Week 21 - Reality Check

It has finally hit me.  Rather than carrying around a fetus, I am actually feeling like I am helping develop a person.  And not just any person, a sweet little baby girl.  All week long I have had visions of mundane activities of us with our little princess.  Most of them are visions of Logan holding our daughter.  I keep picturing him with this little girl sitting on his lap while he reads her a book or her pulling at his pant legs to get his attention.  The moments I see are always something that would be very trivial in the day-to-day, but monumental in the changes that are about to happen as our family grows.

Mallory and BB are ready for Halloween!

This reality that I am facing as I start thinking more and more about ‘her’ instead of ‘it’ has made everything sink in more.  What all do I need to do before the baby comes to feel prepared?  What will our life look like once she is here?  Are we going to be ready?  We have started a ‘check list’ of things we wanted to finish around the house before she comes, but I have been putting off the ‘new baby’ checklist.  Anytime I start thinking about registering, decorating the nursery, testing out strollers, taking classes at the hospital, etc. etc. etc. I become overwhelmed.  So… I will continue putting it off for a few more weeks.  Lets just focus on the house for now and worry about the baby later.

 

As for me, the symptoms continue.  Unfortunately, this week my backaches were worse than normal.  It got to the point on Saturday that I couldn’t walk.  It was a little bitter sweet for Logan since he has had back pain on and off for a few years now, he knew exactly what I needed to help relieve the pain.  I just hate that it was because he experiences this too that he was helpful.  I have been trying to go to prenatal yoga every week and my instructor showed me some exercises that were extremely helpful.  It is amazing how much stretching properly takes pressure off of your joints.

Back pain or not, it is a small price to pay for this experience.  I will take 20 days of not walking from severe back pain for one day of seeing our baby girl on the sonogram and hearing her heartbeat.  It really does make it all worth it.  

Week 1 (technically week 4)

Logan and I really enjoy our freedom.  I mean, a lot.  We always had plans and activities going on every weekend, would take extended vacations and would use any moment we had to play.  We also do not rush into any decisions that we make in life.  We dated for 5 years before Logan proposed to me, then spent two years engaged before finally getting married.  We were also married for 5 years before we even began the conversation about having children.  The truth is we both were so in love with each other and had so much fun being carefree that having a family wasn’t a high priority.  

But then we had a change in our mindset.  We bought a beautiful home that was much bigger than the two of us needed, I celebrated my 30^th birthday, and all of our friends were catching up to us with getting married and settled down. 

After many discussions we decided that it was the right timing for us to try to start a family.  We had a few events coming up and agreed that June was a good time to begin trying.  We also discussed the possibility that children might not be in God’s plan for us.  There is always a chance that we could try for years, and it just not happen.  But we were okay with that.  If kids weren’t in our future, we would continue being happy together just us.  (Secretly though, we were both crossing our fingers and praying that our plan B would never come to fruition.)

Little did we know how ready we were to have children because after only one month of trying we were pregnant!  They say that you just know, and I knew that morning when I took the test what the response was going to be before I even looked at it.  As soon as I saw that word on the digital screen, I woke up Logan with the news.  The only way to describe the feeling was surreal.  It was actually happening.  Right after the surreal emotions of excitement came a big mental question mark of ‘now what?’

Because I am a smart phone addict, I quickly jumped on Google and started doing searches of ‘I just found out I’m pregnant, now what do I do.’  I downloaded a few apps on my phone to track my progress and started obsessing over what I needed to do to make sure I kept my body as healthy as possible.  The coolest thing about the app is it tells you the size of your baby each week.  When I put in the date of my last period, I discovered that my ‘week 1’ of being pregnant was actually week 4 of the child’s development.  If he or she grows up with a taste for whiskey, I will be the one to blame since that is what I was drinking at a wedding the weekend before.  (Don’t worry; I did extensive research that said that there is nothing to worry about this early on.)  After I found out I was 4 weeks a long I also discovered that my baby is now the size of a poppy seed. 

I made a big mistake by taking the test first thing Monday morning.  You can only imagine how productive I was at work that week.  Luckily, it was July 1^st and we had a short week.  There weren’t a lot of people in the office since we had a long weekend ahead of us so I didn’t have to worry about too many people looking over my shoulder as I Googled every subject from what foods to avoid to baby announcement ideas.  

Just because I was proud of my crafting,
here is my 4th of July wreath

Timing is funny though because a few days later, Logan and I were hosting a 4^th of July party with about 40 of our friends and family in our home and I couldn’t tell anyone this big secret I am keeping inside while also avoiding alcohol without making it obvious.  And I HATE to lie.  I was able to dodge the issue for the most part though.  I wanted to tell every person that crossed our path the exciting news, but our better judgment told us to wait until I am at least 3 months along.  (A LONG 3 months.)  For now, Logan and I just get to share the best secret we’ve had so far.