The Fish in Haiti

The only thing better than spoiling a new baby is knowing the money you spent is going to help rebuild a country devastated by a natural disaster. That's why I'm super excited (even though it wasn't my money!) to tell you that my baby's new crib and dresser helped contribute to the rebuilding of Haiti's Double Harvest Medical/Surgical Center. The Purple Wave auction house in our hometown held a fundraiser auction last night and donated 100% of the money to Double Harvest. Knowing the money went specifically to Double Harvest is especially important to us because my parents volunteered at that center a few years ago when they went on a medical missions trip to Haiti.

So now you are asking yourself how we'll get a crib and dresser (and conversion kit to convert the crib to a toddler bed and later full-sized bed!) from Middle America to Southern California. Well, lucky for us Craig's parents actually seem to enjoy making marathon car rides! So they'll be bringing baby's new furniture with them when they drive out here just a few days after my estimated due date, and baby will sleep in a bassinet in our room in the meantime. I love my in-laws! (And no, we don't have a bassinet yet, for those of you looking for gift ideas!)

Speaking of gift ideas, we created a gift registry at www.myregistry.com. (There's a particularly nice 10-pc crib bedding set that I'm rather obsessed with.) This site allows us to register items from literally any store in the world all in one place. It's also convenient because gift-givers don't have to purchase items from the websites linked to from our registry; shop around, find the right price, purchase the gift, and then go back to our registry, click the item you purchased and mark either "Purchased from this website," "Purchased from another website," or "Purchased offline." Simple. Who knows? Maybe you'll find a Haiti Relief benefit auction near you!

For those of you wondering, here's the manufacturer's picture of our new crib.

And for certain blog commenters, here's a picture of the entire decorated "Gender Cake." Make your London friends proud (and thanks for your help decorating it!).

It's a Girl!

I'll admit I was nervous about this whole Chromosome Celebration thing. After all, the party was nothing more than a glorified cake-cutting ceremony. I didn't think people would come then freaked out when literally every one of our guests said they'd be there (and some even invited others). I thought we'd be bored. I thought I'd be one of those annoying attention hogs. A pregnant friend of mine even said to me, "I'm surprised you're doing this."
Well, we did and guess what? It was actually fun. I managed to shed some of the attention limelight by forcing everyone to sing Happy Birthday to two friends who are celebrating their birth this week. There were presents and cards for me and for the birthday girl (not for the guy, unfortunately, but his birthday *is* technically over anyway). And my husband hooked his computer to our TV so we were able to play a continuous slide show of our salmon egg's development as she grows inside my belly. (This was a hit with the girls but less so with the guys, who claimed to be unable to see head, nose, and limbs in the ultrasound photos; I'm not sure I really believe them though. I think they were trying to be tough.) All in all, a good party. And yes, it's a girl!

Making Waves

They say you can start feeling the baby kick anywhere around 16 weeks. I forget where I read this, but I did read, "If you're only at 15 weeks and think you feel the baby kick--you don't. You have gas."

Well, I hit the 15 week mark on Dec. 26 and so for the last half of our holiday visit back in Middle America I kept thinking, "Come on little one. Kick. Kick! KICK!"

I had also read that heavier women are more likely to feel the baby kick closer to week 20. So as week 16 ended and then week 17, I began to have body image issues. Of course, they also say that women in their first pregnancy may also not feel any kicks until later, but that made little difference to me.

However, at the end of week 18 (on January 14, to be exact), there was a definite flutter on the lower right side of my stomach. It felt just as if someone had drummed their fingers against the inside of my skin. We were sitting on the couch reading our nightly "family" scripture, and as my husband read the genealogy of Jesus, I said, "Craig. Craig. Craig!" Of course, he continued reading to the end of the list and then put his thumb on the page and looked at me. By then the baby had quit kicking. I said, "Well, the baby kicked but you missed it."

I of course called my mom the next day and announced to all my Bible study girlfriends that I'd felt the baby kick. It was all very exciting. And then days without any kicking began to pile up. I began to think about all those women who think their baby is kicking when, in reality, they just need to pop a few Tums. I started to think I'd been wrong.

Well yesterday morning when my body was slowly growing alert in anticipation of that 5:30 alarm, I felt the exact same fluttering in my stomach. And I thought, "Is it?" And right about then, three distinct, deliberate (dare I say, slightly angry?) kicks knocked into me.

I rolled onto my side and tried to say, "Craig, the baby is kicking," but because my tongue hadn't been used for many hours and was thick with thirst, I think it sounded more like, "Agh, uh aby es eeking." He said something that meant "What?" And I said it again, clearer this time because suddenly (though the alarm had still not gone off) he pounced on me, pressing his hand firmly against my abdomen so that I was like a bug pinned to the bed.

We stayed like that for several minutes until the alarm went off and then I said, "I think you missed it again." But--partly because the bed was warm and he didn't want to go the gym and partly because he was determined to feel our baby moving inside me--he shut off the alarm and we lay in bed for half an hour or more with his hand against me and pretty soon he said, "I think I feel it," and I said, "Really? I don't feel anything." And then the same deliberate kicks came again and I said, "Yes, there it is. There's our little one."

Our Salmon Egg

We had a bit of a scare just two days after learning I was pregnant. I had begun bleeding a very little bit and when I called the doctor she told me to come in right away. For those of you who may experience something similar, please know that even though a lot of literature says such bleeding is "common," it is never "normal" or safe. Get in to see your doctor ASAP.

But also try not to freak out quite as much as I did. I can picture how I must have looked to my boss when I barged into her office and told her I had a "medical emergency." It's not pretty: pale-skinned and wild-eyed, something like how Mr. Rochester's wife must have looked standing over him setting fire to his bed. I cried all the way into my doctor's office and once there, surrounded by VERY pregnant women and lots of gurgling babies, cried even harder, squeezing my legs together as if that would stop the bleeding. They ushered me in pretty quickly so I wouldn't frighten the other patients into early labor, I think. (Or maybe they were just afraid I'd smuggled in a pint of gasoline and a lighter.)

Well, imagine my relief when this little blip, pulsating from the force of a heartbeat, showed up on the ultrasound screen:

Not much, I know (my doctor hadn't wanted to see me for another week to get a better ultrasound), but the movement was the thing. Seeing another living thing pulsing inside me was quite surreal (and, unfortunately, rather Alien-esque).

Since then, we've had 3 more ultrasounds--the first coming one month later in order to get more accurate measurements. This time there were no tears and Craig was able to come with me. Of course, we were both looking for a tiny blip and completely missed the (relatively) gigantic baby that had replaced it. Afterwards, we both admitted to staring at the screen in horror, thinking the baby had somehow disintegrated inside me without our knowing it. In hindsight, I don't know how we missed seeing the head and body.

 

Things have progressed smoothly ever since. This next ultrasound (taken Dec. 4, 2009) was done as part of the sequential screening my doctor recommended to determine the possibility that the baby had certain disabilities (we came out with a clean bill of health).

This next one is from the same ultrasound and shows the baby's hand held up against the forehead.

And finally, I have a small confession to make. We were not supposed to have the next (and final) ultrasound until Jan. 26. This is the ultrasound where we'd finally get to know what gender our baby is. Well, we told everyone we'd find out on Jan. 26 and a friend of mine talked me into doing a whole "Celebration of Chromosomes" party to tell our (local) friends what we're having. It's going to be a big deal (and we'll also be celebrating that same friend's birthday at the same time) with two cakes (one pink and one blue) and we'll cut into the "gender-correct" cake to make the announcement and everyone we invited said they could make it (even though some of them had to switch schedules around) and that's when the doctor's office called and told us that the ultrasound technician is going to be on vacation that day and asked if we could come in on Jan. 19 (this past Tuesday). So we did. And Craig and I now know the gender of the little salmon egg growing inside of me and we're keeping it secret because we have a party scheduled. This may indeed be the most superficial reason ever to keep such a large secret, but keep it we shall!

And since you can't tell the gender from the ultrasound photos anyway, I'm posting them here.

And here's one of their lovely foot.

The Hard Swim Upriver

So here I am: pregnant and blogging about it and how the little one growing inside me has already completely thrown my life off course.

I never thought I'd blog. And I especially never thought I'd be a "Mommy Blogger," but this just goes to show you how our ways are not always God's ways. This is the story of how I got here.

I suppose it started while I was still a graduate student, happily typing my way towards a Masters degree, when my husband (who I love) told me he wanted to accept a position with a company in Southern California. A land where we knew no one. A desolate desert land full of wannabe stars working the porn industry, drive-by shootings, concrete, and smog. I told him I couldn't live there. I told him I wanted a family some day and that I could not have a family living in that place.

I knew. I knew because this is the place my parents lived when they birthed me and my younger sister and they did not stick around long after that before high-tailing it back to the safe, clean, wholesome, and family-filled Midwest.

Well, needless to say I didn't get my way. This is what is meant by the verse, "Wives submit to your husbands as unto the Lord." I could have dug in my heels. I could have demanded my own way. And maybe I would have ended up with a divorce and an absent ex-husband, but probably not. Probably my husband would have elected to "Love me as Christ loves the church" and to stay with me though that meant being trapped in a dead-end job. He would have been unhappy and it would have been my fault. I decided I wanted my husband to be happy and I wanted to support him in his career endeavors. I made a conscious choice to submit.

The move was a difficult one. I was newly graduated and unemployed for several months in a strange land full of strange people. My husband worked every day, we had no friends, no church, and I knew where nothing was. I cried the first time I went to the grocery store in this new place. But then I found a job, we found a church, friendships began to bud. Though we knew my job would end come Dec. 31, 2009, we decided we wanted to start a family.

Silly me, I thought all women struggled to conceive. I thought what was supposed to be one of the most natural things in the world never was. My mother struggled to conceive me. My college roommate conceived only through IVF. A new and very dear friend had been struggling already for longer than seemed necessary. I'd been on the pill for years and imagined my uterus as a landscape vaguely mirroring the surface of the moon: a place that can harbor no life without intervention. I thought I'd have plenty of time to settle into a new job before actually needing to worry about maternity leave.

I was wrong but God was in control. I found out I was pregnant on Sunday, October 18, the start of week 2 in what proved to be a 3 week long interview process for a job at the same university I'd been working for 18 months. A job I was a shoo-in for. A job, one of the interviewers told me, they wanted to push me through for, get me started right away. Guess what? That job offer never came. One morning in the midst of this interview process I was trying to shower; I was exhausted and my stomach felt turned inside out and all I could do was sit on the floor and say, "God, if it's at all possible--if you can at all provide for us--please don't let me get this job." And that afternoon I received a phone call saying the job was not going to be offered to me after all.

And now here I am. Unemployed, pregnant, trying to pick up freelance work, trusting in God to meet our needs, and blogging about all of it. It may be a long, hard swim but I know it will be worth it.