Sometimes, even the best laid plans are, well, decimated. Even a type-A mega control freak like me couldn’t control my own body when I was pregnant — and I certainly couldn’t control what happened to my son after his premature birth.

Ah, pregnant beginnings. Literally and figuratively. The first trimester of this rainbow pregnancy (yes, that’s actually the term for a pregnancy after a loss). Is it possible to grieve and hope simultaneously?

“If we think too hard, we’ll never do it,” Kellie said. She was right. A cost-benefit analysis would yield no practical reason to grow our family. The only reason to make a new baby was that we felt like it, and we could.