Haven turned three and might as well walked out the door and got married.

This girl, oh my. She is the exact opposite of me in personality. exact opposite. but she happens to look like me which kind of makes me a little happy :) she is SO much like Jace it is ridiculous. She has never met a stranger, she will tell you all about her bub (big brother) what she ate for breakfast, what mommy said she should and should not say at Mothers Day Out, and that she got into trouble for secretly eating her own birthday cake before her birthday party while I was in the shower. She is hilarious. And this girl, can throw a serious fit, SERIOUS FIT. I did not think we could love another child as much as we did our firstborn but I was dead wrong. We love them both the same. They are perfectly different from each other. I seriously cannot believe how fast three years has come and gone. It was just yesterday that we were in the hospital and they gave us a 50/50 chance of her survival. Here is the story that is written in her scrapbook,
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“Haven, it has taken me one year to be able to make this page. Not because I have gotten busy or didnt have time but because every time I have tried, I would end up crying. This is one of the hardest scrapbook pages I have ever made.
I believe you are a miracle.
When I was 20 weeks pregnant I scheduled our first sonogram. I initially scheduled it around daddys baseball schedule but he got moved to triple A a couple of days before so he couldnt make it. We really wanted to see what the sex was so we decided to go ahead and do it and Grammy and Mema S could go with me. While the sonographer was doing the test he didnt say much and at the end of it he acted really weird. The sonographer told me that you were too little to be able to tell what the sex was and that there were other parts that were missing as well. He said something about seeing a specialist and that my doctor would be contacting me first thing on Monday.
I was beside myself.
Grammy and Mema S tried to calm me down saying that everything would be fine but they were really scared too. I wasnt able to go to my doctors office because they were closed on Friday afternoons so since we went to church with her I decided to call her at home. She was great and said she would call the sonographer immediately. She called me back to tell me the news.
You didnt have a diaphragm.
I had no idea what a diaphragm really was or what it is used for. I called a friend of ours who is a sonogographer and she told me about the condition called diaphragmatic hernia. When your baby is born without a diaphragm or with a partial diaphragm there is nothing that separates the heart from all of their other organs. She said it was a life threatening illness and it would have a 50/50 chance of survival after surgery. They would take the baby c-section at 37 weeks and would immediately take it back to surgery. If the baby made it – it would be an ongoing condition that would require different surgeries throughout its entire life. I read many stories on the internet (bad idea I know) of parents who had babies who made it and those who did not.
I have never in my life been so scared.
We had an appointment with a specialist for three weeks later. The Rangers, daddys baseball team, let him fly home for our appointment. I cannot put into words how hard those three weeks were. Daddy was right in the middle of baseball season and we maybe saw each other 3 or 4 times during that time. It was so hard for us to be apart.
At first I was mad. I was carrying a baby that I did not know if I would ever get to hold in my arms. How could God do this to us? His Word says that we are intricately formed in our mothers womb yet there was a very real possibility that my baby was missing its diaphragm. I am embarrassed to admit it now but I was terribly angry at God.
I cried a lot. I prayed even more.
My emotions then moved to sadness. I was so sad that I didnt want to get out of bed the next morning. I felt sorry for myself that I had to go thru this, sorry for Jace that he did too, sorry for Jax that he wouldnt have a sibling, and our families because they were helping us cope and taking care of Jax for me. I didnt know how we were going to cope.
My emotions then changed to peace. I know the many people who were praying for us definitely did their part. Something in my mind just switched and I dont know what it was. Whether or not my baby had a diaphragm didnt matter we would love you just the same for however long we had you. If we, as your parents, didnt have hope for you then who would? I knew without a doubt in my mind we could handle whatever came our way.
Jace and I were strong.
We cried. We prayed. We mourned and then we HOPED. It was the hardest three weeks of our entire lives. The morning we went to the specialist three weeks later I was a mess again. I was afraid of what they would find, or not find. It was a dreary and rainy morning and our appointment was in OKC at 8am. We dropped Jax off at grandparents and started on our way. As we were driving to OKC neither of us really said anything. As I was looking out the window I saw the most vivid, colorful, brightest, biggest, closest rainbow I have ever seen right in the middle of our front windshield. As I was staring, I then asked Jace, “what are you thinking about? ” he then said, “the clearest, biggest, prettiest rainbow I have ever seen.” We both cried. It was at this moment that we knew everything would be okay. I honestly believe the Lord gave us the rainbow to give us peace on the way up.
We found out you were a girl before we found out about the diaphragm.
I was having a daughter!
The technician saw the diaphragm right away. The specialist came in to see it too. It was there!
YOU HAD A DIAPHRAGM!
No one really knew what to say.
After all of this happened many people blamed the first sonographer saying he just scared us in the beginning. Our friend who is a sonographer said he had been doing this for over 30 years and was really good- he definitely knew what he was doing. Looking back I believe it was really simple. You didnt have a diaphragm-
God gave you one.
You will always be our miracle baby and I will always thank God for hearing our prayers.

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A friend of mine gave me a book called You Are My Miracle and we read it to her often. She is our miracle and we will forever be grateful to the Lord for hearing our prayers.
So, we had her birthday party. We dont do parties. Seriously DONT DO parties. We have gone six years with Jax not having a birthday party with friends. How we have gotten away with that I dont know. He has gone to some elaborate friends birthday parties and never once asked why he doesnt have one himself. He is great like that. So we were going to have the families over like always and the morning of Haven asks if Lainey and Meredith will be there? Ummm, no. Not because we dont adore them (we do) but I cannot let her have friends over if Jax hasnt had friends to his party EVER in six years. Her heart then proceeded to break and we had a real tantrum on our hands. Needless to say Mer and Lainey came to the party-of course along with her attached at the hip and next door neighbor best friend Lily. Another example of how different my children are. (We are so glad you came Lainey and Mer!) Haven is not the same without her girlfriends. Anyway, she got lots of pink stuff and it looked like a princess sorority had been murdered in our living room after it was all over with. Could this child be any different than her mother who would not have been caught dead in a princess outfit her whole life?
We love you Haven. You are the funniest person on the planet and make up half of our souls. Happy Birthday honey.

Haven reading a cat a book… seriously?