My name is Karen and I have been married to my dear husband Mike since 1984. We did not set out to have a lot of children, but little by little, God surely changed our hearts. We were going to have the average 2 children, but possibly stretch that to 4. The plan was that I was going to keep working after having children, but that idea was quickly changed .
Our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage at 13 weeks in October 1985. We became pregnant again 2 months later with our first child Jeremy, who was born in 1986. Well, that did it for me, I was in love with my new baby and I loved being a Mommy. There was no way I was going to leave this baby with someone else all day. So, that is when I became a stay at home Mommy. We went on to have a few more children and life was busy.
Timothy was born in 1988 and Joshua in 1991. Six months after Joshua was born I unexpectedly became pregnant again. Quite a surprise, but I still was very excited! The doctor could hardly believe that I could be pregnant again so quickly, especially since I was exclusively nursing. However, I miscarried that pregnancy at nine weeks. We decided to go ahead and try again soon after, and the following month I became pregnant again. Rebekah was born in 1993.
June of 1993 was mixed with great joy with the birth of our first daughter and sorrow with the death of my brother Doug 4 days later. To add to our grief, when Rebekah was 15 days old, our son Timothy was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 4 1/2. Needless to say our world was turned up side down.
