I just want to make it stop!

I have been puking since yesterday at 3pm. :( It's a nasty stomach virus, and it's got me all worried about the baby - worried about dehydration, worried about nutrients. I called my doctor back this morning per her instructions (it's been going on longer than 12 hours). All I can (hopefully) get & keep down right now is water, although I'm feeling nauseous again, so we'll see... Anyone who knows me knows this is like the worse for me and that I absolutely HATE throwing up. :( I'm just praying the little baby will be just fine. I couldn't get the heartbeat on my at home doppler last week, because it may've been too early. I think I'm going to go give it another shot.

...And MY Heart Beats In Love

We heard the baby's heartbeat at the doctor on Wednesday. That little galloping noise was one of the best things I have ever heard in my life! Ryan & I were grinning from ear to ear. It was funny: she found the heartbeat almost immediately, then we heard him/her kick (it sounded like these little "bloops") then s/he hid, so the doctor had to find it again. It was a strong heart beat of 160bpm, which she said is perfect. It made the pregnancy seem more "real" to me, and I am amazed at how intricately God works. To carry one of His children is truly a blessing. I am 11 weeks 3 days preganant today. Depending on what site or reference you use, I either enter my second trimester on April 1st or April 4th. I am going with April 4th. I am very excited to tell the BSF ladies at our next fellowship on that day. And the following week, I'm going to tell people at work. I am continuing to pray for perfect growth and development and protection from miscarriage. I have said it a hundred times: this baby is God's baby, and his/her life is in God's hands. Even though I am still anxious, I trust Him fully. Ryan is out of town right now, so I admit that I am a little more on edge than usual.

I can now feel my uterus above my pelvic bone. I thought my morning sickness was gone, but it came back pretty strong today to the point I thought I was going to throw up in the car driving home. Wouldn't that have been pretty? :) I have also noticed the last few days that heartburn is starting. I keep praying and hoping that my pregnancy is unlike my mom's in the fact that she threw up every day for six months, and her morning sickness didn't start until the end of the firs tri! Yikes!

Well...it's 10:33, and it's an hour past my bedtime. Off to sleep I go.

It's been awhile, so an update

I was thinking this morning about how good God is. When I went off birth control, I prayed daily that He would allow me to, if it was His will, get pregnant right away, protect me from horrible cramps if I didn’t (I used to throw up from the pain), and protect me from hormonal migraines. Of course I prayed, and still pray, that if it’s His will, He will protect me from miscarriage. As I have expressed before, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that His plan is best – both for me and for Baby. I was just thinking how sweet it was of Him to allow me the gift of carrying one of His children this far and for Him to let it happen so quickly, especially when my heart breaks for the women who must wait. A woman at work recently went in for polyp surgery; they were going to try to just remove the polyps from her uterus, but when they got in there, they had to give her a complete hysterectomy. She and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for ten years. I pray that the Lord would comfort her. I think of a sweet friend of mine who has lost two precious babies, and I grieve with her in her losses and her struggle to get pregnant. Her walk with God has deepened immensely, and her faith radiates from her. I realize that I do not deserve this gift – just the opportunity – that we’ve been given, and this week I have been truly, deeply thankful for it.

I am still nervous with three weeks to go until the end of the first trimester. However, I am trying very hard not to approach life with the mindset of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” We get to hear the heartbeat in just 5 days – next Wednesday, and I keep praying God will show us a strong heartbeat on that monitor. Updates to come…

Overwhelmed & Not Doing Anything

I am really struggling with feeling overwhelmed with all I have going on right now. I am working full-time, preparing my own Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) lesons & preparing weekly to teach my awesome group of 5th & 6th graders, taking two online courses through CNM and still cooking, caring for my husband & grandma and our home, trying to find time to walk daily like the doctor recommends and do weekly chores. Last term, this was no problem, and because Ryan & I weren't planning or even talking about getting pregant until I was already signed up for two classes, I thought I would tough it out and see how it went once I became pregnant. I am amazed at how tired I am! It is frustrating, but it is understandable. One book I read said something to the effect that my pregnant body is doing as much work as a marathoner's body is doing just sitting there being pregnant. Having done several triathlons, I can relate to how tired these races make me - and the exhaustion I feel from being pregnant is comparative. I could literally take an hour nap everyday - just like I do after a race. It is because of this, and because of some more spotting today and the nurse telling me it could also be my body's way of telling me I'm doing too much or am too stressed, that I am going to drop my hard class. It pains me and is a tough decision for me; however, I prayed about it and really feel that it is the right thing to do. I feel like I'm "just giving up" or quitting or like a failure, but like Ryan said, I can always take it again later on. I truly commend those pregnant girls who can do both school and work! I think if I worked part-time or maybe if I was at school only or work only full-time it would be a different story, but right now it just seems way too much. My priorities are my home life (especially "growing this little baby"), BSF and work. I want to be able to say I did everything in my control to give this baby a healthy chance at life, and eating well and lowering whatever stress I can are ways I can do that. My other class is very easy and only takes me about two hours a week - if that - so I am going to stay enrolled in it.

The spotting is VERY scary. Ryan was trying to calm me down (one of his big duties in our marriage :) ), and I feel like the best way to explain it is how I explained it to him. Before I got pregnant, I knew spotting was normal and common among many women in the first trimester. Before I got pregnant, I would've reassured someone who was going through it with my limited knowledge. Now that I am pregnant, let me just say, even thought logically I know it is normal and believe my doctor and the nurse telling me this, as well as the countless books and articles I've read, it is still incredibly scary. It doesn't matter that there's not very much. What matters is that there is blood and there should be none. I told Ryan that it's something he will probably never fully understand, because he is a man and will never experience it, and he agreed to that and to be supportive (not that he wasn't before). The nurse told me it can be some implantation bleeding and that some women experience that their full pregnancy. She told me some other reasons but that those wouldn't yet be seen on the ultrasound (they're not necessarily bad), and she again gave me the precautions of when to go to an ER. She was very reassuring, and I feel better and like I am overreacting.

The one thing I am thankful for about the WHOLE pregnancy experience (spotting included) is that it's the biggest thing I've ever done, and my relationship with the Lord has grown a lot in the last weeks. My first instinct is to go to Him, not anyone else. I try to do that anyway, but there is just such a deep sense of Him being in control that that truly is the only place I can go. No one else can comfort me or give me peace. No one else knows exactly what I'm feeling inside. No one but Him, and the best thing is that He knows it even better than I do. And just like He knows what's best for me, He knows what's best for the baby, too.

First Appointment and Announcements

We had our first doctor’s appointment yesterday. She confirmed the pregnancy using a urine test, will send that to the labs to check it all out and ordered some more blood work, which I had done yesterday afternoon. She said everything looks great according to the blood tests last week. She gave me some precautions of when to call her, what I can take as far as OTC medications, exercise, etc… She told me my morning sickness is going to get worse soon, because I will hit the six week mark on Wednesday; generally, I guess, this is when it starts to worsen. Every Wednesday thereafter is when I will change from week to week. My due date is October 7th – poor Ryan can’t go hunting in late September or at all in October this year L. According to the books, our little baby is approximately the size of a sweet pea, his/her heart is now beating, the arm & leg buds are beginning to form, and his/her ear canals are beginning to form in the shape of little bumps. J

Sometimes I get sad or frustrated, because it seems I wake up some mornings and have more symptoms than others. Today was a day when I woke up and felt time. Exhausted, yes, but other than that no symptoms. Yesterday I felt very nauseous in the afternoon, and although it was not “fun” it was my body’s way of telling me that things are changing, that everything’s “normal.” It’s hard to explain – I am not wishing to puke, I just wish I “felt pregnant.” I was a little disappointed yesterday, because I think I expected them to do a doppler ultrasound to see the heartbeat or the yoke sack. I don’t know where I got that expectation, but it was in my mind somehow. I now have to wait 5 weeks before I can go back to the doctor (on March 16th). It seems like SUCH a long time! On that day, they will do the doppler ultrasound to see the heartbeat. She said that there’s a chance they can see it at 10 weeks, but I know myself. If I didn’t see it at 10 weeks, I would probably be a nervous wreck waiting out the week until 11 weeks, so I just scheduled it for 11 weeks right off the bat. Now is my time to trust God that He’s developing the baby as it should be and trust His plan if something else should happen. I’m praying the blood work comes back normal again, that my HCG, progesterone and estrogen levels are going up nicely.

Ryan & I decided to tell our parents this weekend. We are going up to Colorado on Saturday for a visit, so we’ll be able to tell them in person, We’re going to go to dinner with my parents, and hopefully Sarah & Rey (my sister & her husband) – hasn’t gotten back to me yet – on Friday night. Since it’s Valentine’s Day on Saturday, for my family I am going to make some old-fashioned homemade valentines with construction paper and doilies, and I’m going to write a little poem on it to let them know there is a baby on the way. Something like:

My smile can’t be seen yet
My fingers not yet gripped
My little lips can’t kiss you
And you can’t hear my laugh

My God is doing His job
Knitting and knitting away
Did you know that I am being
Fearfully and wonderfully made

For now I’m warm and toasty
Until that exciting day
I’ll meet you October 7th
At least that’s what they say

I’m not telling exactly when
But of this you can be sure
I want to be your Valentine, (Name)
In February 2010

412 to 1,202

I woke up early this morning to spend time with the Lord and to eat my breakfast. As He has in other difficult situations or those of unsurety, during my prayer, I heard Him asking me, "Do you trust Me?"
"Yes, Lord, I trust You," I replied.
"I Am here. I love you." was His reply.
The Lord doesn't always give us forewarning good or bad of what is to happen in our finite lives, but I am thankful I have Him here by my side. I sat anxiously through a meeting this morning and back in my office afterward, I saw the doctor's office called twice. I was thinking that that could be good news or bad news. I called the nurse back, and she told me that my HCG levels are "right where they would expect them to be" and that they were 412 on 2/2 to 1,202 on 2/4. I just hit six weeks this morning, and my research on WebMD shows that my HCG levels should be between 100-10,000 from weeks 5-6. I am so thankful for this answer to prayer. What an amazing God we serve! He cares about the details of our lives, details that seem so small, but when we pray specifically I've learned to sit back & watch God work. The fact of the matter is that if they had told me my levels were too high or too low that would've been an answer to prayer, too, and I could have rested in the fact that I prayed about it, and He cares. I am entrusting this baby to my God, because He cares for him/her more than I could ever dream of caring for them. I am entrusting this baby to my God, because He cares for me, He cares for Ryan, and I am blessed enough to have seen Him work all things together for His good time and time and time again. I entrust myself and this pregancy (& this baby) to Him, because He IS and WAS and ALWAYS WILL BE.

Waiting for HCG Results

It's funny to me that our faith can seem so huge one minute or day, like mine did on Monday, then dissipate as we try to control our own lives through different ways. My way is worry. I got my second vial of blood drawn today, after much lunchtime drama and having to go back after work - URG! - and having the tech stick me so hard I tensed up. (Side note: I really need to learn to suck it up, because if things go well, I'm going to be pushing a human out of me in 8 months). On the boards today, I was reading a couple posts and noticed a couple of women said they had "chemical pregnancies." Well, stupid me (I never learn to stay away from Google) looked up "how common are chemical pregnancies?" only to find out that these are the 50-70% of miscarriages that happen before a woman knows she's pregnant or finds out then starts her period a little late. GREEEAAT. Because I needed to give myself something ELSE to worry about. All I can do is pray. That's all I can do, because I cannot control this baby's life any more than I can control my own.

I'm calling tomorrow morning to get my lab results and praying God has increased my hormones just as they should be.