Tag Archives: marriage

Babies on the brain: the back story

Dear lovely readers,

I wrote a post. This post, in fact. I wrote it in October of 2010, a year and half ago. And then . . . I sat on it. I was nervous about being this vulnerable and sharing these things that were so close to my heart. I was afraid to make public these feelings that may not be “right” but that were happening anyway. But now that we’ve embarked on the pregnancy journey, I wanted to resurrect this draft and show you what I was thinking a year and a half ago about babies. I love seeing the journey my heart has made, guided by the gentle hand of God, and I hope you enjoy it too!

Love,

The New Mama

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10.18.2010

During our 4 years of dating prior to our 5 years of marriage, my husband and I weren’t convinced we ever wanted to have kids. When I was growing up, I was never the little girl that dreamed of being a mom, and he wasn’t sure he could be a good enough dad. We didn’t talk about it a ton, but the idea was that we would keep enjoying ourselves, loving each other as much as possible, and see what happened–with no pressure to start a family. As the years of marriage slipped by, I started realizing more and more that someday I might want a family. My husband didn’t yet feel that way. If I started a sentence with “When we have kids . . . ” he would interject “If we have kids–if we have kids.” Not in a snarky way, but just clarifying that the choice was ours . . . and that he wasn’t all too convinced that was what he wanted.

I knew this wasn’t something about which I could ever change his mind, and it definitely wasn’t something I wanted to argue about, so I started praying. For years, I have been praying something along the lines of “God, if your desire is for us to have a family, change our desires so they’re in line with yours. I want both of our hearts to be on the same page as yours, and with each other. If we are supposed to have kids someday, I need both me and my husband to want it. This can’t be a place of discord, God; we need unity of purpose.”

And gradually, conversation by conversation, through our year of marriage in Bloomington, our three years in Delaware, and the past year in Chicago, I saw that my husband was starting to want a family.

This past summer during Family Vacay 2010, we hopped in kayaks and took a spin on the lake for a couple hours to do a review of the year: the highs and lows, what we had learned, what we hoped for the next year. And there, in the middle of the lake in the North Woods of Wisconsin, for the first time, he said: “I definitely want a family.” The idea was, not right now–but for sure. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

I immediately started crying. “I want a family, too,” I said. A joy flooded my soul as I realized that through his faithful, patient work, God had answered my prayer and brought our hearts to the same place.

Maybe it’s typical for mid-to-late twenty-something girls to start thinking along this line. To start desiring a small creature with little limbs. Someone tiny whom you will snuggle, teach, chastise, hug. I think God has put this desire in most women–not all, but certainly a lot of us. The Bible talks about children as a blessing. We are spoken of as adopted sons and daughters of God the Father. Jesus is our brother. Clearly, family is important to God. Clearly, the earthly family is supposed to teach us something about the heavenly family. Maybe there are lessons I need to learn that are unique to having children. I know they will be a tool of sanctification (refining my patience, increasing my selflessness, etc.), but I think they will also bring me to a deeper understanding of my heavenly Father and the nature of my relationship with him.

Here’s the thing–we’ve enjoyed our 5 childless years of marriage so much! It’s just . . . fun. Every night when we go to bed, it’s like a sleepover. We can be spontaneous, hop on a bus and go downtown if we feel like it. Make last-minute dinner plans with friends. We can pack light. We are both happy and peaceful and so content with our life, and a little voice in my head keeps asking me: why would you jeopardize that? Why would you willingly put an end to a phase you’re still enjoying so much? It’s like eating a delicious dessert, and willingly stopping when you’re only halfway done even though you’re still ravenous.

But . . . BUT. I’ve been praying. At another key moment during Family Vacay 2010, one evening I was kayaking on the lake with my aunt and cousin. (Why do deep revelations seem to happen while I’m in a kayak?) We watched the sun sink behind the tree line. The lake was as smooth as a mirror, and we could see the moon getting brighter and brighter in the East. I paddled off by myself for a while and just watched the sky. It was ablaze in color–dark blue where the moon was, fading to a lighter blue, then a blushing pink, and then a swath of brilliant, golden yellow. As I soaked in the beauty, I prayed “God, I sense you want us to have kids someday. You’ve brought us both to a place where we know we want that in the future. But you also know that in my heart, I’m reluctant to move on from where I am now. I’m so happy! You’ve given me such a great husband, and I’m having so much fun with him that I don’t want to ‘mess that up’ with the challenges I know kids will bring. If you want me to have kids, I need some wisdom from you. I need you to give me the conviction that it’s OK to leave behind this awesome phase and move onto a more challenging one. That it’s OK to lay aside the kind of fun we’re having now and accept something I sense will be harder than anything we’ve ever faced.”

I breathed deeply and gazed at the sky.

Suddenly, it was like God spoke into my heart. “Look at the sky,” he seemed to be whispering, “See the three colors? The deep blue to the West, the pink, and then the golden hue in the East. Isn’t it perfect?”

“Yes, it’s perfect,” I thought.

“Well,” God seemed to say, “what if it were all blue? Or all pink? Wouldn’t it lose some of its beauty? Isn’t it glorious because there are three different beautiful colors all combined into an even more beautiful whole?”

And then I saw! I am in the blue phase right now. It’s gorgeous–but at the end of my life, do I just want to have a blue sky? No, I want all the colors God has in store for my life. I can leave behind the blue and move into the pink. Each color is adding beauty to the canvas of my life. They are all different, and all necessary to the final work of art.

So even though I love the blue phase, I can leave it behind and embrace new challenges because there is beauty in each different part of life. Will it be harder? Maybe. But it will be worth it somehow.

Regardless of my mental understanding of this, my emotions still swing back and forth between exhiliration and dread. I see a few moms at a playground watching their toddlers run here and there. They seem peaceful, content. They have cute ponytails. I think “I could do that. I could have a morning excursion to the playground while the air is brisk, and then head home and make a PB&J sandwich for my small one before they settle down for their afternoon nap time.” And diapers–hey, I worked as a nurse’s aide in a nursing home. Diapers on a baby should not scare me in the least after what I have seen and done and smelled with people in the opposite spectrum of life.

But then I see a tired mom with 3 or 4 kids get on the bus I’m riding to work with her big, awkward stroller. I see the dirty looks the other bus riders give her when they have to move to make room for her entourage, and when her baby starts screaming and two other kids start fighting. She yells “shut up!” to her 3 or 4-year olds, and then calls someone on her cellphone. She’s loud, she’s cussing. She sounds frustrated. She looks tired, angry, and I don’t like how she’s treating her kids. “Will being a mom turn me into a monster?” I think. I know the evil inside me–and it feels dangerous.

I see a mom with a newborn strapped to her torso with one of those fabric thingies that crisscross on your back. I see the tender looks she casts at the sleeping face. I see the careful way she arranges the blanket over the baby’s body to make sure he or she is nice and warm. She looks happy, peaceful. Content. Maybe she’s going to meet a friend for coffee. Or maybe she’s going to do some shopping. But this baby at her chest is right at the center of who she is right now, of what she’s all about. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Then I see a Mom pushing a stroller down the sidewalk as I head into work. The Mom in question is in her sweatpants and looks depressed. Maybe she’s just sleepy . . . but being who I am, I of course construct a whole story around who she is, why she’s so sad, and how alone she feels by herself in the house with this baby, and I start pushing against these imaginary walls of baby-dom crying “No! I don’t want to feel alone! I don’t want to be trapped in baby world!”

Maybe next year I’ll feel ready.

Is this normal? This back and forth? This consuming desire, and then this fear and resistance?

These are the times that I wonder about birth control. Yes, it’s given women more power over their bodies, and more opportunities. No, I wouldn’t have wanted to have a baby right at 22 when I got married. I am grateful for role the pill has played in my life. It’s made that time of month less painful and more regular. It’s allowed us to have 5 fabulous years of marriage getting to know each other, learning how to live together harmoniously without anyone else in the picture. But then I think about how much easier it would be if it just happened when it happened. If the decision weren’t mine, it would almost be . . . easier to accept. Liberating, in a way. I keep secretely hoping that I’ll get a surprise baby. Even after the pill has worked its magic so effectively for 5 years, I feel hopeful about being part of the 0.01% margin of error.

And I just want to add (since I know this can be quite the hot topic): I’m not taking a political stance on birth control . . . or a religious stance . . . or any stance at all. I’m just saying that as someone who has taken the pill for 5 years and had a great experience with it, I still have moments of questioning. Of hoping that this month . . . it will fail.

Right or wrong or neither, these are my emotions.

I don’t know what God has in store exactly. Maybe we won’t be able to have kids. Maybe we’ll be called to foster care, or to adopt. Or something so unexpected I can’t even imagine it now. Maybe there will be miscarriages, infertility. Maybe twins, or triplets. I don’t pretend to know what the future holds. All I can say is that my heart is a work in progress. I’m learning about the beauty of family. I’m learning about God’s patient work in our hearts, and his kindness to me and my husband as he guides us through this emotional process.

Thank you all for reading . . . it wasn’t my ‘usual fare,’ but it felt good to express all this. To verbalize these thoughts that have been with me for so long. I’m sure some of you have words of wisdom . . . or perhaps similar struggles. I love you guys–and I always love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Happy Valentine’s Day dear . . . I’m pregnant!

(see yesterdays’ post for part 1)

So there I was, at about 4:30 pm on Monday February 13th, alone in the bathroom with a peed-on, positive pregnancy test in my hand. My heart was racing, my face felt hot and happy. I looked at myself in the mirror. I am looking at a pregnant woman, I said to myself. I have a baby inside me.

The wheels started turning–how was I going to tell my husband?

He was due home at about 6:30 pm, and of course one option would be to run into the hallway screaming as soon as I heard his key in the lock “I’mpregnantI’mpregnantI’mpregnantI’mpregnant!”

But there was a small hitch–we had friends coming over at 6:30 as well. I was going to be making dinner, which incidentally I really needed to get a move on. No, I didn’t like this scenario at all. There was no way I was going to let him walk in the door, shout “I’m pregnant!”, run back to the kitchen to make sure the eggs weren’t over-poaching, and then have our friends come in 60 seconds later as the astonishment was still playing all over my husband’s face.

Uh-unh. That wasn’t the way I wanted to make my revelation or have our first precious talk about the joys ahead.

I’ll just wait, I told myself. The next day was Valentine’s Day, and wouldn’t that be a perfect and memorable day to tell him? I knew I could keep it to myself for 24 hours, and I actually started getting excited about having this wonderful secret that no one could guess at–and it would be just mine. For one day.

Anyway. My husband came home. I acted normal. It was kind of fun, actually, modulating my speech to sound like I thought I would under regular circumstances. He noticed nothing, which is incredible since he really can normally detect the smallest change in my behavior or tone of voice. Our friends came over shortly after (Hi Felipe! Hi Rebecca!) and we had that awesome Tomato Kale skillet over rice. We talked, we laughed, we had fabulous madeleines courtesy of Rebecca’s baking skills, and all along I held my secret in my heart like a precious treasure.

The next morning I glowed on my ride to work. I could feel the happiness radiating from my face as the train rocked me back and forth, as the bus made its starts and stops. I’m having a baby. No one knows, no one can tell, but I’m having a baby.

I stopped in at Walgreens to buy another pregnancy test on my way to work, and took it in the little bathroom as soon as I got to the office. Why, you may ask? See, I was afraid that some funky thing with my body may have given a false positive. I’d recently watched a ridiculous (and hilarious) episode of 30 Rock in which Liz Lemon gets false positives on a whole bunch of pregnancy tests because of a whacko ingredient in a bag of Mexican chips she’d been inhaling. And since I had just started juicing in the morning that very Monday, what if all those micronutrients that my body wasn’t used to came out in my urine and tricked the test?

Irrational, yes, but I had questions. I had doubts. Thankfully, the second pregnancy test still showed a line. A little faint for my taste (it was the cheapest test), but obviously there. I was relieved, and let myself feel a little more excited.

Will you laugh at me if I admit that I took yet another test a few days later–just in case?

Anyway, that same day while I was still at work, Tuesday February 14th, I called my insurance company. I asked question after question until I had a firm grasp on my benefit package. What’s included, what the deductible is, what doctors are in-network, if midwifery is covered. Incidentally, the first person I told “I’m pregnant” was the Blue Cross Blue Shield customer service rep. She said “congratulations.” Thanks, customer service rep. I’m sorry I don’t even remember your name.

I read up on the midwife group at Swedish Covenant Hospital and made an appointment with them for March 28th, when I would be at the end of my 12th week. The woman who answered the phone said anywhere between weeks 8 and 12 was normal for a first appointment, so based on that I had no qualms about waiting that long.

I wanted to wait a little longer anyway to get in to a medical professional–that may seem odd–but I figured that if I was going to have a miscarriage (which is more likely to happen in the first trimester) then I would prefer not to go to the doctor beforehand. Because that just makes pregnancy seem more real. And the more real it seemed, I reasoned, the more pain I would feel if I lost the baby. Does that make sense? Anyway, right or wrong, it was simply the way my heart was reasoning.

Valentine’s Day evening, I got home from work. I started dinner. My husband got home from school. We filled each other in about the various events in our days. I was bursting with my news, but the moment wasn’t right yet and I let my husband think that I was just really excited to give him my Valentine’s Day gift. I suggested that we eat dinner in the living room (way more intimate and snuggly) and give each other our Valentine’s Day gifts there. He had written a card I wanted to read nice and slowly, and I had personalized a mug that I bought at Starbucks, which had been hiding in a dresser drawer for a few weeks. That very evening I had filled this very tall mug with a bunch of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, and buried the positive pregnancy stick in the middle.

I brought out the cup. I handed it to him. He read it slowly, turning it around in his hands (it’s a cup with a long list of all the nicknames I have for him, in case you were confused).

My heart was beating hard, and I noticed my hands had started shaking. Am I nervous? This was not what I was expecting to feel.

Then he started rummaging in the chocolates, and pulled out the stick. “What’s this?” he asked, genuinely confused. And then he thought for a moment and looked at me. He was still looking a little perplexed, so I squealed “I’m pregnant!”

Embraces, tears, and an evening of dreaming out loud ensued. I forced him to sit through an out-loud reading of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” weeks 1-6.

Of course, the next step was to decide when to tell people. Some people would have picked up the phone immediately, but we decided not to. I was experiencing no symptoms, no morning sickness yet, nothing, and the “miscarriage” refrain kept singing in my head. So we decided to wait until the risk was more minimal before sharing with our families or anyone else.

Needless to say, that plan didn’t work out so perfectly. Because that very Thursday, two days later, my friend Carrie came over to hang out before Bible study, looked me in the eye and asked in a no-nonsense tone: “Are you pregnant?”

We’ve been pretty open about our cycles, our dreams and our hopes with each other, so this wasn’t an altogether unusual question. I wasn’t planning on telling, but I hesitated a second too long with my answer.

And in that split second, she had my number. I didn’t even have to say anything before she was embracing me and saying “Oh my gosh!!”

So she and Eric were the first to know, and have been faithful friends in prayer about this baby ever since.

Since I have many women in my life who wouldn’t hesitate to ask a direct “Are you pregnant” question, I had to prepare an answer that wouldn’t be a bold-faced lie but also wouldn’t give away something we had decided to keep private for a little longer. Our solution was “well, no news yet,” which yes–I totally had to use on my Mom. Sorry, Mom.

Despite our efforts, the news slipped out to a few more people–some church friends (especially after I almost fainted in front of them), some people in our Bible study, etc.–but I’ve enjoyed the slow and gradual reveal.

So there you have it! As of today, the first trimester is over. I’ve been dreaming about baby James a lot. I had my first appointment one week ago, and there will be so much pregnancy and baby talk on this blog that you can’t possibly be ready.

More soon, and thanks for accompanying me on this journey!! I’m excited to share it with you all.