On the Home Stretch

In the early hours of this morning after one of my many visits to bathroom, I climbed back into bed and started thinking of my pregnancy and my little boy. I thought about the pink stretch marks forming across my abdomen that I had mostly avoided during pregnancy and I thought about my aching, stiff back that comes every time I get up from any reclining position. I thought about my feet that have begun to grow larger by the end of each day and the daily battles of hunger and fatigue.

I was lying on my left side with my large belly propped up by a pillow. I'm normally a back sleeper but after I reached about 20 weeks in the pregnancy I had to adjust my sleeping position because my growing uterus would put extra pressure somewhere on my back and it wouldn't be good for me or the baby.

To be completely honest, my train of thought originated at Cafe Rio, my favorite burrito place located in Utah.  And I started listing off all the places I could go for lunch later today that were similar but not as good: Freebirds, Chipotle, Bullritos. In Athens, we had Barberitos, which was amazing, but during my first trimester I couldn't keep down a delicious burrito no matter how hard I tried. The regurgitated mess of beans, rice, meat, and tortilla was a lovely reminder that my body was no longer my own.

There have been many discomforts of pregnancy that intellectually I knew I would encounter and tried to brace myself for but I never realized the toll they would take both physically and emotionally. Each day I am physically exhausted before the day is through and I feel emotionally beat wondering how much longer I can do this while recognizing these nine months of pregnancy are only the very beginning of years of physical and emotional exhaustion.

But while I was lying on my side in bed, I tried to picture our little boy growing up with us as his parents. I thought of Brenden wrestling with him and teaching him about Batman and I thought of trips to the library and spending time with his grandparents. I thought about him running around outside with a superhero cape on. I thought about those years of exhaustion coupled with years of the otherwise unattainably unique joy of family life and parenthood.

With a small smile to myself, I recognized that I am truly realizing one of my lifelong dreams. Before I could even form legitimate words, I had wanted to be a mother.  I didn't know all that role would entail then, nor do I pretend to now, but I knew inside of me it was something I was meant to do. I realized how lucky and blessed I am to have this opportunity to bring a new special life into this world.

With every little (and big) kick and elbow nudge, I am reminded my life is not my own. I am part of a bigger plan and the minor discomforts of this pregnancy cannot compare to the joy and excited anticipation I feel as I contemplate this next phase of my life, this part I have waited for for the entirety of my conscious existence.

Dear Baby Boy,

I am so excited to meet you. I have waited my whole life for you. I love you more than you could ever realize.

Love,
Your Mommy

On Being Pregnant: Second Trimester

And so we move onto the...

2nd Trimester:

Brenden and I decided to announce our pregnancy to the general public the first day of the second trimester. We had decided on this day long before we realized that my second trimester began on April Fool's Day. We considered waiting to announce it until the day after April Fool's Day because we didn't want people to doubt us but then we realized we didn't actually care if people doubted us. We thought it would even add to the fun of the announcement. So on April 1st, the first day of the second trimester, right around midnight, I posted a little puzzle to announce the pregnancy. We loved the responses and congratulations. 

My morning sickness mostly subsided during the second trimester. I did discover my gag reflex is much more sensitive than before. But I'm glad I don't feel like throwing up every day anymore.

The first time I was sure I felt the baby move was right around the middle of 17 weeks. I was attending a trumpet recital and as soon as the performers began, I could feel the baby moving. The baby kept moving throughout the remainder of the recital. I don't think the baby's hearing is developed enough at that point to be the explanation behind the sudden and sustained movement for the duration of the recital but it's fun to think about. Baby continues to be super active and makes sure I know about baby's existence; I get good kicks and punches pretty regularly. At every ultrasound and heart tones check up, Baby is constantly moving around, sometimes making it difficult to get a good heart rate reading or a good ultrasound picture. When I first noticed Baby's movements, I would burst out laughing because I found the sensation so strange and exciting. Brenden joined in my laughter because I apparently looked like a crazy person. I've grown used to the movements now but I still find them exciting every day and enjoy the sudden reminder that I have a sweet baby growing inside me.

At 18 weeks we had our big exciting ultrasound where we could find out the sex of our baby. Brenden and I were adamant about keeping it a surprise but when we saw our little baby on the screen we realized we had to know. We took back what we said to our ultrasound technician and asked the doctor if he knew what we were having. He told us and we told our family. Everyone else will have to wait until we do a big gender reveal at the baby shower. Be excited! It's either a boy or a girl! 

Near the end of the first trimester, I started expanding. Now in the second trimester I feel like I am ballooning. I have three pairs of maternity pants and a few shirts I can wear in public. I wear drawstring and yoga pants and Brenden's t-shirts while I'm at home. I think the only pre-pregnancy clothes I can still wear are my socks. By the way, I love my maternity jeans. I think I might wear them for the rest of my life. 

I think my biggest struggle during the second trimester has been getting comfortable enough to sleep through the night. Since Brenden has been away at Philmont for the last two weeks, I've been able to utilize our entire queen bed and all EIGHT of our pillows. For the first time in a long time, I've been able to sleep through the night on a semi-regular basis. We'll have to see how things change once he returns.

I'm not sure if the concept that Brenden and I are going to have a child has fully settled in my mind yet. I feel like I should be more scared than I am right now. I expect some of the fear will show up in the third trimester and certainly once we take our sweet baby home from the hospital. I guess right now I'm purely excited for this new chapter in our lives. It's a feeling I want to soak in as long as I can.

On Being Pregnant: First Trimester

I am 27 weeks pregnant this week and our baby is somewhere around the size of a rutabaga, apparently. I get weekly email updates about my pregnancy and in each one some item of produce is used as measurement for the size of my growing child. I just thought I should mention this for anyone who doesn't get weekly updates like these. They're not very good measures. For example, it could easily say:  27 weeks: "This week your baby is the size of a rutabaga!" 28 weeks: "This week your baby is the size of an even larger rutabaga!" Or like the week when I was told my baby was the size of an avocado-- okay, well is that an avocado from Walmart or the Mexican food market? There's quite a difference.

Anyway, I thought I would give a little update on my exciting experience of growing a human being inside of me. Next week marks the beginning of my third trimester and I figure I should share some of my experience with the blogosphere.

Here's a little recap on what went down this first trimester:

1st Trimester: 

Brenden and I found out we were expecting a baby on January 26th. I took a few different pregnancy tests to confirm it and Brenden laughed at my excitement with each positive answer. It was a wonderful day! 

I contacted an OB/GYN in Athens the next Monday. Because of my chronic illness and other exciting health things, I'm considered a high-risk pregnancy. I've had more check ups and ultrasounds than a normal pregnancy would. I had an amazing rheumatologist in Atlanta who took great care of me and stuck me with needles every single visit I had to keep track of basically anything and everything. We learned our baby is at risk for fetal heart block. This is something we are currently keeping tabs on. Also, I have a particularly large uterine fibroid which is basically a noncancerous tumor. It can grow during pregnancy so my doctors are keeping track of that as well. Luckily, its location shouldn't be a problem for a normal delivery for me. It just takes up a bit of space that the baby could use so I get to grow especially large and uncomfortable during pregnancy. It could become particularly painful sometime during the pregnancy but it isn't likely.  

I experienced quite a bit of morning sickness during my first trimester. I learned to be okay with throwing up. I became adept at distinguishing when I was just feeling sick and when I was about to expel my last meal. I prided myself on always knowing the exact right time to run to the toilet. 

Even though I didn't throw up ALL the time, I did feel sick almost all the time. I had plans to volunteer and work during Brenden's last semester at UGA. Those plans fell through as I spent much of my time in bed, feeling miserable. But happy miserable! After my illness and stint in the hospital last year, being pregnant sick was awesome. I had a wonderful reason behind my sickness.

While being sick, I was unable to hold down a lot of my favorite foods so I discovered some "comfort" foods that I found tolerable. I stockpiled those particular items. I am opening myself up for judgment here but I don't care. All I could eat some days were cheap pizzas from the frozen aisle at the grocery store and Spaghetti-o's. I literally mean "all I could eat" since there were days I would make myself healthy meals with all of the nutrition and nourishment the baby needs to grow big and strong just to throw it all up while the only thing I could hold down at the end of the day was a can of Spaghetti-o's or a Totino's pizza. I tried my best to be healthy-- I bought the calcium enriched Spaghetti-o's. I figured not starving while pregnant was a better alternative to starving while pregnant. I think in general not starving is a better alternative to starving but particularly so whilst pregnant. 

So first trimester I was sick a lot and ate junk to stay alive. I had doctors' visits and blood tests galore. The End. 

An Update from a Month Ago!!!

Here's a post I wrote when we first moved back to Spring:

Blog Post 5.16.13

Looking Back, Catching Our Breath, & Looking Forward

                These past few weeks have been ridiculous. In addition to finishing up one of the scariest semesters I’ve ever had (chamber music recital, Master’s orals examinations, four term papers and a final – all of this over the course of five weeks), we also packed up all our stuff and moved. Also I graduated with a Master’s degree in Music performance from the University of Georgia and we had a lot of family visit us to celebrate and help us move.

                The last semester saw some huge changes for our family. I decided not to pursue a Doctoral degree in music or even a career in music. I’m going to keep playing the tuba and plan to put on a recital every summer because it would be a horrible waste to have put in as much work as I have and then stop playing. Also because I would probably go insane. I’m also looking into starting a small private teaching studio. I’m considering a lot of things for employment over the next year. I’ve started looking into other career options and am planning to go for another round of school at University of Houston after gaining Texas residency status. I have my eye on a career in dentistry because it would allow for an ideal work family balance, we’d be comfortable/secure financially, and because I have an uncle and a grandpa who were/are dentists. They’ve both warned me that it’s not all cake and roses, but I like to think I could handle it. We decided to start a family and have our first child on the way (with an ETA of late September/early October).

                A smaller-scale bit of news that I learned recently and am super pumped about (I don’t get super pumped, so this is kind of an anomaly on my excitement scale) is that I get to go to Philmont with my Dad in mid-June. Philmont is often referred to as “scouter’s paradise” and for good reason. It’s a huge camp where crews go backpacking for a bit over a week in the mountains of New Mexico. I had the good fortune of going to Philmont back in 2006 when I was 16 and now I get to go again as an adult leader. Having done scout camp a few summers ago as an assistant scoutmaster, I can say from experience that the adults get some sweet perks. That is, as far as perks go when you’re roughing it in the backcountry. I think you’re supposed to start training for Philmont at least 6 months in advance. I get 6 weeks. So now I have to recover from the steady stream of sugar and caffeine that got me through the end of the semester. So far, so good.

Some thoughts on Boston

This morning I was writing in a journal I started keeping since I learned I was pregnant. I haven't been very diligent about it but I've been having this nagging guilty feeling every time I've seen my journal sitting on a table in the house and this morning I finally picked it up and started writing while I ate a bowl of cereal.

I felt inclined to write, particularly after hearing about the bombings in Boston. I had feelings I wanted to sort out and I didn't think it would be right to completely ignore such a tragedy in a journal I hope this baby will someday read. I don't want this child to think his/her mother had some falsely optimistic view of this scary world we live in. I want my child to know I am aware of the evils of this world and even though they exist, I did deliberately bring him/her into this world.

I think it's significant that this is the first entry in this journal that I addressed directly to my child. As I was writing, I realized the entry turned out a lot different than what I had originally anticipated. I imagined explaining my confusion and despair over the events that occurred two days ago. I thought I would write about how I cried for an hour after hearing about the attacks and I couldn't completely understand why. I thought I would apologize for how terrifying and evil the world is and how sorry I was that this is the life we, as a society, have created.

What I wrote instead both surprised me and didn't surprise me:

My sweet little baby, sometimes scary things happen in the world. They happen a lot actually and some people might even wonder why we are bringing you into such a scary world. I hope you will be able to see the good in the world as you grow up and that you will never become weary. Even when there are so many bad things happening, they cannot compare to the good things in life. If you took all of the bad things and somehow added them all up into one big gigantic bad thing, it would still not compare to the glorious joy and light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Did you know that? I hope you will come to know it. There is nothing bigger or more consuming than the Gospel. It is for everyone everywhere and can bring joy and peace throughout all of the world. If you are ever frightened or saddened by the scary things in the world, remember the joy and peace of the Gospel and the love Heavenly Father and your Savior have for you. Remember that because of them, good will always prevail in the end and darkness will be cast out by radiant light.    

When bad things happen, sometimes people ask where is God in all of this? Because God has given us agency to choose right or wrong, He will not stop people from making bad choices but He will help us fix them. God is always there. You can see Him in everyone who is trying to make things right.

You can see Him in the first responders at the scene and medical personnel at the hospitals. You can see Him in the bystanders turned heroes. You can see Him in the family and friends comforting one another. You can see Him in residents offering their homes and food to the stranded. You can see Him in those mourning with those that mourn. God is there with the people affected by the bombings in Boston. He is with us always.