Weeks 37 & 38: Just Keep Swimming

This photo (37 weeks!) was taken in what will be our new master bedroom in a matter of weeks! As usual, we snuck in for a self-guided tour that Sunday, and while the kids played a really loud game involving running in and out of a closet, Steve snapped this belly pic for me.

Here's the house, too!

As you might have guessed from the photos, the house and I are now roughly the same size.

This week the kids started school at their new elementary. Gracie is in third grade and Charlie has just begun kindergarten. Thankfully their days have been repeatedly, "great" and "perfect" respectively.

Grace also had her birthday on Wednesday. I was feeling so crummy that I honestly thought I might give birth (these two girls shared the same due date, so it would have been kind of awesome for them to share a birthday!) but obviously that did not happen. Instead we had Panera, Steve took the older two to a trampoline park, there was a gift-opening bonanza, and we finale-d with a Cold Stone cookie dough ice cream cake. :)

Dr. Appt

My most recent doctor's appointment was quick and to the point. Quick urine sample, heartbeat check (130's), mashing my stomach to find baby's position, and then checking my progress toward labor (4cm dilated, 60% effaced).

Also, I found this SUPER CLOSE parking just for me! YES!

And Dr. Olvera gave me the basic details of induction day--we're to arrive at the hospital at 4:30am (WHAT?!), I'll get started on the induction medications (and I can "get [my] epidural WHENEVER I WANT") and she expects to be on hand to break my water by 7am. So we'll see how that goes.

Keep Swimming

We're in "just keep swimming" mode.

A few days this week we've been convinced we'd be holding this girl by the following day, but NOPE. I feel terrible. Baby has dropped (yay!) which means (a) I look a little more hilarious because she looks more like a giant beer-belly than a pregnancy bump, and (b) I am dying of pain in my pelvis. Sorry to say pelvis. I'm also very nauseated again, which is not my favorite. And tired. And lots of other unpleasantries are going on, which are supposed to mean labor is coming but so far have not produced actual labor. *facepalm*

My stomach is so big that it's getting hard to drive the car! Ha! Tip-toes for gas & breaks, and I am constantly adjusting the seat so baby-girl doesn't have to snuggle the steering wheel.

This is my favorite dress. :)

Juliette is a doll face and lets me take a nap in the morning while she watches PBS snuggled up against me. She snuggles me pretty much wherever I go.

I don't wear makeup, I DO get dressed, and I am mostly laying down.

And we've started ordering groceries through Shipt. They shop for and then bring the food TO YOUR HOUSE, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate NOT having to waddle painfully through the store dragging all my feelings (and Juliette's, too) along with the grocery cart. AND that when Steve is home, he can hang out with me instead of grocery shopping. It is a marvelous invention, and I am thankful for technology this pregnancy!

I've started making myself daily to-do lists again. They are super basic, and include things like "Wash Juliette" or "Do the dishes." Wunderlist makes a little happy "ding" each time I check something off that makes it almost worth it to do the work. ;)

Steve's been working every day. I've been getting up with the kids (in the dark--boo) to get them ready and off to school. We are both disheartened and exhausted down to our bones, as is typical in these last few weeks of pregnancy. We've been putting the kids to bed and then climbing right into our own bed by around 8. This year has been full of stress and new beginnings and change, and we're just sort of sucked dry. So bedtime at 8 is great.

I'm resigned, but I would love your prayers if you are a prayer. Steve needs them, too. We're okay, we're making it, but that extra bolstering up of love and help would be a real gift from heaven in this last week of waiting. Thanks for being there for us. :)

xo,
Jamie

Weeks 25 + 26: Lightning

Gracie-loo took my 26 week photo for me. I almost photoshopped out the sock in the doorway, but I decided against it. Socks on the floor are pretty representative of our household at this stage of life. NOT because I am pregnant, but because that's just where everyone who's not me puts socks. Its hard to write that without coming off as a little mom-bitter haha. Oh well. Suffice it to say: the sock stays.

These last two weeks have been heavy and hard. Steve's worked 11 shifts in a row with only one day off. He's so tired he keeps falling asleep on the couch (which is not his jam) at random intervals. Its wearing on him to say the least. Tonight is his last shift in this run, and then things will settle down a bit as far as work goes.

And for me, this puts my focus squarely on trying to keep it together enough that the kids and Steve are fed and feeling loved. It sounds so easy, but it feels so hard. Every load of laundry, every half hour spent planning meals, every evening cooking and making sure my littles get scriptures, prayers, vitamins and medicines before bed: it all takes an incredible force of will. Because I am tired. And my heart is heavy. And I miss my sweetheart.

One night this week Juliette started bawling at the kitchen table and then projectile vomited right onto her dinner plate, still untouched and full of food. Gracie dove under the table like she was doing an earthquake drill. Charlie just wanted to talk about throw-up. I didn't panic or even feel anything, really. I just cleaned up my girl and put her to bed, cleaned up the table and ate with the big kids. I'm feeling again that hard and weighty part of motherhood: that I have to just do it, because there's no one else there to do it for me.

Last night when I lay in bed alone trying to fall asleep, I felt this big blockage in my heart: this massive black boulder of CAN'T. I can't do this. I can't do 14 more weeks, progressively harder as I get heavier and more tired, still feeling sort of sick even with gum in my mouth. I can't take care of my babies alone like this while Steve starts work at a new place (which is going to be hard for him because new stuff just feels SO BIG, you know?) in a city where I know virtually no one. How can I make new friends when I can barely take care of myself and my family? How will I find someone to look after my kids when I go into labor? How can I take on the impossibly terrifying challenge of delivering--which, since Charlie's scary birth, has stricken my vulnerable heart--in a hospital I've never seen, with doctors who have only known me for a few weeks? I can't do those things, when even the logistics of getting the kids to the pool/library/grocery store in my current state overwhelm my brain. Everything feels dark and huge and impossible.

I lay there in our room and tried to pray about all this. Rain was pouring down outside and the blinds kept lighting up with lightning flashes, again and again. I didn't know where to start. I asked Him to carry me. I don't know how He will. The big black boulder hasn't gone away. I know He will get me through, one day at a time.

But I wish it felt easier. I wish it felt more purposeful. I wish there was someone beside me all the time, whispering in my ear, "You're okay. You'll stay okay. This is all on purpose, and it is all good." Maybe there is, but so far, I can't hear it.

21 Weeks: Home Sweet San Antonio

The day before we reached 21 weeks, Steve flew out to Texas.

It was so last minute that it never even made it on our Google calendar. Our initial plan had been to head out to San Antonio and hang out in military temporary housing while we house-hunted together. But on Monday of the week Steve left, he kind of casually came up with the idea that he go out himself and Skype with me while he toured some houses. And Thursday morning (dark and early) he headed to the Charlotte airport and was off.

The Ottos, who were our across-the-street neighbors when Grace and Charlie were little, put him up for the weekend. I was so glad to have him staying with a sweet family instead of alone in some random hotel. Their daughter Faye even drew him a picture, and he watched a lot of Spurs basketball with the boys & their dad.

And during the day, he house hunted. Thursday was kind of a bust--he found zero properties he was interested in. But on Friday we found a place we loved, and put in an offer. Saturday he was left to explore the neighborhood while we waited for a response from the seller, and I suggested he check out some new builds so we would have a backup.

He called me from their model home and said, "You shouldn't have sent me here. I LOVE this."

He took me on a Skype tour and we talked numbers. Meanwhile the seller of the other house we liked came back with a not-very-compelling offer.

San Antonio LDS temple.

After some conversation, prayer, and a trip to the San Antonio temple for my Steven, we decided to go with a new build. And then the whirlwind began!

He signed papers and went straight to the showroom where we started making as many choices as we could so the house could get started ASAP. Grown up choices, like which tile to match with granite! Yikes! We both kind of couldn't believe we were doing it. :)

He even drove over to our very own dirt lot and showed me where our house would be.

The kids and I spent Daddy's time away at swimming lessons, hanging out at home, going to church, and hanging out at home. I was so thankful for a sweet lady from church who brought us dinner Monday night (Steve's last day gone) when I was worn to the bone. My poor little body was so wiped out that I got a stye and a cold sore, on top of needing a few days of good naps to catch up. But we did it! And now we've got a house in the works to take this little baby home to. <3

17 Weeks, Part 2: Lighting, Rock Bottom, and the Upswing

So at 17 weeks and one day, I hit rock bottom.

I'd been feeling a bit better for the previous few weeks, and even started slowly weaning myself off my generic-Zofran nausea medication, and then all of a sudden, I was SICK again. Like, so sick that after I wrote that post where I put myself to bed at 6 pm, I ended up not making it to the bathroom when a wave of nausea hit, and I threw up IN MY HAND.

It turned out to be a case of lightning striking twice. More specifically? I got the stomach flu on the downswing of months of morning sickness, and I didn't identify it. AGAIN. Just like in my Juliette pregnancy.

So far I've thought of no other natural phase of life in which I could have a massively awful stomach flu and not even know it. Pregnancy. Am I glowing yet?

That night, I felt prompted to post on Facebook requesting prayers. Because this is not something I would regularly do, it felt a little awkward, but the feeling persisted so I did it. The outpouring of love I felt afterward was sweet and humbling and it cracked my heart open so that all the feelings of worry, despair and uselessness that I'd locked up inside it came pouring out of me. I sat on the bathroom floor and cried hard, long, desperate sobs. I prayed for help, begged for help, demanded help, and when I finally--after months of looking--felt my Heavenly Father answer with comfort, I couldn't stop begging Him not to leave me.

The first months of this pregnancy have been one of the hardest, darkest, and loneliest times of my life. In addition to the life-changing sickness that hits me (and I feel almost positive that this pregnancy has been the very very worst in that respect), I felt like I lost a thousand things about myself that I loved, and was left with only the very basic core things: My faith, which I will admit, felt worn thinner than I'd like it to be. My love for my family and dear ones. And the capacity (however forced) to wait until things got better.

There were days when I was bleeding so much we were convinced we had lost the baby. Weeks when consistent (though less) bleeding made it hard for us to connect with and feel attached to the idea of a real new baby coming to our family in September. There are weeks I can't really (and don't really want to) remember: a blur of sleeping, throwing up, and trying to be human enough to interact with my 3 other "babies." Weeks when I couldn't bear to eat, read, write, draw, talk on the phone or leave the house (edit: leave the couch).

And the hardest part sometimes was knowing that I'd chosen it. I was fully aware of how hard it could be, how low I could get. But I felt like I was meant to carry this baby, like our family needed it, and so even though I dreaded the idea of being pregnant again, going through this challenge that is so hard I feel like it diminishes the light in my soul--I chose it.

I guess its good to hit rock bottom sometimes. I mean, I hate it. But sometimes awful stuff is a much swifter and more powerful teacher than slow-and-steady good stuff. And after I broke down and cried in the dark in the bathroom that night, and prayed really sincerely hard, I finally felt my answers start trickling in--the same answer from lots of different voices, all speaking the words God needed me to get into my head and my heart. Here is an excerpt from a message I got almost immediately from a friend I look up to, love, and admire very much:

I want to encourage you to allow yourself to be loved on, and served. Because you have a servants heart Jamie, you forget that there is service because God's people have needs. Remember that need isn't weakness, but an opportunity to witness the work of Gods people first hand.

Please let me ease your burden, and lift your heart. I love to serve, and you would be doing me a favor.

She was so right.

I'd been so focused on my loss of ability to serve as I usually do, that I forgot that it can be a gift and an honor to serve others. And that by refusing to ask for help (which my family and I both needed so greatly!) I was not only perpetuating my own difficulty, I was also denying people who love my the chance to give service. Which I LOVE doing. Why would I refuse to let people do something I love doing???

Ego is part of it. It's hard for me to need. I'm used to fulfilling needs. It's something I deeply love and value, a gift my Heavenly Father has given me that gives me a huge sense of purpose and value. So it's hard for me to not only be unable to give, but also to ask others to give. To me. What will people think, right?

But it's become clear to me that that is my task for now. My big challenge. I have to ask for, and accept help.

Several friends reached out immediately, and I gratefully accepted their offer to feed my little family (that's been the hardest thing lately since I feel pretty okay until around five, when I get sort of queasy again). How tender and loving everyone has been!

I should have asked a long time ago, but honestly--I thought I was. I thought I was asking enough, having someone babysit while I went to an appointment, or occasionally drive a kid to school when I was having a rough morning. But now I can see that I should have asked for more help, and sooner. God wasn't restricting the blessings and help I could be offered--I was doing that by refusing to ask, convincing myself that I couldn't ask for more than the limit I'd given myself.

I'm still learning. Thanks for your prayers; I've felt them keenly and they've buoyed me up more than I can tell you.

xo,
Jamie