Baby Journey -Part 2

Baby Journey -Part 2:  The Beginnings of the Weary Stage

For the first week it was a fun and exciting little secret just between us.  Then we decided to go ahead and tell some people close to us.  We figured that the main reason not to share was in case something happened and we lost the pregnancy, but we also figured that if that did happen, we would want people close to us to know what was going on to help and support us.

The first week of knowing I felt totally fine and normal. Then at 5 and a half weeks I woke up Sunday morning for church and felt awful. The day before even I was completely fine.  I woke up and felt light headed, nauseous, and overall just really weird and really bad.  I barely made it through church.  I felt much better afterwards when we ate lunch.  That's about how it went for the next two to three weeks.  I would have times of feeling awful, but normally felt better as soon as I ate.

This eating to feel better was quite a challenge with teaching though. I have always been a night person and NOT a morning person.  Always. Since I was a little kid.  I used to pretend to go to sleep when my dad would check on me and then stay up late for hours reading when I was in elementary school.  And my mom has always said I was grumpy and mean in the mornings.  So in general I struggle with getting up and ready for work so early (or up early for simply anything).  And due to my nature of disdaining mornings and always rushing and running late, I have never eaten breakfast.  At least not since my mom stopped making me food in the morning when I was a kid.  Needless to say, since I've been pregnant, I have NEEDED food in the morning, and this has been quite the challenge.  Now also feeling exhausted (and man, people aren't joking when they say you are exhausted) even when I get more sleep than I ever have as an adult on a weeknight, I wake up still exhausted, still hating the morning, and still rushing and running behind on a daily basis.  I've been grabbing a quick bagel or banana or toast and trying to eat it without making a mess all over myself while driving to work.  The other day I was walking into the school with a whole box of Cheerios sticking out of my school bag and shamelessly stuffing handfuls in my mouth while quickly walking to my classroom. I may have accidentally dropped a few on the floor.  One I accidentally stepped on as well.  I was sorry.  I really wanted to eat it.

I've also been snacking in my room as a last resort.  I physically feel like I can't even make it until our conference at 9:50 without eating more.  I start to feel so nauseous, light headed, and awful.  I have never eaten in my room with the kids there before, but I just have to.  I try to be subtle.  It's not like I'm chomping on an apple in front of them or eating a gourmet meal, but I still feel bad.

Around the end of week 5 and beginning of week 6 is when I officially entered the "weary" stage as my father-in-law has explained.

(More on that to come...)
   

Baby Journey -Part 1

Baby Journey -Part 1:  Let's Make a Baby

---If you haven't heard the news yet - we're pregnant!!  I'm currently just at 12 weeks.  I've been writing about how the pregnancy has been going and will post it bit-by-bit.  My hope is to continue writing throughout the pregnancy both to share and to simply have the journey recorded for us to one day look back and remember.---

Cody and I had discussed starting to try to get pregnant for a while. We were going back and forth about when to officially start and the possibilities of it happening right away (we deemed very unlikely) or it taking a while. Ultimately we knew that it would be God's timing and not ours.  After all, we could use all the prevention in the world and still get pregnant, or we could try consistently to get pregnant only to have nothing happen.

We went on our summer trip to Jamaica in July and decided to start trying the next month in August.  At the beginning of August we talked about it again, prayed about it, and decided to officially start trying. The next day we were "in the mood" and I asked Cody one more time if he was really sure. I think my exact words were something like "Are you really sure about starting to try? Because I'm pretty sure I'm ovulating this week. So this could be a legit chance to get pregnant." And Cody said yup let's do it. So we did.  (TMI? - Sorry, some of this is more for me/us to remember than y'all!)

I guess we can't be 100% sure... but we are pretty darn confident it was that first official time. What are the odds?  I mean, we wanted to start trying, knew it was a possibility, but also knew there was a big chance it could take a while.  Whelp, a few weeks later I found myself in the middle of our teacher work week before school started.  It was Meet the Teacher that night and all day I just wanted to go home and take a pregnancy test.  I was pretty sure I was pregnant.  That night at Meet the Teacher I had several parents ask things like if I was married, had a family or kids.  My answer was yes I'm married but no I don't have any kids yet. However in my head I thought 'Although I think I might by the end of the school year!'

As soon as I came home from Meet the Teacher I said hi to Cody and went straight to the bathroom to take a test.  Pretty quickly a little plus sign came up.  I sat there for a minute staring then took a picture of it on my phone.  I cleaned it off some and then called for Cody to come in our bedroom.  I think he thought there was a spider or bug or something by the way I yelled for him.  I was standing behind our closed bedroom door holding the pregnancy test and when he walked in I just started crying and couldn't say anything. I held up the stick and he put two and two together.  He was instantly excited and I hope I always remember that later that evening at one point he looked at me and said "Well, shit just got real." (*He doesn't normally say words like that, somehow the fact that he doesn't made it seem more real or serious or something.. I don't know if that makes sense.) It was very humorous the way he said it and in the setting of the evening.

We then proceeded to take lots of pictures of the positive test and of us holding the test, then decided to be double sure and we went out to buy a different brand and I took a second test.  This one showed the words "pregnant" or "not pregnant". Pretty clear answer.  It said "pregnant."  We then took pictures of that clear tiny life-altering word on the screen.  According to our calculations I was just four weeks and a couple days along.

(*Thank you for all the congratulations so far!  We've enjoyed getting to share our news recently and feel so much love and joy from everyone.  If you'd like to lift us up in prayer, we could definitely use some for me to feel better as soon as possible.  I have been feeling slightly better the last few days but overall still not very good.  I'm very ready to move past this exhausted sick feeling stage.  And of course for overall health for the baby!)