Thoughts on my Pregnancy

So here is another blog post about something that I have been thinking a lot about recently. And yes, it has to do with my pregnancy.

See I know a lot of woman who do pregnancy blogs, where they journal about how far along they are, how they are feeling, what they are excited about, that sort of thing. And I love reading these blogs. I always thought that I would be one of those woman who did this. I mean, why not? It's fun to share some of the thoughts and feelings we have, and invite others along for the journey.

However, I am not going to keep a pregnancy blog journal. I'm not going to tell you how many weeks I am or how I've been feeling, or what's been happening. Oh I'm sure I'll share things here and there, I can't help. I am excited about Baby Nugget. But the pregnancy part of this? Yeah, that part I'm kinda not so much in love with.

Let me explain. We found out I was pregnant, got excited, got a little scared, didn't tell people, continued to wait and see what the Lord had in store for us. Starting in the beginning of November, I got sick. Well I started to get sick. Really sick. I started missing work, and spent days laying in bed just praying that I wouldn't throw up again. I tried ginger, I tried food before I got out of bed, I tried small meals during the day, I tried food in the middle of the night. Nothing worked for me. I quickly became very very miserable.

It doesn't help that during this time I'm still scared that I might miscarry again, still scared that I will see that red where I don't want to, and dealing with hormonal changes that made me into a psycho. I tried drinking the tea that I knew would help. I tried drinking more water, and when I started to throw that up to, I started to get a little worried.

Here it was the month of November and everyone was talking about how Thankful they were for different things. I did not feel thankful, except for the life of the child that I was holding close to my heart. I felt angry and confused, and miserable. I felt isolated and like I would never, ever get through this. I felt like other woman were super excited for their babies, and here I was...someone who had experienced loss, who was not fawning over her child.

When I WOULD tell people I was sick and throwing up so much, I got a lot of "Well Praise God because it means your body is working!" I wanted to hurt those people...

It's hard to praise God when you are literally curled around a toilet. Or when you are afraid to move for fear of upsetting your stomach. Or when you are 12 hours away from your husband, your biggest supporter, throwing up a hamburger and crying because you just don't want to anymore. It's hard to be thankful for sickness, even though somewhere in my head, I knew I should be. It was hard Thanksgiving day to be thankful and happy to be with my husband when I threw up crackers, beef jerky, water, and steak. Eight times. That's how many times I threw up that day. No. I did not feel like praising anyone, I did not feel thankful.

I struggled a lot. Because I knew what it was like to loose the life inside you. I knew how helpless and scary that was, and here I was, each day with a small miracle growing inside me, and I couldn't be grateful, I couldn't be thankful. What kind of mother was I? Is this really how this was all going to go down? Was I really going to become one of those mothers who just hated being pregnant? I didn't want it to be me.

But the reality is that it was. I caught myself deleting things on Facebook that were just so negative. I had to be careful who I talked to because I didn't want to sound like I just hated this whole process. And it is just that, a process. I'm learning, picking up new habits, hoping old ones die, and praying that I continue to feel supported by my husband, our families, some pretty awesome Doula's I know, and one amazing Midwife.

So I can't, and won't keep a pregnancy journal. Because I need to forget this part. I need to forget how sick I was November and the beginning of December. I need to learn that it is ok that I needed help keeping things down, and that it is ok that I needed Zofran. I need to allow myself some grace and forgiveness, and stop being so hard on myself, to accept this reality.

What is that reality? I don't like being pregnant. I don't. But the best thing that someone has said to me this pregnancy I repeat to myself every time I throw up, or I let myself go to long without eating, because I need to hear it, over and over again.

"Not enjoying your pregnancy does NOT mean you do not love your baby."

I don't know why, but this was what I needed to hear. This is what was going on in my mind. That. That because I was so miserable, that because I hated being so sick, I thought, some where in my brain, that it meant I did not love my baby. Oh how the lies of the enemy slip in so easily! I don't struggle so much anymore. I take each day as it comes and remind myself that every day is a victory, because every day sine October 16 I have still been pregnant. Not a happy yay pregnant, but pregnant none the less. 

Today is Christmas Eve. And I finally feel thankful. I feel thankful to a young woman who talked me through so many things, who listened to me tell her that I couldn't do it anymore, who came and cleaned my house because I just didn't feel up to it. I'm thankful for all the Doula's I know, who I can call, who listen to me, who talk me out of freaking out when I had a backache.I'm thankful for a long distance friend who knows where I am mentally, and reminds me of the truth, that I do love my baby. I'm thankful for a Midwife who talks to me on Facebook, I happen to think no OB/GYN would do that, and who gives me good advice, and pushes me to make good choices for me and my baby. I'm thankful for a Mommy who answers about a bajillion questions that I've had this past month or so. I'm thankful that my baby is alive, and that I felt the little nugget move, those little flutters that you can't understand until it happens to you. And I'm so thankful for a husband who gets up and goes to work when I can't, and then who comes home and takes care of me when I can't take care of myself. Thankful that he tells me to drink more water, and eat more snacks, and get up and MOVE. He's wonderful, he really is. 

Merry Christmas Everyone. I hope you are all feeling the joy and love that I am feeling today. Even though I have to move slowly because I'm still afraid of throwing up. Even thought Christmas threw up in my house, and the dishes haven't been done. I am out of bed, and I didn't need to take my anti-nausea medication, and tonight I get to go spend time with my family. 

I feel like myself this morning. I feel like myself, plus one tiny new life, and the wonder of that...is enough to be thankful for. 

After 12 Weeks: Why We Waited

Recently I read a blog post (find it here) that made me think a lot about my recent life choices. While the author of this post makes a very valid point, and I do believe that woman should be allowed to tell or not tell about their pregnancies, I would like to speak on behalf of the woman who DO chose to wait until after 12 weeks to announce their pregnancies.

In late June of this year, while serving at as a leader at a youth camp, I found out that I was pregnant. I was very excited, and told just about everyone. I'm really terrible at keeping secrets, so it wasn't hard to tell anyone who would listen to me that I was going to have a baby. In early July, my husband and I announced to friends and family, in a very public way, that baby was coming in March 2014. So on July 20, when I stared to heavily bleed, you can imagine how devastated I was. It was hard. One of the hardest things I have gone through. My husband was gone for another week, and I was going through this, at the moment, very much alone.

One of the worst things about loosing our baby, was the comments and congratulations that were all over social media, and the amount of people who knew we were expecting. It took MONTHS for everyone to finally know that no, we were not expecting anymore. A month and a half after loosing our baby, I posted this to Facebook "Public Service Announcement: I miscarried our baby. I am no longer pregnant. If you know someone who still thinks I am, please set them straight. I'm really tired of having the "No, not this time, I'm not pregnant anymore" conversation. It sucks, even when its an innocent conversation, it really really really sucks. So spread the word people, and please...stop telling me I can eat what I want because I'm pregnant..." It was hard for me to realize that maybe there were still people, still, who did not know. 

I went through and deleted things. Reminders of something that would never be. Hurts that cut me to the core every time I saw them. A cake posted by a friend for my baby shower. Posts of congrats and blessings and prayers. It all just hurt so much. 

I had a lot of healing to do after our baby went Home to Heaven. It was rough for a while. I cried...I cried a lot. And I grieved, which is something that I had never had to do before. Some days, I couldn't stand the attitude that parents had towards their children. I'd come home, and cry to my husband and say "What I wouldn't give to know that I will have to change a poopy diaper" or "I would love to have to wake up at three AM with our baby..." 

So later this year, on October 16, while one of my very best friends was in labor with her third baby, I took another pregnancy test. When it came out positive, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I didn't know if I wanted to be excited, or if I wanted to hide. I didn't know if this baby would live, or if in a month I would be telling everyone, no sorry, not this time...again. While I cried over those two little pink lines, my husband held me. 

As a family, we made a choice not to make this new little life public until after 12 weeks. Let me make this clear, we were not ashamed of our baby, or living in fear, we were making a choice that was better for us. And it does not make me insane. It makes me human. 

I told people I trusted. I told my parents, my husbands parents, my boss at work, people who I knew would pray for us. People who I knew understood that, while I was excited, I was just...scared. I needed those 12 weeks to wrap my mind around the idea that I could, in fact, carry to term. I needed those 12 weeks to remind myself that I am stronger than fear. I needed those 12 weeks to talk this out with my husband and draw on his support. I needed those 12 weeks. It was not out of fear that we did not tell people, in a public way, that we were pregnant, it was out a need and desire to learn, for myself that not ALL pregnancies end in heartbreak. 

I didn't want to have to go back, again, to delete and tell everyone that I lost my baby. I, who am a very emotional person, held that grief to myself. I wanted to celebrate and rejoice the life of my baby, who was very real to me, on my own, with my husband, in my own way. For once, I didn't want to blast it all over a Facebook status about incredibly torn up I was inside. Because I was. More than most people know, I had a really hard time learning to trust that God knew what he was doing when I started to see that blood. It took a long time. A really long time. And it was hard. 

And forgive me, but I didn't want to have to do that all over again. 

I wanted to wait. I wanted to hold the life of this new baby close to my heart, me and husband both did. We wanted to keep this wonderful little secret and share it together. We didn't want public knowledge. We wanted quiet, and peace, rest. With one another, with our new little life. 

Granted, with this little one, I got terribly sick, and I'm sure that most people knew already. But they respected that it was PUBLIC knowledge. They didn't pry. They didn't ask. They waited, and those who knew, prayed. 

Only once did I have a good friend ask me if I wasn't living in fear. It was hard to answer her. Pregnancy after miscarriage is a whole new ball game. Every time I went to the bathroom, I expected to see blood. With this baby, when I got to how many weeks I was when I lost our other one, I was a huge mess. I had a day where I cried because I had a backache. Every cramp, every weird feeling sent me into panic. I memorized 2 Timothy 1:7 and 1 John 4:18 and repeated them to myself over and over. I talked and cried to God and my husband. So yes, there was fear, but no, we weren't NOT announcing publicly because we were afraid of loosing our baby. However, I was afraid of telling people and then telling them, once again, no, not happening. 

The day I hit 12 weeks, I rejoiced and cried. That week, we told publicly and invited friends and family to rejoice with us. 

It is a choice. One that every mother must make. One that every family must make. Crazy enough, none of us knows what will happen to our children. Even now, at 14 weeks, something could still happen. How many more days do I have with my baby, I wonder sometimes. A month? Two? Until 38 weeks? Maybe I will only have this baby until he/she is three or four, or 16. I don't know. You don't know. 

God does though. He knows the number of days I have, my babies have, that my husband has. He already knows. I release that control to Him and let go of those things I can't control, which happens to be a lot of things. 

Basically, I just wanted to share these thoughts, and invite other mothers who needed and wanted to wait until 12 weeks to know you are not alone.  

I get it. I really do. 

And there is nothing wrong with that. 

In Case You Missed It

I'm a little bit pregnant.
As in 12 weeks.
So.

GET READY FOR A NEW ADVENTURE!

Also, to those who knew before and were praying, thank you. And thank you for keeping our little nugget ours until we felt comfortable. I really have been very sick with this baby, it's been a rough November, but we are doing very well, and are very excited about what is to come.