This is a vulnerable post, but it feels important.

I always thought I would have six kids. Maybe more. I dreamed of a house full of little voices, tiny hands reaching for mine, endless chaos and love. But biologically, our family stops at three. And that feels… complicated.

I’ve been pregnant seven times. Three babies made it. Four didn’t. Half of my pregnancies ended in miscarriage. Half of my hope, my dreams, my tiny imagined futures, they just vanished. There is grief in that, a grief that sits deep in your chest and whispers in quiet moments. But there’s also a strange, aching gratitude, because the ones who are here, my three daughters, are everything. They are light and laughter and chaos and love in ways I never knew were possible.

We’ve talked about adoption. We’re open to it. But it hasn’t happened. No doors have opened. No signs have whispered, “This is the next step.” And maybe that’s God’s mercy. Maybe He’s asking me to rest. To accept. To pour all of me into the children He has entrusted to me rather than chasing the family I imagined. Maybe He knows my heart, my body, my limits better than I do. Maybe His plan is not about numbers, but about depth of love poured deeply rather than spread thin.

Pregnancy was brutal on me. I wrote a little about that here. My body ached. My energy drained. My heart swung between hope and fear. I never knew if this time would be the one I lost. And yet, I love having babies. Every tiny flutter, every kick, every moment of imagining the life I was carrying felt sacred. And now it’s over. That ache, that joy, that longing: it’s all done. And it’s final. No more newborn snuggles and skin-to-skin. No more baby wraps at church, swaying while I worship like a lullaby.

And yet, God’s hand has been in all of it. Even in the losses, even in the quiet, lonely grief of miscarriage, even in the disappointment of doors that stayed closed, He has been there. He’s been the quiet presence holding me together when I felt broken. He’s been the one reminding me that my children, the ones I have, are exactly the ones He meant for me to raise. That His plan is better than my dream. That His love is enough to fill the spaces I thought could only be filled by more babies.

Two of my dearest friends are in newborn land right now. I worried it would sting, that seeing them with their babies would open old wounds, that I would ache with longing for more. But it doesn’t. Instead, I get to celebrate. I get to love their babies fiercely, like Auntie KK, without the ache of wanting my own. And in that, I see God’s provision. He has given me the freedom to rejoice in others’ blessings while fully embracing mine.

I love my life. I love my children. I love the home we’ve built, the rhythm of our days, the laughter that fills our rooms. And yet, there’s a quiet ache that never fully goes away. The ache for the babies that never were, the pregnancies that ended too soon, the imagined family I once dreamed of. I grieve them. I name them in my heart. And I give them to God, trusting Him with what I cannot hold.

It’s a strange paradox: relief and grief, love and longing, joy and mourning, all tangled together. But I’m learning that I can hold it all at once. That God can hold it all at once. That He can take the ache and the gratitude and the love and weave them into something beautiful. When I think about my newborn babies and holding them, I physically ache, like being homesick for a home that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s okay to grieve the family I imagined while celebrating the one I actually have. That this, right here, is enough. That He is enough.

And slowly, gently, I’m learning to rest in that truth. To let go of what I cannot control. To love what I have fiercely and fully. To trust that God’s plan, even when it looks so different from my dream, is better. That the ache I carry, the longing I feel, the love that spills out of me are are all part of the story He is writing. And it is good.