My personal journal made public

I am a scrapbooker and photo fanatic, not a writer or journalist, however when I am pregnant I become a journalist and write, write, write. I started journaling when I was pregnant with Tanner because, as you read in the Sept 27th entry, we went through infertility/invitro. I was having blood work every other day to make sure my numbers were increasing. One week after finding out we were pregnant we were told that my numbers were NOT increasing and that I would most likely miscarry within the next 2 weeks - that would have been between Dec. 7th and 20th - 5 days before Christmas (Tristan is due on Dec. 20th and I have a c-section date scheduled for Dec. 12th, same time frame, I would have never imagined back 11 years ago that we would be where we are today, I guess it's good we don't know what our future holds just WHO HOLDS THE FUTURE)!!!! We were devastated, we had tried 5 years to get pregnant and now we were going to lose him, as you can see from the picture on the right, we did NOT lose Tanner and he is our 1st miracle baby, a healthy and very innocent 11 year old who loves Jesus with all his heart! Then with Tayden, because of the 10 year age difference and mere shock that we had actually got pregnant on our own and that we were 4 days from starting invitro, I journaled because I had the same fears of losing Tayden. As you can see from the picture on the right, we did not lose him either and he is our 2nd miracle baby, a healthy, very wild, crazy, silly 1 1/2 year old who does not obviously understand about Jesus yet, but he does know how to fold his hands during prayer at the table! For me, journaling was a way to express my feelings really just to myself. And now that Tanner is older it's fun to sit down with him and read my entries about him and Tayden to him, it is a reminder to our family that even through very difficult and uncertain times the Lord carried us through both pregnancies. So, when I got pregnant this time I bought a journal book and began writing so that one day I could share, with this baby, my feelings and experiences. It was fun journaling UNTIL AUGUST 15th when we found out that our precious unborn baby boy, Tristan, would be born with Trisomy 18 and was considered "incompatible with life", the hardest thing about journaling then was to know that I would never (barred a miracle) share my journal with Tristan. My feelings greatly changed about journaling that day, I now journaled because I was in shock, devastated, depressed, I didn't even know how to verbally express what I was feeling because it just overwhelmed me completely. I honestly felt like I would NEVER make it through this tragedy, this wasn't a possible miscarriage like we were told with Tanner, this was a 100% amnio test result showing our 3rd miracle baby would not live. As I began doing Internet research, I found 100's of stories on the Trisomy 18 Foundation and 100's of stories on personal blog sites about families around the world that had/were experiencing Trisomy 18. I was touched MOSTLY by their willingness to be open and share their innermost thoughts and feelings to the public. I never dreamed I would be sharing my personal journal and making it public. See, I am a very open and outgoing person until it comes to being in the spotlight alone like speaking or reading in front of people then I become a very quiet, shy person and withdrawal (except for the 18 yrs. I sang in our 300 voice choir at our mega-Baptist church or the 15+ yrs. I sang in 2 church ensembles), I can publicly sing week after week, JUST DON'T ASK ME TO SPEAK OR READ! Trayc and I were talking one night and he said, "You have such a love for people and you love to be an encourager to others, you should consider doing a blog and sharing your journal." I said, "Absolutely not, I'm not able to do that, I don't speak or write like an author of a book, I'm the Hallmark girl (the name and joke my family calls me because I never give a card without writing an entire book on the inside and because most of my encouraging words sound like a Hallmark card, ya know, it just honestly comes from my heart and is very real, it's the way I am). He said, "you don't have to write like an author or write like anyone else's blog, you just have to write from your heart and allow the Lord to use you." I said, "Yeah, but no one wants to hear my Hallmark words". He said, "You don't know that, there just might be that one person out there that relates better to you than to the deep words of someone else". I will be honest, I did consider it and became excited about the thought of helping others and started thinking maybe this is the direction the Lord wants me to take, maybe this is the ministry He wants me to start, but day after day I quickly became discouraged and felt very inadequate. Trayc asked me to pray about it before I made any kind of decision one way or the other. Okay, I did for several weeks and I have strongly felt the Lord telling me I needed to do this. So, here I am sharing my personal journal and making it public so that if there is just ONE person out there hurting because they just found out their baby has Trisomy 18, or a mother whose daughter or daughter-in-law is going through this, or maybe it's a friend who doesn't really understand this genetic disorder but wants to be there for their friend, whatever it is, I hope through sharing my innermost thoughts, my feelings, my experiences and the inevitable loss of our precious baby boy, Tristan, that the Lord will use this in a mighty way to encourage others and to glorify Him and Him alone.