I seriously have been trying to write this blog post all week. Every time I sit down to work on it, something comes up and I get derailed until it's too late in the evening for me to have enough functioning brain cells left to write anything coherent. Assuming I do anyway, of course.
It's been a busy time, between working on the house and getting our garden produce picked and taken care of. The garden isn't producing as plentifully as I'd hoped (too many plants, not enough room, I'm thinking), but it's bringing enough in that it's taking a few hours every few days to harvest everything and then take care of it. We had chicken curry last night made with our own tomatoes and peppers and Ben was really thrilled - both with the recipe and the fact a good portion of it came from the garden. He's never been around for canning tomatoes before and I sort of regret now that I did the blanching and peeling while he was away so he didn't have the fun of squishing the tomatoes. Anyone else reading who has been similarly deprived: you have my sympathy. Tomato squishing is the best part of doing any canning all summer. I mean, just picture a great big pan of warm peeled tomatoes just waiting for you to stick your hands in and start squishing them up. Doesn't get much more fun than that. Since we're beginning the process of getting our building permits for the addition (hooray!), we've finally began doing some of the work on the kitchen we've really wanted to do all year, like getting the transition bar installed between the wood floor in the living room and the composite floor in the kitchen and hanging the vertical blinds. Yes, we know it's all going to get torn out again shortly. In fact, installing things pretty much ensures that. If all goes well, we should begin the foundation work in the next few weeks. I've been feeling the baby move now and then, but it seems we have a placid one on our hands: whoever this little person is, they're not in a big hurry to start thumping away on Mom. I've been praying for a baby with a laid-back sunny disposition like Ben's and now I just have to remember not to get too worried when he or she is not too worried about being on time with things like movement milestones. One of the big differences between me and Ben is that he's not concerned when he's running late for something; I always feel bound to be absolutely on time even for things that really don't matter. Which is probably why I walked at 12 months and he waited until 15. Having said all that, as I'm sitting here typing I'm getting probably the strongest movements I've felt yet. It feels...sort of like someone popping popcorn very gently under my skin. I'm very relieved to feel that because I've been firmly resisting using the Doppler monitor to hear the heartbeat again. I've been doing some reading and it seems there are some indications that exposure to focused sound waves from ultrasound or even the Doppler monitor can be hard on the baby's developing cells. So unless there's an emergency, I really don't want to go bombarding Peanut with focused sound waves just so I can feel happy to hear a nice little heartbeat. All of which makes a little movement a welcome event. Today, Peanut is alive and well and cheerfully kicking me in the stomach. Hm. That doesn't sound too good, put in those terms. This week I can definitely tell I'm no longer in the first trimester of this pregnancy. I suddenly have the overwhelming urge to take care of all the little odds and ends I've been putting off for the past three months. So far I've been painting doors, cleaning corners of the house that have been building up dust and clutter, finally beginning to think about how to actually decorate around here, weeding the flowers, trying out new recipes, and no longer needing a nap every afternoon in order to have energy to make dinner. I notice that I can go up and down the stairs without feeling achy. How exactly does that work, I wonder, considering the baby is a hundred times bigger and heavier than three months ago?
I can also take a shower first thing in the morning before breakfast without passing out. Betcha everyone was just itching to know about that. Furthermore, I had the energy to also be interested enough in politics again to go read up on all the candidates on yesterday's ballot before we went in to vote. I haven't even wanted to hear the radio lately; and for anyone who knows me well, this should be an indication of just how tired I was. There was an exciting bunch of skulduggery going on in my hometown...but I wasn't voting there. Bummer. Apparently there were some similar fireworks in our new hometown, but I didn't have the same kind of background to know what was going on and who to really vote for. So yesterday morning - the first big election I haven't worked in twelve years! - Ben and I sat down and read through a lot of candidate statements and news articles before going in to vote. That's when I realized the fog must really be lifting off my brain because my reaction wasn't "eh...okay...big deal..." A lot of people have told me, "Oh, you're going to feel really good these next couple of months." It's not that I didn't believe them, but it is actually surprising to me how much better I feel. After all, I just did two first trimesters in a row between Joshua and this baby, so feeling better while still expecting is all new territory. And folks have started with the patting-the-tummy thing. I wasn't sure how I was going to respond to that, if it would be really weird and uncomfortable or if it wouldn't bother me. Turns out...so far it doesn't bother me. Maybe because I'm so very pleased this baby is still around and getting around-er, so to speak. Today I spent most of the day barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.
If you’ve lived in a cave most of your life, you probably haven’t heard this is a bad situation. Anyone else has probably heard this phrase used with scorn to describe a woman who’s supposedly downtrodden, miserable, and certainly not “living to her potential”. I can honestly say I loved every minute of it. There was a time I thought I wasn’t going to get a chance to be in this position and I actually laughed aloud when I realized I could now accept that particular label. I’m not sure when this job got such a bad rap. Cooking is one of my all-time favorite things to do. Being barefoot on a hot day is it’s own pleasure. And while being pregnant has it’s weird, startling, or yucky moments (this is definitely not the time to lose a good sense of humor!)…it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. I’ve never been called on to use so much foresight, energy, ingenuity, decision-making skills, or management capabilities as have been required of me these days, which means my “potential” is being tested in ways it never has before. I expect that bar to only get higher in the coming weeks and months as I become responsible for a young child and Grandma Lila continues to need increasing care. And this is not a job I was press-ganged into. It was one I enthusiastically agreed to. Tough to be downtrodden under those circumstances. Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. And proud of it. The technician's diagnosis: "You're definitely pregnant."
With an acrobat, apparently. You would not believe the maneuvers we watched this peanut do. Flips, somersaults, and a lot of kicking and waving. The age by measurement is about 10 weeks, 6 days. Technically, we're only at 10 weeks 3 days, so this is good news. There were no signs in the preliminary reading of anything unusual or abnormal. My bloodwork has all come back with excellent reports, we've picked up the baby's heartbeat three times, and now we have some nice black and white pictures. We're being told repeatedly, "Looks like a nice normal pregnancy. Have a nice day!" All of which means...the little weird things that happened were just little weird things and no indication this time of an impending miscarriage. God has not only blessed us with a strong little peanut, but given us overwhelming evidence to prove he has. Hospital policy is to exclude everyone from the ultrasound room except the patient and that was making me pretty uneasy. I really didn't want to do the ultrasound without Ben there, but hospitals have a way of sticking to policies even when you beg. When they called me in and told Ben to stay behind, I broke from my usual meek habit of following the rules and said, "Isn't there any way he can come in too?" "I'm sorry, that's the policy," the nurse said. "You can talk to the technician, but we don't let anyone in and for now you'll have to go wait in the other waiting room." So there I sat, off in a little waiting room while Ben was left in the main room. I was pretty nervous by then (not a good combination with morning sickness and a stomach full of water...) and when I looked around for something to distract me, I was surprised and thrilled to discover and current copy of Cooking Light sitting on the table. Nothing distracts me quite as well as indulging my recipe habit. I found a few good ones and began copying them down on a piece of paper I found in my purse. As a distraction, it worked pretty well because I got a lot less nervous; something I was very thankful for a little while later when the imaging center's manager beckoned me out into the hall for a conversation. "I hear you have some family you would really like to bring in for the ultrasound," he said. He was an older man, and he seemed kind of nervous to be talking to me. "Yes - I was really hoping my husband could come in too," I said. "I've had some bad experiences with ultrasounds and I'd feel much better if he were there." "Would it make any difference if he just sat outside?" he said. "Because we really don't like anyone else to be in the room while the technician is doing measurements." "It would be better than nothing," I said. I kind of brightened up, because Ben sitting just outside the curtain was a lot better than Ben in a waiting room across the building. At least he'd be right there. "Now, the reason we have the policy," he explained, "is because sometimes...when family is there...and the technician might make some kind of facial expression or the family member might not understand what's being measured or what's being looked at...things can get kind of unpleasant and people get scared and I would hate for you to have a worse experience than before." It was funny, but right about then, I knew I could convince him to let Ben in. All I had to do was be very calm and very reasonable. So I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, what's happened before is I was present for an ultrasound where my youngest brother was found to have a genetic problem and it was thought at the time he might not even have a brain. Then with our last baby, we had two ultrasounds where we knew the baby was dead even though no one told us as much. We were together for those and we were okay for them, but it makes this ultrasound kind of hard for me to do." He looked at me for a second and said, "I think in this case, we're going to make an exception from the policy." I think I almost cried. I said, "Thank you so much. That is really, really kind of you and I appreciate it." Later, Ben was waiting for me to use the bathroom (64 ounces of water at once?!! Yikes!!) and the manager came by. Ben said, "Thank you so much for letting me be there. It looks like everything is fine and the baby is healthy." The manager shook his hand and said. "Good. God bless you." I'm not sure which was the bigger blessing for the day: another diagnosis of "everything is fine" or meeting a man with enough kindness and common sense to let Ben stay with me through the ultrasound. I was very glad he was there. And we tried two of the recipes for dinner. They were both 5-star-keep-in-the-recipe-book ones...though I should probably write them on something more permanent than a two-month-old shopping list. A week ago, Ben and I ran across the possibility that we could purchase a fetal doppler monitor at 73% off. It was $35 and it was a little pocket model that didn't tend to work accurately until 12 weeks. We'd just gotten to nine, but we thought about it and said, "Well, we're not the only ones we know having babies right now. Other people might have a use for this sometime as well...and it sure would be nice if we could listen to the baby's heartbeat on our own." So we bought it. Mom Turner said, "You know you're going to try it out anyway, whether it's too early or not." "Yeah, we know," we said a little sheepishly. "But hey, it's a really neat little thing and if we know it's too early, it's not like we're going to be bothered if we don't hear anything." The box came in the mail today. Considering all our conversations of the past week, I'd already come to the point of saying, "If the baby's fine, then we just have to wait a few weeks and we'll get a good chance to hear the heartbeat then." But of course, when I opened the box and looked everything over, I thought, "Aw...give it a shot." I heard nothing but what I suspected was the baby's placenta - sort of a whooshy thing that clearly has my heartbeat in it, but it's the only thing like that you can hear in my stomach so I figured that's what it was. Still, no baby heartbeat. But then, Ben wasn't home. I put the machine away and told Ben about it later. After dinner he said, "Hey, I'd like to take a look at this little thing we bought." I got it back out and showed him the parts and explained what I'd read in the instructions about how it worked. "So what did you hear?" he wanted to know. "Not much," I said. "Maybe the placenta, but then that's only to be expected." "What's it sound like?" he said. I tried to think how to describe it better than I already had. "Here, I'll just show you," I said. So I put the pieces together and got it all angled properly...and there was that whooshy sound again. I handed him one of the two earbuds and said, "Like this." And then it happened. Cutting right into my heartbeat was another much fainter sound. Fainter, but pretty unmistakable. I've heard it a hundred times over the years, multiple times with every one of my siblings. "BEN!" I squeaked. "THAT'S THE BABY!" Of course I was so excited that I moved the monitor and we totally lost the sound. I think the last time I was that excited was the day Ben asked me to marry him. "Okay, now we're going to find it again," Ben said. "Just a minute." He went and got the laptop and the line-in jack and hooked everything up. "I don't know," I said. "I think it was pretty much a miracle we found it once - I may not be able to do it again." "Just try," he said. So we did. I went to the same place and listened for my heartbeat and realized it was pretty far over to my right, so I slid the monitor to the left just a touch...and there it was again. So strong and clear and unmistakable that the monitor flashed the little sign that it'd found a fetal heart rate and the numbers started climbing. I couldn't see them, but Ben was saying, "It's 100...no, 110...no 150...no, 170. It's 170!" The baby obliged us by lying there calmly for a whole minute and thirty seconds before moving. One minute and thirty seconds of a strong little heartbeat chugging away at 170 - 173 beats per minute. Right perfectly on target for a baby this age. I think I must've held my breath half the time. I know - lack of oxygen is bad for babies. But I was afraid if I breathed I might jostle everything around and we wouldn't be able to hear any more. Almost best of all, we have a recording. We called up my family and Ben's and played it over the phone for them. We played it over the big speakers for Grandma and her mouth dropped open and she said, "That's the baby's heartbeat?!! That's absolutely marvelous! How did you do that?!" I don't think Grandma's ever heard a baby heartbeat before. They weren't using monitors like that when Mom was born. Thing is, being able to hear the baby's heart on a little pocket monitor at just barely 10 weeks old is no small feat. It wasn't a coincidence. It was a very, very precious gift. Jenny asked me why I thought we could hear the baby so early and I said, "Because God just gave us a very special gift." And he did. Click the play button if you want to hear our blessing of the year so far! If someone were to ask me seven or eight months ago if I was afraid of death, I would've said no. Death is not something to be afraid of. God is bigger than death and it's a lot better to save that kind of respect for the one in charge, not the underling.
Then Joshua died and I discovered something about myself: I'm not afraid of dying myself...but I am very afraid of death when it comes for the people I love. Especially, as it turns out, my children. I didn't realize quite how afraid I was until this week when I saw a few mildly abnormal pregnancy symptoms. Before I tell the rest of the story, the week has gone by and we've figured out that we're not dealing with another miscarriage but something only annoyingly problematic on my end. In other words, it doesn't appear anything is wrong with the baby or threatening him. (Or HER, as Anna firmly states. She has a good track record. She's making me doubt my usual all-babies-are-boys-until-proven-otherwise mindset.) Over the course of this week, though, I've had a lot of reason to think about what it means to be afraid and what needs to be done to conquer fear. At first I thought I needed to talk myself out of it. Turns out that doesn't work. For one thing, I wasn't exactly sure what I was afraid of at first; and for another, when you find one thing to focus on that's positive, you can find negative things that send you right back to being afraid again. Ben watched me failing to be unafraid and began stepping in pretty quickly. He reasoned with me several different ways before he eventually said, "You know, there's a reason we're told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And 'fear' is different from 'terror'. When you fear God first, you respect his power and authority over everything else more than you respect anything else. When you really know and fear God, you can't be afraid of death, because God controls death. The closer you are to him, the more you should have fear of him and the less you should be afraid of anything else at all." It seems like through the course of my life, the lesson I've needed to learn most is how out of control I really am. I can't control my own life, let alone anyone else's - even those I love and want to protect most, like the tiny baby it feels like I'm so responsible for protecting right now. As much as I want to do it - even as much as I try to do it - I'm still not in control. There are so many other things and people stronger and more in control than I am: and the controller of all of these is God. What's amazing is how quick I am to focus on something like death and fear it rather than focusing on the Controller of Death and fearing him! The thing about fearing God is that it only leads to wisdom if you believe that God is Good. Lots of people are afraid of God because they think he's arbitrarily cruel or doesn't care what happens to us or just allows bad things because he feels like it or he's ineffectual at preventing it. That's not the kind of fear that takes away other fears. It's a whole other ballgame to fear God while wholeheartedly believing he is wholly and completely Good without change or fail. It's this reminder that finally broke through the fear I couldn't shake myself from. I feel like a little kid who lost her mother in the store only to realize she'd been standing right behind her the whole time. Ever have a moment of relief like that? It feels pretty wonderful. Happy 10-week anniversary, Peanut. I can't wait to hear your heartbeat. Ever hear of sibling rivalry?
Yeah, I've heard about it too. Apparently, it's expected that in any family of more than one child there's always an underlying level of competition where the kids are each vying for attention and putting the others down to manage it. Siblings pick on each other, the common lore goes. The more siblings, the more intense the bullying and the struggle for command. Movies like "Cheaper by the Dozen" (the new version) really promote this concept, and a common breakthrough in a "family" show is when the kids learn their brother/sister is really quite dear to them and not all that annoying after all. The kids in my family are far from perfect and have definitely been unkind to each other. But this sense of competition with each other has been absent. I suppose I always took this for granted until recently, when someone from a family similar in size to mine told me some stories about her relationship to her family during her growing-up years and shortly into marriage. For her, everything was - and is - a competition to see who's better. Who's smarter, who's more talented, who gets the better boyfriend, who does better in school, who has prettier children, and so on. They love each other; but boy, do they compete against each other. I listened to these stories and started thinking about my siblings, who would downplay their strengths to keep another sibling from being embarrassed or who would coach a sibling on their schoolwork rather than crow over them about getting better grades. Then I looked at Ben's family and realized one of the things that was always familiar and comfortable to me about them was the relationship of the siblings and the way they take care of each other and don't put each other down. Jenny used to clean Ben's room for him while he was at school just so he could be delighted when he got home, for instance. I recognized that trait and loved it. That's what I want our kids to be like. The thing is, competitive rivalry - probably better just named "Boastful Pride"! - is actually natural. It's our earliest inclination, the kind of trait that lends credence to the whole idea of "survival of the fittest". The mentality of holding each other up, protecting each other and being selfless is actually the unnatural one, the philosophy that goes against our basic natures. If loving humility exists among siblings, it means something was deliberately done to cause it to happen. If something was deliberately done, then that's what we want to do to our children! I mentioned this to Ben. "At some point, the parents of the other family must've thought the competition was good," he said. "They must've seen it as normal, as making their kids stronger, at just indicating healthy preparation for living out in the world. Otherwise, who would tolerate it?" Perhaps the first thing - as always - is simply recognizing how ugly this rivalry is. Pride and boastfulness have to be intolerable. Not cute, not normal, not healthy. Intolerable. Perhaps it's also easy to do our kids an injustice by making them think when they're little that they're the most beautiful, talented, amazing people ever to grace the face of this planet. If they make the mistake of thinking they are, they'll start getting jealous of people not recognizing how great they are. A person's life is about who they are in comparison to what is perfect, not who they are in comparison with anyone else around them. I think it may be when kids start thinking of themselves as pretty wonderful and comparing themselves with their siblings that they start finding out their brothers and sisters can *gasp* outdo them in places and that's where the rivalry comes in. It becomes a fight for each to ensure their status as top-wonderful-person-of-the-family. So to help our children love each other better and not get blinded by selfish rivalry, I think we're going to be pretty matter-of-fact about their strengths and weaknesses and be on the sharp lookout for the development of "Aren't I pretty great?"-ism. We already love our current little peanut very much, but for his or her sake we're going to have to prevent him/her from getting a big head. Love them truthfully for who they are and point them toward becoming more like God, not toward outdoing anyone around them. Because it would be so easy to let that pride take hold and the rivalry creep in, and I was deeply saddened by what those things had done in the life of the person I spoke to recently. It has created resentment and jealousy and bitterness and grief through the years and it's bound to create more in the years to come. It's a painful, ugly, cancerous thing - nothing healthy and normal about it at all. As Ben puts it, "It's a bad weed we have to keep out of our garden." Life feels in slow motion to me right now.
Part of it is my body not allowing me to do my usual number of things in a day. I'm used to pushing myself, to doing a lot at a time, managing to clean the kitchen, do the laundry, cook three meals, make all the beds, take a walk with Ben, help Grandma with a shower, weed the garden, trim the bushes, and sit down sometime in the evening to enjoy a little time on the computer before bed. I have family members who complain about this, but my philosophy for a long time has been that if something needs to be done and I have time to do it, I should do it: because there's no guarantee there'll be time for it tomorrow. My mom has told me many times that when she was expecting or nursing a young baby, she had to learn to pick a few things in a day and just do those or she would be worn out. Mom and I have kind of different temperaments, though, and I always wondered if I would really have to cut back that much. Then there was my pregnancy with Joshua and I was still getting a lot done even if I started feeling iffy around 5:00 in the evening. So I figured, "Well, I just have more energy than Mom." Then along came this baby. Like a lightswitch, at about five weeks my energy started dropped off. By this week - week six - there were a few days when I got literally nothing done. Every time I tried to get up and get going, I was lightheaded, short of breath, sick to my stomach, and generally feeling like I got run over by a truck. We're starting week seven now and I've discovered a few things: every day is a smaller window of opportunity than it used to be. Every day requires me to spend a lot more time eating (apparently my blood sugar is crashing and I'm under orders to eat protein every two hours), a lot less time cooking, and a lot more time sitting. Every day is more precious to me than before, and it often seems to drag by as I wait patiently (or not so patiently) for this baby to get bigger and make it through the most uncertain time of his/her young life. I have to be very careful to sort out what's necessary to get done and what I can let go for the time being. Grandma Lila is a little confused about this - she's used to me getting everything done and I think she forgets why I might be slower to cross days off on her calender or get her bed made in the morning than I was before, and meals are definitely less elaborate. Actually, I'm not sure she always knows it's me who does these things, so she's worried about me doing too much but thinks the staff is not keeping up with things like they used to. I'll have to give that staff a talking-to; but hopefully the next few weeks will go by quickly and I'll be back up to better speed before long. And then there's Ben, with his new motto of "You're feeling sick - woohoo!" I have a friend who told me that when she was newly expecting and throwing up every morning, her husband would say, "Isn't this exciting? We're having a new baby! It's kind of cute that you get sick every morning!" She was laughing about it and I knew why, because I can see Ben doing that. It's a good thing, too. Because boy, these slow days are no joke: I'm not used to having to STOP to smell roses - I generally appreciate them as I'm running by with a bucket full of weeds. So when Ben cheers because I feel like I'm about to get sick, I laugh a little and then I feel better. I've been told most of my life that I don't smile enough and take everything much too seriously. Like all the things that float around in my mind as things that have to be done, but that will be just fine if I don't get to them for a while. Going at half-speed for the past week is reminding me to take things less seriously, smile when I feel sick - no, actually because I feel sick - and be satisfied with getting only a few things done each day. Like making dinner. Which I should probably go do now. If I can just get out of this chair... Last Monday - well, two Mondays ago, now - we had a very productive day. Ben and I spent about six hours out in the yard weeding, cleaning, pruning, and planting (3 flats of impatiens, all under the Kanzan cherry in the front yard). We also spent a while working on the big project we've been working on with Dad Turner over the past few weeks. I didn't think much of it - there was a lot to get done and we were just tackling it like usual.
Then Tuesday morning, I began doing the laundry which had been put off by a day because of all our outdoor work. I was carrying laundry baskets downstairs when I felt something I hadn't felt for a while and had sort of forgotten about: a sort of tugging in my stomach muscles that was just on the edge of uncomfortable, like when you've worked the muscles in your legs too much and they keep threatening to cramp. I was standing downstairs sorting clothes and thinking about the feeling and started to do a little simple math. That's when I got suspicious. I came upstairs and said to Ben, "I think it's time to buy a test now." "What?" he said. "Well, we can wait a few weeks like last time," I said. "But I think we're expecting again." By that evening, I was practically sure of it. We went over to Leah's family's house for dinner and I was helping make hamburgers when the uncomfortable feeling got strong enough that I finally sat down and then put my feet up for good measure. Instant relief. Yep, I thought. Something is definitely going on. I'm not the kind of girl who sits around with her feet up very often, especially when there's a lot going on in the kitchen. Leah's mother-in-law looked at me and said, "How long ago did you miscarry?" "Late February," I said. "Hm," she said. "I know. I'm suspicious too," I said. Last time around we were a lot more secretive for a lot longer. This time I pretty much gave up. Everyone we know already knows that we were expecting a baby before and it was only a matter of time before we were again. It took us until Thursday to get around buying a test. And I woke Ben out of a sound sleep Friday morning to inform him that it was very definitely positive. At which point, we promptly began spilling the beans to our family just as fast as we possibly could. If you would've asked me a year ago if I'd be the kind of person who would tell the whole world she was expecting as soon as she knew about it or if I would be the kind of person who would just keep it to herself (well, herself, her husband, and their parents/siblings...) for a few months, I would definitely have picked the latter. The problem is, we did that last time and we found out something: Joshua's life was something to take joy in and most people barely knew of his existence before he was gone. We told everyone and then immediately had to turn around and tell everyone of his death. This does not mean that I think everyone should know our private business all the time. But life is very precious, even life that's a baby only the size of a sesame seed. It is something to treasure and rejoice in for the miracle and the gift that it is, a gift God gave us just as certainly if we possess it for one day or three million. I treasure every day this baby is continuing to live and grow, every day that brings on a little greater loss of energy and all the other symptoms that are making me lose ambition to get other projects around here done again. I suppose I would be lying if I said I have perfect unshaken confidence this baby will join our family as a newborn at the end of January: it's sometimes a moment-by-moment thing to keep my mind on being at peace and not being afraid. There is just such a long way to go and so many things that could happen. It even makes me feel quite vulnerable to tell everyone about this baby so soon, as if he's a secret I'd like to hold onto for a while just to make sure he's really real. In a way, boldly telling everyone of his existence is a gesture of faith, at least on my part, because it's flat out claiming, "Yes, we are having a new baby!" Not "maybe", not "if everything goes well", not "well, we hope..." Those things are all true, of course, but at the point you announce, "We're expecting again" it's an unqualified statement. It's a statement of hope. As much as my doubts want to take over, as much as I want to hold back and do the pessimistic "wait and see", I am joyfully saying, "We're expecting again!" We named our last baby Joshua because it was a declaration that this child was ours and had a place and was known to God; we also named him Hope because we wanted to remind ourselves that it was something we still had even if we could not keep the child himself. Joshua's death was not the death of hope. This baby's life is something entirely new and distinct and different, and we are full of hope - also translated "expectation" - that we will hold this child in our arms and raise him (or her!) to Godly adulthood. And that is our very wonderful news for this week. Well, mostly back to normal, anyway. I'm still having occasional random moments of weepiness, but that's beginning to fade. Today I got all the laundry finished and put away (I washed a lot on Friday, then ran out of energy before folding everything and getting it hung up), cleaned the house, washed the kitchen floor, went to an insurance appointment with Ben, stopped in the local precinct so Ben could vote (I still have to vote at my old precinct and I got an absentee ballot last Thursday since I didn't know how much I was going to be ready to be up and around), and made three normal meals instead of the sort of sketchy ones I've been making over the past few weeks. I did not have a nap attack and did not have to sit down at 5:00 because I was feeling queasy. For pretty much the first time in my married life (and today is our three-month anniversary!), I feel myself. It's kind of weird.
One of the strangest things about this is feeling like nothing happened. Physically, I don't feel any different than I've felt most of my adult life. I can't tell I was carrying another little person around with me. This has actually been at the root of some of those random weepy moments, because it's as if I had a baby that just vanished without a trace. I'm not sure this would've made such an impact on me if I had other children, but it certainly made an impact this time around. A friend of mine described the weeks after a miscarriage as bringing her a lot of sudden thoughts like, "Wait, this is just wrong - I'm supposed to be pregnant right now!" and I know what she means. On the other hand, being pregnant was a whole new experience and not being pregnant is something I'm used to. I have no frame of reference for what was coming next, no memories of what it feels like to get really big and uncomfortable or have the baby move or give birth or nurse or any of those things that were "next on the agenda" a few weeks ago. So most of the time, the occurrence of thoughts like, "today would've been Week 13" only brings a sort of wistfulness because I have nothing in my brain to really tie that thought to. Then there are other times when I am suddenly and intensely sad and Ben has assure me that all is still well. I'm glad this is fading, because it's sort of like being ambushed - you're walking along and everything's fine until suddenly wham! you're crying over practically nothing at all. Mom is often like this after a new baby is born. The family joke is that she cries over Hallmark commercials in the weeks after a new birth. I didn't expect that to be a part of this week because I guess I sort of figured this baby was so tiny and so new and my body had never had to make such big adjustments that it wouldn't have to adjust too much going back to normal. In a way, that's true; but apparently I'm still susceptible to crying at odd moments. Ben keeps getting concerned I'm going to think he's taking this all too lightly because he isn't having the same kind of difficulty and I keep telling him I'm really glad he still has that beautiful Turner smile always ready because it reminds me that all really is very well. In other news, Grandma Lila has been officially cleared to walk and make all "transfers" (getting in and out of bed, into the bathroom, etc.) on her own since she has strengthened up a lot and is doing so well. The physical therapist will probably continue to come for a few more weeks, but then she'll mostly likely be discharged from care and will be back to where she was before she fell in November. Sort of like me: it's as if nothing ever happened. I think we're all getting more sleep these days, as Grandma doesn't have to wait for someone to come help her to the bathroom and we don't have to get up every few hours either. It's a lot quieter around here than it was for a while at night. We're also gearing up to get drawings and plans ready for our addition as it looks like this winter was pretty much nonexistent and spring is coming early. We have to consistently have some warmer weather before we can pour the concrete footings for the addition, but that time seems to be approaching fast and we need to get our act together and get things nailed down (ha, ha) and ready to submit for permits. We have a pretty good idea what we'd like to do indoors, but we have some interesting challenges when it comes to things like designing the roof and figuring out exactly what dimensions would suit Grandma's bathroom best. And I think maybe it's time to resume taking walks. I've missed them the past few weeks. There has been a sudden appearance of birds singing in the morning again which makes me think spring really is just around the corner and I've been inside a whole lot lately. Maybe early tomorrow Ben and I can go out and take a brisk stroll around the neighborhood. Now that would really be getting back to normal. |
Author: LaurenWife of Benjamin and mother to two wonderful little girls who are getting bigger every day. Enjoys writing down thoughts and discussions we are having within the family and sharing them with whoever is interested in reading. CommentPlease don't be shy! If you're reading the blog updates, we'd like to hear what you think. Click on the "comments" link to send us a note.
Archives
August 2018
Categories
All
|