Week 18

Here's a new picture, for week 18.



WOW, I can't believe we're almost to the halfway point. While I was home alone on Saturday I started reading my What to Expect: the First Year book. I'm not sure whether that was a good idea or not! Reading that book made me realize how very unready I feel to have a baby. Can I confess something? I am not, and never really have been, a huge "baby person." I think babies are adorable at around the 6 month stage, and I adore toddlers because they are such cute little people with personalities! But new babies seem so fragile and I wonder, will I be able to feed, change, and clothe such a tiny little person?

Thankfully, my mom told me that she had the same feelings when she had me and my sister. She wasn't a huge baby person either, but when it's your own, it all kind of just kicks in, or so I hear. I guess we'll find out about 22 weeks when we meet this precious new little person!

Stephanie

An update

I realize I've been bad at updating this blog, but hopefully in six months when I have all kinds of baby pictures, that will change! I've been holding out on a new tummy picture because instead of a definite baby bump, my stomach looks like I've been eating a few too many cookies for the last couple of months. I'll give it another week.

Last night our community group from church went indoor rock climbing. I had never done this before, and was skeptical whether it would be fun or not (I could just picture me making a fool of myself!) But it turned out to be a lot of fun. It's actually kind of a work out to do! And the best part? With your harness, you can't actually fall when you slip, just kind of hang there. Not sure I'm ready to embrace actual rock climbing, though. Real rocks don't have colored hand holds.

So I've been asked what my pregnancy symptoms are, and for those who are curious, I thought I'd give the run down here.

Morning sickness or dizziness? Nope. (Hallelujah!)

Cravings? Not really anything that I HAVE to have, but right now my favorite things to munch are peanut butter, cheese sticks, and cottage cheese. Must be a protein thing. And for some reason, pizza always sounds amazingly good to me.

Frequent bathroom breaks? Not so bad at this point. We'll give it a few months, when baby starts dancing jigs on top of my insides.

Hot flashes? YES. It's all the hormones, which sometimes keep me up at night. I feel like I'm going through menopause. I love summer, but my mom always told me how uncomfortable it was being nine months pregnant in August with me. Payback, I guess.

Forgetfulness? Absolutely. Pregnancy brain is frustrating for someone who's always been uber organized and on top of things. A couple of months ago, I left my purse somewhere and then my coat at another place, all in one day. Dan thought I was losing it. I'm not denying that he was right.

All in all, I can't complain. I'm thankful for a pretty easy pregnancy, so far!

Stephanie

A bloodless but not painless experience!

I can't think of anything too entirely original to post about tonight, so I will complain about my medical experiences the past week! :) First the fun stuff. Dan and I had our first prenatal appointment on Monday, which went great. I love my doctor, and decided right away I was good with her delivering our baby! I guess that's a good sign. We got to hear the little one's heartbeat - wow to say the least. It was so quiet and fast, but it definitely confirmed that there is something going on in there!

Unfortunately though, I had to have my blood drawn, yuck. I know, it's a normal part of life, but my veins just don't seem to cooperate. The nurse at the doctor's office tried valiantly two days last week to get something out of me, but it was just not happening. So they sent me off to the lab, where, as the nurse put it, "They'll get you in one try." Oh my, I wish that had been true. They led me to the room where they draw blood, and it was freezing cold. The first phlebotomist tried three times and each time he made a sound like, "Oooh." Not good! So they had me come back the next day to try with a different phlebotomist. Two ladies tried on me, and thankfully, one got a little bit out - only enough to run one of the tests, though. I guess I have small veins to start with, and in a room that's kept pretty cool, they had no plans of showing themselves. (Hearing one of the phlebotomists say, "Oh, the needle is the same size as your vein" is not a good sign.) I guess I will just have to bring a heated blanket next time, or run a marathon before hand, one or the other! I joked that I was so full of holes that if I drank water, I'd spring a leak.

Well, I keep telling myself I wanted to start documenting what my baby belly looks like, and at the beginning of month 4, I just got around to having Dan take a picture. My stomach is funny - some days it's flat, some days not so much. Good bye flat stomach, I'll see you at the end of this year, I hope!

Stephanie

Stranger than fiction

I was just thinking the other day how sometimes it's so easy to get the "grass is greener on the other side" syndrome and start thinking that everyone's life looks so much easier than my own. I've often thought lately that my own life seems "stranger than fiction." At times it feels like so many things in my life have just been so odd—like my older sister's handicap, my dad's unemployment, my mom's chronic illness, my medical trip to New Mexico, an unplanned pregnancy. I look around at the people around me and think, "Why does no one else seem to be struggling with such strange things in life?"

What a limited perspective! I forget that no one's life is exactly smooth sailing. Suffering and hard times touch everyone, from the richest celebrities to the poorest people on the streets. It's a plain old fact of our humanness. When I look at the people around me, it's easy to miss the pain, the struggles, the hurts that they carry everyday from both the past and the present. No one's immune to difficulties.

Last night I was reading one of my devotional books from Joni Eareckson Tada, who quite frankly, is one of my heroes as well as one of my favorite authors. This particular devotional book is called 31 Days toward Overcoming Adversity. As I read this passage, God's simple truth hit me over the head:

The sufferings we encounter in life—even the garden-variety sort of daily trails—are meant to help us partake of Christ. For when we enter the fellowship of His sufferings, God strips us of our "self-help" mindset. We are forced to our knees and driven to lean on His grace. Then—and, it seems, only then—can God impart His Son's character to us. In so doing, we are "made like Him."

Rather than complaining about the struggles and hard things that God brings into my life, I should be seeing them as gifts from God, opportunities to become more like Him and share in fellowship with Him. After all, Scripture tells me to "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds."

Lord knows that I need a fresh perspective every day, every minute, every second. But rather than acting the part of the martyr, I hope to remember that "in every situation, God is doing a thousand things that you cannot see and you cannot know."

Stephanie

(Just for fun, here's Dan and me at White Sands, New Mexico. It was so beautiful! And no, it's not a beach, just miles of perfectly white sand dunes.)

Footnotes from a crazy trip

Where to even begin? Dan and I are here in sunny New Mexico! We flew in yesterday with the purpose of seeing the doctor who my mom saw a couple months ago. We wanted to be tested to make sure we weren't carrying any Lyme Disease bacteria, since both my parents tested positive. I know it sounds crazy, but this doctor has seen whole families carrying Lyme Disease. Apparently, the mainstream medical community's view and understanding of the disease is fairly limited.

So today, we were able to see him, and he did some testing. I could only hope and pray that he would find nothing... and thankfully, most of that prayer was answered. He did discover that I have something called mycoplasm (a bacterial parasite), some yeast overgrowth, bacteria, and unfortunately, a touch of the spirochetes that cause Lyme Disease, apparently a recent acquirement. Dan, on the other hand, had no spriochetes (yay) but a pretty overwhelming amount of mycoplasm. It was so yucky to see on the microscope! The good news is, the doctor has had success treating of all of this. I am hopeful that clearing this yuckiness out of my body and detoxing will relieve some of my excema syptoms that have been so NOT fun.

Anyway, that is a short update on what is up with us. Life has been so overwhelming at times. On the bright side, we get an entire day tomorrow to go site seeing and enjoy some vacation-ish stuff. Since it's hard to take vacations these days, we want to make the most of this time.

We would appreciate your prayers!

Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." ...LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure... Psalm 16

Stephanie

Invitation production line

Yesterday Dan and I got to hang out with our good friends Jon and Rachel (who are getting married May 30!), her sister Darcey, and my roommate from college, Bekah. We had a good reason to hang out: we had wedding invitations to crank out, 150 of them to be exact.


I think they turned out really pretty! Rachel's color choices are really unique: red, orangey-gold, gray, and black, and she found some beautiful patterned papers that pulled them all together nicely. She picked out several of them, so all of the invitations have varied papers on them wrapped around the middle.


I didn't know if could get them all done, but we did it, production-line style! Here we are with the finished product.

Stephanie

Misfit

Anyone remember the island of misfit toys from the classic Rudolph the Red nose Rain deer movie? (Which, by the way, I did not get to see this Christmas. It was not Christmas when I was a kid until I had watched this movie as well as Frosty the Snowman.)

I'm naming my post in honor of those toys. Last night Dan and I went clothes shopping because I had a Christmas present to return and therefore credit to use up at a store. It honestly was kind of funny because Dan walked away with two pairs of pants from the experience and I could find... nothing.

Here's my problem. I'm a misfit. I wander over to the Juniors department and see screen shirts, funny colored jeans, and oddly ruffled miniskirts. Don't get me wrong. There's some cute clothes in the Juniors department, but I've decided that since I'm 22, it's time to step it up.

So I head over to the misses' department. It doesn't go much better there. The clothes just don't seem to fit my body, and many of them are edging dangerously close to the middle-aged look.

What's a girl to do?

Head to Ross Dress for Less. That's my solution. Tucked in the endless racks of clothes, I can usually end up finding a cute shirt or two that doesn't scream "I'm 14."

Anyone else experienced this?

Hope you all had a blessed Christmas!

Stephanie

P.S. Cindy your family picture is adorable! I love it! Thanks for sending me one. :)