Hello Baby! Part 1

Oh hi there, my neglected blog. 

    It's BABY SEASON people, and that means babies and tummies are popping up all over the place. I have been blessed in the past few months with a new nephew, Davie, and a new niece, Janea, and am waiting on a third niece or nephew (who may have not received the memo about being due on the 9th of June). Maybe it is just the age I am at, but my Facebook feed seems constantly flooded with baby photos. It's almost hard to keep up with who is pregnant and who isn't, hopefully I wont slip up and ask the non-pregnant girl when she is due... never a good idea. 
    I'm no exception. Yes, even I have joined the ranks of pregnant-hood and am sporting ever-so-sexy maternity jeans. We made the "official" announcement April 1st, and had mixed reactions. You see, we may have announced the exact same thing LAST April 1st. April 2nd we re-announced it.
    My pregnancy so far has been a bit of a blur. I will be 25 weeks this Saturday, and I still can't believe  how quickly the time is going.
    Daniel and I found out a couple days prior to moving to the Bouwers' farm. He came home from work and I surprised him with two little pairs of baby moccasins; one pink pair and one blue pair. He didn't clue in, since we had so many nieces and nephews on the way he assumed they were for someone else's baby's feet. Once I had given him a "congratulations on your new baby" card, the lightbulb went off and there was much hugging and giggling and tummy touching. It was a sweet moment I will hold onto for many years, I'm sure. 

    The weeks that followed were less sweet. Shortly after moving into the farm house, I awoke one morning for church, and minutes later was hanging my head over the toilet. I remember wondering if I was REALLY going to be one of those pregnant ladies. Oh, was I ever. 
      I lost five pounds in a week: about the only thing I could keep down was water and Power Aide (yuck).  It seemed so counter productive, loosing weight and not being able to keep down anything when I knew I had this tiny babe inside me. I soon discovered standing near the sink was a no-no, I could smell the drain... que gag. Opening the fridge... que gag. Raw meat... gag. Cooked meat... gag. My midwife got me on some pills, which helped control the excessive chunk-blowing (lets be real, is there a nice way to put it?) but I still gagged often and felt nauseous almost constantly. It might sound cliche, but through it all I had this piece of me that really was OK with feeling like garbage, because I knew it meant that something incredible was happening. Oh, and we eventually told Kristianna (Daniel's littlest sister whom we were living with) that I was in fact pregnant, and not just ill. She stopped avoiding me after that. 

     I must admit, a number of things feel to pieces between February and March. I had had big plans for Cotton Fox as a business and blog, but it was pretty hard to get inspired or motivated when all I wanted to do was sleep or puke. Finally things started getting back to normal around mid April. It was a bit after my first trimester had ended. I had big hopes that there would be a definite breaking point from first to second trimester; where I would wake up one morning bursting with energy and inspiration! There would probably be the "Chariots of Fire" theme playing in the back ground too... but the change was more gradual than that. 

    Out of the frying pan and into the fire, April and May were a crazy whirl-wind of Mennonite madness! I had volunteered the fall before to run our community's annual Mennonite Central Committee Relief Fair. On May 25th everything came together, but the weeks leading up to it were AB-SO-LUTE-LY crazy. I do think it's a fairly significant part of my pregnancy story, though, because it sort of encompassed that strange in-between time, when you aren't ill anymore, but you also aren't showing or feeling any movement. I also went from doing nothing but sleeping and being sick, to organizing a fair, moving out of the farm house, starting a new job and house hunting all within a couple of weeks. It is not something I would ever encourage a pregnant woman (or any person really) to do, and the day after the sale, I crashed pretty hard. 

    Almost a month later, and the house hunt is still underway, I'm still working at my new waitressing job, and those stretchy-momma pants are actually starting to stretch over my little baby belly. I'm trying to take it slower, listen to my body, drink lots of water: the usual pregnant-lady stuff. I am also hoping to get back to blogging here, mostly as a way to document this pregnancy. My fear is that I will miss it in all the busy-ness of my life right now. We have been house sitting for a different family since the beginning of June, and will need to move out the beginning of July, probably to live with my Nana or possibly to another housesitting job. Logically the housesitting make sense for us, saving rent money to put towards our downpayment, but I am definitely eager to get into a place I can lay in some roots and "nest". Pinterest helps ;) 

Jordan