So, Jenni, Anna, Rebecca, and any other Christians out there;
This is something of a carryover/response from a message in the third trimester folder, but I felt this was the most appropriate place to post it:
I've never had a huge problem with my faith in re: hyperemesis. Maybe it's because one of my sisters also suffers with it (although not as badly), so I knew before I ever got pregnant that it was a possibility (I think that perhaps it hits you much worse when you've never even heard of it before you HAVE it). I have however, suffered from a dearth of faith at the beginning of this pregnancy because I was so angry at God for allowing us to lose the baby we miscarried right before we got pregnant with this one, and perversely enough, angry (although not particularly at God, just in general) about being pregnant again. Yes, I know that 1 in 5 pregnancies end in miscarriage, while only what, something like 1 in 1,000 women suffer from HG, so my feelings may not exactly make sense, but there you have it.
Anyway, my "decision" has to do with making a choice for permanent birth control, mostly because of HG. I can't say for sure that we'd have more naturally even if I didn't suffer with HG, but I can say that we probably wouldn't be going with the permanent option. This is also largley influenced by the fact that, after 10 years of marriage with no "surprises", our last two pregnancies were unplanned. So we are planning on a vasectomy after this delivery, unless something goes wrong and I have to have a C, in which case my care providers have instructions to do a tubal ligation. But, as I am only 31, I feel that by choosing a permanent option I am closing a door on God and saying, no matter what you have planned for me, I'm not doing this again. That said, my husband and I do strongly feel that God has led us to home school our boys, and how I could do that through another pregnancy (this time I couldn't keep them home for almost 4 months, and the HG has gotten worse every pregnancy) is completely beyond me. I've also wanted to adopt or do foster care since I was a child (my dream as a little girl was to own an orphanage, LOL. Even then I wanted to take care of babies whose parents couldn't take care of them or were gone). Before this pregnancy we had decided to wait 3 years or so and then look more seriously into adoption before choosing between it and ttc again. But even though knowing that we were done having children naturally should make it easier for me to look forward to doing foster care in a few years (if God provides the space, as we're now getting cramped in the home we just moved onto a year ago thanks to our coming "addition"), I cannot attain any inner peace about the decision to go with a permanent option. Your thoughts?