We're halfway?!?!

Let me start off by saying, wow I cannot believe I have not blogged about my pregnancy at all. I really thought I would be one of those woman who would take a picture and blog every single week.  Little did I realize, the more I grow, the less inclined I am to take a photo. Which means, the less I wanted to talk about it. So here we go, I would like to look back at laugh at myself in a few years so I must start somewhere!!

Week 20: Halfway! And yesterday, the MOST wonderful day happened, we found out we are having a little girl. A GIRL! I can't believe it.  I secretly thought it was a girl.  I fell in love with the name Mabel and although I never pictured myself with a girl, I pictured myself with my little Mabel.  Mabel means adorable.  When I was younger, I loved the show Mad About You. To this day, I will sit and watch episodes, I just love it.  They had a little girl on the show and they named her Mabel after Helen Hunt's characters very controlling mom stated, "Mothers Always Bring Extra Love."

I love the name Mabel.  As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I hoped to be able to one day have a Mabel and yesterday we were able to see our beautiful little girl. 

So now, I know absolutely nothing about having a little girl, other than the fact that I am a girl.  I laugh because I know my daughter will be the girl whose mom just can't do her hair cute so she is forced to go to school with her hair in a ponytail everyday. 

I'll show you the only ultrasound picture we have of her from yesterday. It's of her cute little bum and legs.  We have the full anatomy scan next week and I can't wait to have more pictures, but for now I want to frame this shot, because I know she has the cutest bum in the world. (I realize I have already become THAT mom)

I told you the cutest bum in town!

Ok so recap on weeks 4 - 20!!

1st Trimester (Weeks 4-12): Most woman will be very upset to know, I had no morning sickness.  I was completely exhausted from day one until the second trimester.  It took me FOREVER to wake up every morning and I was easily in bed by 8:30 ( I would have gone to bed by 7:30 if Jeff would have let me)
We took a trip to New York towards my last 2 weeks in the 1st Trimester and I was sooooo tired.  I loved our trip, but I could barely keep up!!

2nd Trimester: I was very excited to welcome the 2nd Trimester.  Not only would it get me to feel more confident about my pregnancy, but the energy I had not seen in weeks had started to come back.  I could actually do laundry and wash dishes and clean my house again.  It was heaven. Yes, chores were heaven!!

By week 17, I have started to feel our little girl kick.  Jeff has also been able to start now that I hit 20 weeks, he has felt the little jabs.  It's really special!

At 20 weeks, I am halfway and Mabel is the size of a banana and weighs about 10.6 ounces according to my Baby apps.  Almost a pound! Grow baby girl grow!! I have become increasingly hungry each and everyday.  Even after I eat, I need to eat more.   

19 weeks!

We have started Penny back up in training, "Mommy Preparedness Class" She gets to learn how to walk next to a stroller and basically train her to know the baby is not a squeak toy. I am not worried, these two will be best friends.
We will be starting our Birthing Classes in the next month or so, which I am very excited for and even more so because we changed doctors and our new doctor is 100% behind the Hypnobirthing classes we would like to take.  He knows the instructor and really supports this method.  Huge sigh of relief!

And then comes baby...

We are so excited!!

Arriving December 6th, 2013

A week of bad luck...but don't worry, be happy!

This was not my week to say the least!!

We started the week off finding out that my wonderfully, loyal car I have driven since I was 16 is now considered totaled due to my VERY minor fender bender last week. It is just my luck that my very first accident would be one that I completely total my car. I literally hit a car going 5 miles an hour.  However, the damage is worth significantly more than the car itself.  Go me!!

Goodbye! :(

Well if that wasn't a great way to start a morning, I drove to my parents house to borrow my dad's car who were off enjoying a week vacation in paradise.  When I went to lunch that day, my dad's car had a flat tire.  GREAT! So after taking the car across the street to Costco I walked back to work and broke my shoe.  It was just like in the movies, you know when a woman breaks her heel and her dream man comes running after her to save her from the oncoming traffic....except reality happened and I just looked like a idiot standing in the middle of an intersection with a broken heel, a flat tire and a totaled car in the shop.  I didn't think it could get much worse, but I reached for my sunglasses to hide from the embarrassment only to realize they had snapped in half.  

Needless to say, my week didn't get much better, but I have to thank Jeff for trying his hardest to make everything ok.  He came home from work while I was making dinner and started playing this music video.  I would be lost without his humor.

Thank you Jeff!

Seattle!

Jeff is in Seattle for 3 weeks and I got the chance to fly up there to visit him to explore the city!  He is considering transferring up to that office, so we wanted to see if Seattle was for us. It was a really great weekend and the city is beautiful.  It didn't rain once while I was there, but Jeff said it's been raining a lot this week.  Oh well!
I do have to say, no matter how many Starbucks you think your city has, I have NEVER seen so many than Seattle. This is where it all started, but wow, there was literally one on every block and then inside every building.  To top it off, every Starbucks had a line!!

The First Starbucks!

The view from the Space Needle

This was a pretty awesome tour! We walked all around underground the city!

The BEST crepe!

The famous fish market!

They really do throw the fish right over your head!

The Gum Wall!

Crossfit

So Jeff started this workout called Crossfit in October.  He wakes up every morning during the week at 5 am and gets his work in.  I think it's safe to say, he likes it! A few weeks ago they had a competition.  Since Jeff was new he was in the JV level and he ended up getting 1st place! I was so proud of him! It is a crazy type of workout, I don't think most people would be up for it, but Jeff loves it and he is really good at it!

 See him in the middle?!

Grandma's 90th!

My Grandma turned 90 in January!  She has not been feeling well lately and we were unable to take her out to dinner, but we made the best of it by bringing the party to her! I think she looks so great!

My brother buys her lottery scratchers every year. Sadly we did not win!

Just a bit of an update?

Well hello blog world, remember me?? It’s been a little bit since my last post…

I feel like I crawled into a dark, eerie cave and I am finally coming out it to see the daylight. The past 8 months have been quite frankly a blur, but I feel like I am ready to talk about it.

This past October, Jeff and I celebrated 8 years together. The morning of our anniversary, I took a positive pregnancy test and our lives immediately changed. We were ecstatic. I was completely shocked and probably took about 20 more tests over the next week just to confirm. I just couldn’t believe it was real. This was ACTUALLY happening to us. I will never forget the moment we found out. Jeff’s face will be a memory I will always cherish. He was so giddy, we had no idea what was ahead of us, but in that moment, this little plastic stick had changed our future forever. I went to the doctor to confirm, but yes, we were having a baby!

We scheduled our first ultrasound for the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday could not have been more appropriate. At 10 weeks, we found out we lost our little “Almond.” The fetus no longer had a heartbeat. I felt my heart break. I had so many emotions going through me. Our baby was there. Its heart beat inside me and then it stopped. Just like that, it was over. It was like a cruel trick my body played on me as if it never happened.

It’s been about three months now and I don’t think the pain of the reality will ever go away. I have found to stay close those who can really empathize with our pain. Others try to minimize the situation as if it’s going to cheer you up to just “move on.” I understand how it can be hard for those who have never had any issues to relate to something like this at no fault of their own. I wish I could take this pain from future couples who experience this. It’s an awful feeling.

Jeff has been nothing short of wonderful in his support. I often forget that this is happening to him too. He lost this little future as well. We were in this together and it doesn’t stop after our loss. In order to move ahead we must stick together. I can understand how tragedies can drift couples apart. We all grieve so differently. It’s easy to resent your partner for not grieving the exact same way you are. What’s important is that you support each other through their grief.

I must admit, there are days where I can’t seem to shake reality. I often find myself lost in my own head trying to figure out a way to change what happened. The best advice, my Mom gave me was to experience my grief headfirst and to let it happen. Not to pretend it’s not there. When I get sad, be sad and know its okay to feel sad. If I get angry, be angry and know its okay to be angry.

I was reading a book called, “Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed. The author wrote as an advice columnist for a website and the book is a collection of those stories. One woman wrote to her about her recent miscarriage. She lost her baby at 6 months and it had been over year and she just could not get through it. She felt stuck. I could literally feel the woman’s pain right from the page. Here’s some of what Cheryl said in response:

“You will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing – the genuine healing, the actual real deal down on your knees in the mud change is entirely and absolutely up to you.”

This paragraph hit me hard. I knew exactly what my mom meant at that moment. The only way to get through heartache is to survive it, endure it and move on in a positive direction. Easier said than done, but I know this is what I have to do. I could sit here and be stuck, but if I don’t have the courage to be “unstuck” I will never see the opportunities right in front of me.

Life certainly has not gone to the plan Jeff and I had hoped for, but that doesn’t mean we will give up. I look up to my husband’s strength. As much as it pains me to say, I know there is a reason to why everything happens. I do not know why this happened to us, but I do know I’m learning each and everyday how to heal.