Having a large family, it seems I get asked fairly frequently "how many children do you have?" It used to seem like such a simple question. There was a time that regardless of how you looked at the question, the answer was the same. We had 9 children back then.
But then Ali died and it made the answer hard and painful too. After her death, we had 8 children on earth and 1 in heaven and this question was a painful reminder of our loss.
I eventually got used to fielding this question and then less than a year after Ali's death I miscarried Taavi Shiloh. And the answer got even more complicated.
And then last year, it got yet again even more complicated. Most people aside from my husband and children don't know that Malachi was actually a twin. We lost his twin, Tomas Zebediah, very very early in my pregnancy. In fact, we learned that he had died at very same time we first learned of his existence some 6 months before Malachi was born. It was fairly confusing emotionally grieving one child while celebrating another. I eventually started giving the simplest answer to most people who asked about the size of our family which was to just answer the number of children we have at home.
And now we have little Malachi who is two weeks old today.
So how many children do we have now?
Well we have 10 children at home.
And Malachi was our 11th child to be born alive.
Yet his pregnancy was my 12th pregnancy.
But Malachi is the 13th eternal soul that I have conceived.
So if you ask me how many children I have and I hesitate before answering, it isn't because I can't count that high or that there are just too many to remember. I certainly remember each and every one. Sometimes it just doesn't seem easy to condense all of their stories and lives into one single number. That's the not so short or simple answer.
