Unexpected Expectation

What a long several months it’s been! We bought our first home in January, but didn’t move in until March. March-April 2014: Oh, what a start to what seemed like never-ending madness!  I got sick at the beginning of March but never seemed to bounce back. A few weeks later and a few days before we planned on painting some of the walls in our new house, I got the idea that maybe I should take a test to see if we were expecting again. Sure enough, that little test told no lie. So, I didn’t help paint. Instead I packed. And packed. And packed some more. Then moving week arrived. I felt worthless with moving things and cleaning anything. And I felt horrid. I just wanted to sit down and cry at the amount of house work piling up in front of me before we were even settled in our new home – the home we had been pining over for 2 + years.

Finally, we got most of our stuff put away. April came and then our oldest got sick for an entire week. A couple weeks later, our youngest got sick, and then I got sick.  The sickness just would not go away! And then our oldest got sick again. When in the trenches of non-stop sickness and trying to clean germs for over two weeks, it’s so easy for perspective to fly out your new home’s windows. I was not in a good frame of mind to say the least. I missed too many hours of work and was rapidly depleting my already too-small bank of time for time off from work. I couldn’t see the here and now – all I kept thinking about was prenatal appointments, doctor appointments for the girls, and the impending maternity leave at the end of the year. The leave that I’d be lucky to have 2 weeks of time saved up for. I was freaking out and ticked off and sick and…I could go on. I was not in a good way at all.

On top of dealing with the sickness, wouldn’t you know it? One thing after the other seemed to go wrong or need fixed RIGHT NOW with the house. I started to think we made a mistake. Maybe we should have just stayed crammed tight in a two bedroom apartment for the rest of our lives. That way maintenance would take care of everything and blah blah blah blah.

During this time, we found our youngest has a developmental delay. So she’ll be getting therapy and I have no clue where to find the time from work to get her to those sessions. Thank goodness they can be held at daycare. But TIME, friends; precious time seems to be slipping faster and faster away from us.

All of this may seem like the typical stresses of being a parent of two kids under 3 years old and moving. But then there was real darkness on my heart and in my mind. Two years ago we were expecting our second child but she/he left us. The days leading up to the loss and after were a nightmare. I still feel deep sadness and pain from it. Last year at this time I was just days away from delivering so I was much more at ease. But this year, we were still so early on in our pregnancy that I just knew that all the stupid and annoying stresses of late surely have made our babe leave, too. My hair started to shed – a LOT, like as in post-partum (or as it did after we lost our babe two years ago). I had bad cramps, but not too bad. But those cramps were still there, beckoning me to succumb to the old emotions from two years ago. Besides, all of my symptoms just stopped. It was like a switch was flipped: no more extreme exhaustion, no more or very little nausea, no more food aversions. You may be thinking: isn’t that a GOOD thing? Doesn’t that happen in the second trimester?? It hadn’t happened to me in our past pregnancies. So I didn’t think of anything good – I just thought, “Oh, great. Here we go again.” Every day I was waiting for the axe to drop. I just knew I was destined to lose this babe, too. A friend lost her baby at 12 weeks. I bawled - hard. I knew the emotions I felt and was sharply reminded of how scared I was to relive May of 2012.
Then we had our 14 week regular checkup. I was of course so nervous about hearing no heartbeat. I could have thrown up from being so nervous.

Thank God that Matt was able to take some time to come with me. I just couldn’t lie there on the table, not hearing a heartbeat by myself.

Alas! Two seconds after the wand was on my tummy that glorious little heartbeat was heard. I didn’t cry tears of joy, but burst out in laughter. JOY!! Oh loveliness of life!

I hadn’t honestly laughed in weeks. It felt amazing to have pressure and stress lifted off my shoulders. I had tried to let things go. I truly did try. But my heart was heavy and I couldn’t lift it up on my own.

Sure there are going to be other stresses and burdens the rest of this pregnancy and after, but I feel so much better knowing that this little girl or boy is going to be with us.

Too often I have expectations – mostly of myself and how my life should be. I then expect things to go so badly once they don’t go as I expect. I need to learn to stop expecting so much. I must learn to let it go. After all, I don’t really have control of many things, right? But I can embrace and adore my life as much as I want. And I suspect that if I let it go and stop expecting “this” or “that”, then I will be able to take time to smell the roses. And roses are so sweet and such a special gift from a very special Mother.

Happy Mother’s Day to all moms and dads: I know I couldn’t be half the mother I am without my best friend and husband!