed us forever. It is amazing how much more compassion you feel for others who have been in your same shoes. It has been a testimony to both Spencer and I how the Lord places certain people on our lives for a reason and gives us these trials not only for our benefit but for the benefit of others. I think that the world doesn’t give enough empathy for couples that miscarry. I know I sure didn’t before this experience. It is an extremely difficult thing no matter how far along you were in your pregnancy.

Honestly, I didn’t want to tell anyone and neither did Spencer. We didn’t even want to tell our families but I knew my mother would have my head if I didn’t tell her. When I told her about the situation she told me that I needed to tell people so that they could pray and emphasize with us. She also told me that there are people out there who know exactly how I felt and that I should rely on them for guidance and support. How true my mother’s wisdom was.

I decided that it would be appropriate to tell my brother who is on his mission. Brandon told me to read a scripture; it is D&C 122:7- it reads:

 7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the apit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the bdeep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to chedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of dhell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give theeeexperience, and shall be for thy good.

How grateful I am for the scriptures. What a comfort. As hard as this trial was it will be for our benefit. I am so grateful to have the knowledge that I have of the gospel. Knowing that my Savior not only suffered for the sins of the world but for every other emotion and experience we go through helped me cope with this situation. Our Savior knows each and every one of us and he is the one we should turn to with whatever happens- for he knows how you feel.

As much as this whole experience sucked (sorry I don’t have a better word to describe it) I know that good will come from it. For anyone who reads this and experiences this horrible situation sometime in your life, know that everything happens for a reason and that there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.  

Words of wisdom

I saw this quote on Facebook today and wanted to share it. Life is to short to always be waiting for a storm... Love President Hinckley!

Catching up!

Well obviously, I am horrible at this whole blogging thing... Since my last post was in January of 2012. But I have decided that I will try to be better. I think the hardest thing for me about having a blog is knowing what to say. Spencer and I both are constantly going and I feel like most of the time I don't have anything exciting or really meaningful to write about. I expressed this concern to my two cute friends Annie Andersen and Liz Jorgensen and they said you just need to write. So, I will apologize right now to any of you who read this and think "why is she rambling about nothing", but now that I am out of school (WAHOO!!) I have a lot more time on my hands and I am really going to try to do this.

A couple years ago Spencer got me this awesome digital scrapbooking software that I have fallen in love with. It is called MemoryMixer. I used to love to scrapbook but I soon realized that it was extremely expensive, hard to store all the necessary supplies, and time consuming. Well I decided that I would try out digital scrapbooking. I just finished the first year of our marriage, now that we have been married almost 3 years... haha but I am working on getting all caught up. I am going to see if I can figure out how to upload it onto my blog so you all can see it! Yay! It worked so here is what I have done so far....

Ok sorry this may be a really long post... But I was just so excited with how this turned out.

Hopefully seeing this scrapbook will help update everyone with things that have gone on.

A lot has happened since I last wrote. My cute brother returned to his mission after a year long wait. He is doing well and honestly dropping weight like crazy. He has now been out 4 almost 5 months and is already down more than 40lbs. As most of you know, Brandon was very proud of his size but he couldn’t be happier right now. When we got to talk to him on Mother’s Day I felt like I was talking to a whole different Brandon. Not that Brandon was a terrible person by any means; he just didn’t care to spend too much time with his family or show very emotions- he was a typical teenager. He just seemed at peace and his countenance beamed through the Ipad screen. I love that boy so much, miss him like crazy but I am beyond proud of him. Here is a picture of us talking to him on Mother's Day! I will put more up so you can see how much he has changed.

As for my other darling sibling, Kayla is doing amazing. She is growing and quite honestly I can’t believe that she will be a sophomore this year. She is quite the babe. My Dad plans on polishing his riffles for when members of the other sex enter the door of the Benson household. I am also very excited for her as she just made Varsity Cheerleading. This at first was quite comical since the Benson family is not cheerleading material (not that there is anything wrong with cheerleading). Kayla was even a little leary at first but I think she is enjoying it so far and I am excited for her. I know that it will make her High School experience that much better since she will be so involved. When Brandon saw this picture, he made a special request if they could possibly get Kayla a longer uniform... love that kid (being the older protective sister I concur).  

Well, things are also changing for Spencer and I. Spencer has changed his major again… (smile) but I think he has finally decided and is going to stay with this one. He is pursuing a communications degree. The exact degree is called Strategic Communications, for all of you who just wrinkled your forehead and thought whatever that is- it is pretty much a business degree focused on advertising, marketing and public relations. I always thought Spencer would go the business route; he is just so great with people and an awesome salesman. He is excelling with his school work and I couldn't be more proud!

In May I was able to finish my Bachelors! I am officially a BSN nurse! I never thought I would see the day when school would be over but it ended and it has been so nice to be done! My graduation was awesome. I actually got to speak at it since I was the Valedictorian of the Bachelor graduates of the Science Department. Honestly, when the dean emailed me to deliver the news I was shocked. I even had to have Spencer verify the email that it said what I thought it said. I have had really good grades but I was not expecting to be the Valedictorian by any means. It really was an honor and we had a blast with my family and our really close friends, the Whittington's, in St. George!

One proud husband... Or just
excited that his wife's stress
level just dropped dramatically.
Thanks for putting up with me babe!

Other updates: I started a new job last October at Primary Children's Medical Center. I was hired to the Infant Medical/ Surgical Unit and I have loved every minute of it. I get to go into work and take care of babies. It is the best job ever- really my dream job! The unit is specific to ages 2 and below. One time I took care of a 3yr old and it was a change being able to actually communicate with my patient. I really have loved the change and it is such a good fit for me. I have awesome managers and co-workers and I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

Well... I think that is all for now! Until next time...