A different kind of marathon

Looks like I won't be running the type of marathon I thought I would anytime soon. Instead, I have a different kind of 9 month marathon ahead of me (6 months at this point). 

Much to our surprise, we are having a baby and we couldn't be more excited! 

Our little family in Denver, CO

Here were my first thoughts on finding out I was pregnant:

"Is that right? Let me check the instructions on the box again. Does it really have two lines??"

"YAY!" Along with tears of JOY!

"Oh man, what have we gotten ourselves into? There's really no turning back now."

The above thoughts are pretty much exactly what I was thinking those first few moments we found out I was pregnant. The main overwhelming emotion was excitement, anxiety, thinking, "it's about time!", and some fear. The first night, I lay in bed for hours unable to fall asleep. I was excited, but really, really scared. My fear wasn't about labor or parenting or the enormity of having a child (I'm sure those fears will come at some point!). Instead, I was afraid it wasn't real or if it was, it wouldn't be for long. I was terrified to wake up and not be pregnant anymore. One of the risks with endometriosis is miscarriage and that first night I could not stop thinking about the possibility of it. Finally, I remembered to turn my thoughts to God and pray (why did it take me until 1:30am to do this?). I don't remember thinking about anything after that, but finally fell asleep.

Everybody loves a baby bump progression, so here we are with barely a bump to see:

4 weeks

One of the positive things about waiting for 3 years to become pregnant is you have a lot of time to do research. I have three books on pregnancy, one that I've already read the first part of, we've interviewed providers (that seems really ridiculous now, but hey, it's already done!), I have about 30 bookmarked pages of lists of things you should do while pregnant, what you should eat, things to register for, everything you wanted to know about breastfeeding and cloth diapers, and a million other topics no one cares about when you aren't pregnant. The first year or so that we tried to get pregnant I researched like a mad woman. This made me pretty depressed the second year and I had to put it all out of sight, but now I'm feeling pretty ahead of the game.
 

8 weeks

I think in the back of my mind (very far back) I held on to the possibility of becoming pregnant, but we had pretty much given up on it. We decided against trying fertility treatments and didn't think we would adopt (we are in no way against those things, it just wasn't for us). Even with my doctor telling me there would be a chance of conceiving since my surgery last August was so successful, I still didn't want to get my hopes up. Luke and I prayed for God to show us his plan for our lives. Maybe there were things we would do that others, who had kids, couldn't easily do. Maybe there were positive things about being childless (yes, there are many!). On one level I resigned myself to not having kids and I could even feel joyful in that, but I knew deep down what my true feelings were because they would creep up on me especially when I saw or read something about someone else's struggle with infertility. Amazingly I never felt sad when others announced their pregnancies and I'm glad I could feel genuinely happy for them. The hardest thing though was knowing how much Luke wanted to be a dad and seeing him with our friend's and family's kids and knowing what an awesome dad he would be! 

11 weeks with a tiny bump

We've made it 15 weeks and I'm breathing easier after hearing Baby Baine's heartbeat and seeing him/her on an ultrasound (5 more weeks until we find out the gender!). Everything is healthy so far! This pregnancy and baby are an absolute miracle! I can't believe how many doctors told me that I would never be able to get pregnant, how sure they were that I needed a hysterectomy, and how none of them knew there was a specialist in Atlanta who would look at my chart and confidently tell me that he could remove every bit of the endo and leave all of my organs intact. We are so thankful to have found Dr. Sinervo, at The Center for Endometriosis Care. My concern at that time was to get back my life, to not be in pain and nausea everyday. The icing on the cake is this miracle baby growing inside me. 




 My goal is to run a 5K in my second trimester. I stopped running in the first trimester because I was tired all the time and feeling nauseous (no change there!) but now I'm feeling less nauseous and a little more energy so I'm determined to get back to running. I went for a run yesterday with Luke and my dad, who is in town for the 4th of July. It felt great!

For all my mom friends out there, what kinds of exercises did you like to do when you were pregnant? I'm doing lots of walking, and a little bit of core and yoga. I'm thinking about finding a pool to do some swimming or pool walking.

Thanks for sharing in our excitement! I spent an entire day on Facebook reading congratulations messages from friends after we posted our announcement. Facebook gets a bad rap, but man it made me so happy to read all of those comments!! Here is our post if you missed it:

Ready to Roll January 2018!

Blessings through Infertility

Percy Warner Park

What are you passionate about? The photo to the left encapsulates several of my passions: my awesome husband, exploring new places, being outside in nature, running and hiking.

Over the past few years, I've felt my passion for running, traveling, singing, doing my job, and living life to the fullest slipping away.

My mom died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2013. I questioned God's kindness and became very depressed. I believed in God and believed that he loved me enough to save my soul, but I didn't think God could possibly be interested in the details of my life. Those details might be a huge deal to me, but God had infinitely larger and more important things to concern himself with. Who am I that he would look upon my life? Why should he interfere or care? He is God. He is all knowing. He is all powerful, and He owes me nothing.

My beautiful mom with my brothers and I

I've never felt a strong desire to have children. I thought maybe God left the mom gene out of me. Luke and I have said many times that God may not want us to have children. There are all kinds of things God may have in store for us that would be easier to do without kids. Three years ago I spent quite a bit of time in prayer and searching about whether God wanted us to have kids. We felt God leading in two ways: 1) he wanted us to do foster care. 2) he wanted us to try to have children. So, in our own wisdom (ha!) Luke and I decided it really made the most sense to try to have our own children first, and then we would do foster care at some point in the future. Two years later it was pretty clear we weren't going to have biological children and fortunately we came to our senses and became obedient in becoming foster parents.

I struggled with God to make sense of why he would lead me in the direction of trying to have children and then break my heart when it didn't happen. I felt a very clear word from him that he wanted us to conceive. Did I make a mistake in hearing from him? Why would I go from not even having that desire, to crying every month when it didn't happen? I couldn't make sense of it. Was he just mean?

Through the disappointment of my circumstances God has been teaching me that he is in charge and I'm not always going to understand why specific things happen or the timing of certain events. Lauren Daigle sings this idea beautifully in her song, Trust in You. God sees the bigger picture and there is a reason he doesn't move every mountain out of our way. God has asked me to die to myself and I am challenged by the first words of the song, "Letting go of every single dream, I lay each one down at your feet." Click here to listen. This was an important lesson to learn, and this song reminded me to trust in God.
But it wasn't the whole picture.

God didn't just want me to trust him because He is God, he also wanted me to know that he loves me. I mean, really loves and cares for me. He has completely baffled me. He took me on a journey through trying to have children and taught me that he cares very much about the details of my life. He cares about my health, my body, my dreams, my thoughts. I'm immediately humbled to think that I even doubted.

Riley and Olive enjoy the ocean

After my surgery in August, I was in Pawley's Island listening to the waves crash. I was happy to be recovering from surgery (especially at the beach) but I was still in pain and wrestling with God. When I went off birth control pills a desire to get pregnant began to grow in me. I just assumed it would happen immediately. I began making plans. Looking back those plans make me feel like an idiot and are another reminder to give up control. Not because I am forced to turn over control to God, but because he is worth trusting with my entire life, every single detail.

If God had not sparked in me that desire of getting pregnant, I would have stayed on birth control pills and had endometriosis building up inside me without even feeling it. It would have caused much more harm over time and I wouldn't have known it was there. It took going off the pills and then feeling all the pain that came with it, to find out there was something really wrong. Feeling that pain led me to get the help I needed, and for that, I am so thankful.

I now see how absolutely loving God is to care enough about my physical body, to lead me down this road so I could get help. It actually amazes me. God has strange ways, but he is so loving towards us. It is so shameful that we doubt him and think he is mean or doesn't care. Hopefully this will stick with me and I won't easily forget, that in those moments when I have no idea what he is doing, he is loving me and I can trust him.

Why does God care that I love to run? Why does he care about my job? Why does he care about me singing? Zephaniah 3:17 speaks of God's love towards us. A mighty warrior who takes great delight in us. He cares about these things because he loves us. 

Zephaniah 3:17