Color photograph of four children in Christmas pajamas sitting on a white bed with a brass headboard

The Story of Nora | Part I: Incomplete

Nora Ann Ivy Waite was born on Monday, October 14, 2019 at 2:18am. But, her story actually begins on Monday, July 13, 2015, around 2:30am.

It was then that I had just delivered our fourth and (supposedly) final child. We were team green and I was pretty sure that our baby would be a boy. I wasn’t surprised at all when he arrived and Scott announced that we had a little Lincoln. What did surprise me is what happened next. As Scott likes to tell the story- “They hadn’t even wiped the goo off Lincoln when Claire turned to me and said ‘We still have a girl waiting for our family. He’s not our last.’”

black and white photo of new mom and dad looking at their

Right around the time I vocalized that Lincoln was NOT our last

Scott was adamant that we were done.

I was a hormonal postpartum mess and was sure we were not done. My baby blues were strong and I would regularly cry to my best friends over the fact that I knew there was another baby for our family. But Scott was 100% at peace with our family being complete. It was actually a really hard time for me and I prayed often and prayed hard to feel peace over the conflict between my feelings and Scott’s.

Now, before you think Scott is just the worst, he most definitely is not! I am the oldest of six, he is one of three, but only two living. His older sister died at 2.5 months old, never even coming home from the hospital. A small family is all he has ever known. Big, loud and chaotic are great words to describe my growing up years… On top of the six Rollins children, there were always friends and friends of friends joining us for meals or family activities. Our home was stuffed to the seams with children. Having a big family of my own just felt natural to me.

Scott and I went back and forth on having a fifth baby for a long time. Sometimes it would seem that he was coming around to the idea of one more. Sometimes it felt like maybe I could be done at four. But then I’d go to count my children and make sure they were all there… one, two, three, four, fi… oh, wait. We only have four. But I was always looking for and trying to count number five. Even when I tried to make peace with being done, with our family being complete, I just couldn’t ignore that feeling that had been so strong in the delivery room after Lincoln was born.

Four of what I knew was meant to be five Waite Wee Ones

I knew Nora was waiting to come to our family and I had to get her here.

It started out as a joke. I told Scott that we would have baby #5 one way or another. Either we would plan for her or God would give us a “bonus baby” down the road. I refused to call her an accident because she would be anything but an accident. I knew she was meant to be a part of our family. I started mentioning our bonus baby a lot. I actually felt a lot of peace during this time. Even though I didn’t know when she would arrive, I knew she would come and part of me thought it might be fun to have her arrive years down the road when our others were grown.

But the thought of a bonus baby started to worry Scott. Eventually, he sat me down and told me that he trusted me, and trusted my instinct. If I said there was another baby for our family, he was on board with having one more. The stipulation- he wanted to have a say in when she came, rather than leaving it up to fate and potentially having a baby well into our 40s. So we started doing what needed to be done to have a baby.

I didn’t necessarily feel ready to have a baby at that point. I had been experiencing some major hormone issues since Lincoln was about a year old and was significantly heavier than I’ve ever been. I honestly didn’t know if I would even be able to get pregnant with how big of a mess my hormones were. We started trying and I made some major changes to how I was eating and exercising in hopes of helping my body heal. It ended up not taking nearly as long as I had thought it would to get pregnant, which I can only attribute to God having a hand in things and knowing He had to get Nora to us before Scott changed his mind!