Family – Onward Hoe!

It Takes a Village (Fitness Edition)

I don’t like working out around other people. Even when I’m at home and my husband decides to take a day off from exercising, he’s not allowed to stay in the room with me while I do it. I REALLY don’t like going to the gym where strangers can see my fat jiggle when I run. I feel very self-conscious exercising in public, and I would prefer to do it in the privacy of my own home.

However, it is VERY important for me not to make major life changes alone. I need the support and help of family and friends, and yes, even strangers who are in the same boat as I am. Family and friends are great because they love you and support you, and you can text them how much weight you’ve lost and get something like this in return:

Yes, I call my sister "Buck Buck Number Two." Is that weird? — Yes, I call my sister “Buck Buck Number Two.” Is that weird?

Strangers, on the other hand, are wonderful because you can tell them your exact measurements and not give a flying flip what they think of it because you’ll probably never meet them, and even if you do, you’ve been through something together by then that makes you happy to finally meet them, still not caring that they’ve seen your measurements because they were right there with you.

I have both of these groups, and hooboy is it necessary for me. I have my sweet husband telling me I’m beautiful regardless of my weight but that he’s also SO proud of me for all the hard work I’m doing. I have my sister cheering me on with every weight loss update. I have my coworkers commenting on how they’re starting to see the changes. And I have a group of mostly strangers on Facebook who are all working on healthier goals together. We can post links to recipes, we can complain about how hard our workout was, we can encourage each other to keep it up anyway or get back on the wagon, and we can give each other big cyber-fives on a job well done.

I work out alone or only with my husband (who doesn’t count as “people”), and I prefer it to the gym or to a group class, but it really does take a village to help me stay on track and make good choices. So to all of you who have read and posted or texted me encouraging comments, THANK YOU. I need you. I can’t do this without you. I’m thankful that I don’t have to.

Meaty vs. Veggie

I went to look at my prompt for today and immediately got “Ebony and Ivory” stuck in my head for some reason. And it’s funny that today’s prompt is what it is because my students asked me this exact question in class today: How do an herbivore and an omnivore cook together?

It comes up a lot when people find out I’m a vegetarian. One of the first questions they ask (after wondering what I eat and how I get enough protein) is, “Is your husband a vegetarian too?” No. No, he is most definitely not. That always invites the follow-up question, “Sooooooo…how does that work?”

It’s honestly not that complicated. I’ve been meatless for seven years, and I’ve known my husband for about seven and a half years, maybe eight, so for the vast majority of the time he’s known me, I’ve been a vegetarian. And we didn’t get together until two years ago, so we both knew exactly what we were getting into before we ever got together. Also, cooking together became a pretty normal thing when we started dating, so we had a good bit of practice before we got married.

Usually, it goes like this…

On Saturday, we decide what we want to make for the following week’s dinners. We pull from a lot of different sources, including a weekly meal-planning service we got cheap with a Groupon (emeals), but my favorites are Forks over Knives, Thug Kitchen (pardon the language if you visit the site), Food Network, and All Recipes. We also have several cookbooks and a recipe box full of vegetarian slow cooker ideas. We both have to agree that we either really want or are willing to try a recipe before we add it to the week’s list. If we’re both on board, I print out the recipe.

Doesn't the mullet magnet guy look like Sir Paul McCartney? — Doesn’t the mullet magnet guy look like Sir Paul McCartney?

Once we’ve picked our poisons, if you will (though you really shouldn’t), we make a grocery list based on what each recipe calls for and what we already happen to have. If we haven’t been very inspired by the recipes we’ve found and only have a few, we’ll make a stirfry one night or just sautee some veggies and pair them with pasta. ORRRR we’ll have “lazy night,” where we go out to eat or order Chinese or something. We put the meal schedule on a white board on the fridge so that whoever is home when it’s time to cook can see what’s on the menu and get it started. We stick all the printed-out recipes on the side of the fridge so they are visible while standing in front of the stove.

Most of the time, Will just eats a vegetarian dinner and has something meaty for lunch, and most of the time, he says he doesn’t feel like the meal is lacking anything, but bless him, he loves me a lot, so he may just not be saying it, though we definitely do have some recipes that he REALLY likes as they are (including our risotto and our tortilla soup). However, there are a lot of times when he says, “It’s good. But it would be a lot better with chicken.” We now have a bag of chicken in the freezer if he ever wants to cook some and add it to his meal. When we make stirfry, he might cook some chicken separately, and I might cook some tofu, and then we’ll just add our own protein to our own bowls.

Last night, we made pasta. We cooked a skillet of veggies for me and a skillet of peppers, onions, garlic, and sausage for him. He then added tomato sauce to his skillet, and I had plain sauce. He now has a jar full of meat sauce that he can use over the next couple of weeks. Making all of that at once was a little hectic, but now when he wants meat sauce with his pasta again, he’s all set.

That’s pretty much it. I usually eat the leftovers for lunch the following day, and that’s planned into my week on purpose, so we make sure we have enough for me to do that. He usually eats whatever he feels like eating for lunch, and we do our own breakfast things too because we have different morning routines and tastes. He doesn’t get as much steak as he’d like in his life, but he gets WAY more veggies than he was getting when he was single, and he recognizes that this is a good thing. I don’t mind him cooking meat, but if it’s beef, we have to set up an elaborate ventilation system so I can’t smell it.

Oh, and eating out or getting take-out is easy, and if he’s like dying for some meat or something, we figure it out. It’s really not so hard.

Ella’s Story

I’m sure that some of you are curious about what, exactly, happened in my pregnancy, but you’re not sure if you should ask. Thank you for respecting our privacy by not asking. I don’t mind you knowing, but it is a painful story to tell, so I’m going to do it once right here and now and be done with it.

It was a Saturday morning. We had just eaten a late breakfast and were getting ready to play a video game together. Will was excited because he loves video games, and this was the first time I was going to play with him. I got up to go to the bathroom before we started, and while I was on the toilet, my water broke. I guess I should be glad it happened on the toilet and not on the couch, but it’s impossible to be glad right now about anything that happened that day.

I freaked out, started shaking, and shouted for Will to help me. I couldn’t stop shaking. I told him to get me a pad even though I knew it wouldn’t do much good at all. I asked if he could drive to the hospital because I didn’t want to wait for an ambulance. He said he could do it, so he changed out of his pajamas and I grabbed a towel to sit on in the car. We called the doctor on the way and told him what had happened. He said to meet him at the women’s center at the hospital.

When I walked in, they got my information, and a nurse came out to meet me and take me to a room. She just kept saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I had no idea what was happening, and I think she probably wasn’t allowed to make a diagnosis before the doctor had seen me, but she knew exactly what it was and where it was headed.

The doctor came in, and they brought an ultrasound machine so he could check on the baby. There was no fluid left, and he couldn’t find her heartbeat. He did a full exam and said he could already see pieces of the membrane breaking and coming out. There was nothing to be done at that point but get her out. Her lungs weren’t formed well enough to breathe, so she was completely dependent upon the amniotic fluid. When it was gone, so was she.

We sat around a lot, family came and went, the chaplain spoke to us, the nurses patted my arm, and eventually they gave me something to start labor. They told me it would feel like really strong menstrual cramps, but that it wouldn’t be so bad. They asked if I wanted morphine, and I did, so they set up a drip. It did not just feel like strong cramps. It was so bad. But my sweet husband did not leave my side. He sat right next to me and held my hand the whole time.

We knew we wanted to name our baby, so we quickly made some decisions on boy and girl names. It’s amazing how fast and easy it can be to come up with a name. We make such a big deal out of it, but it’s really quite simple. Ella Claire for a girl. It’s what I had always wanted to name a daughter if I ever had one. Ella for my maternal grandmother, who was named after her own maternal grandmother. Claire for my paternal grandmother (and also my middle name until I got married and changed it). We had just taken a silly internet quiz that morning to tell us what we were having, and it was right. We were expecting a girl.

Several hours later, the doctor came in and told me to push. That part didn’t hurt at all. In fact, all the physical pain stopped at that point. Even the next day, I felt like they expected me to be in a lot of pain, but I wasn’t. They gave me a prescription for heavy-duty ibuprofen, but we didn’t even fill it. I was fine. Just empty and devastated.

I had a baby. The doctor told me to push, and out she came. He said, “Your baby has passed. It looks like it’s a girl.” He asked the nurse for the time, and she told him. 9:08 p.m.

This is the story of how Ella Claire McMillian came into the world. She was tiny and perfect. She had ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes, all her finger- and toenails, little cheeks and eyes and ears and lips, a little perfect nose. Will said he’d always thought that babies just looked like babies, but that Ella looked like me.

We spent some time alone with her, and then the chaplain came in to pray with us and bless our daughter. Then they took her away and moved me to another room.

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Baby girl,

Your story is one of love. You were conceived in love, anticipated eagerly in love, wanted, hoped for, dreamed of, and prepared for. You were delivered in sorrow, and you are grieved in pain, but only because you were and are so, so very loved. And even though you are gone, your story is not finished because our love for you will never end, and it will never change. Wherever you are, my perfect girl, I am eagerly anticipating the day I get to meet you again.

Love,
Mama

It Takes a Village

Dear Family and Friends (and Complete Strangers),

I want to thank you. Thank you for your kind words, your encouragement, your wise advice, your compassion, your love. Thank you for sharing your own struggles with me, for joining me in the pit as it were. Thank you for sitting with me, for hugging me, for checking in on me periodically, for sending me cute animal pictures and videos. Thank you for bringing food, for offering to bring food, for taking us out to eat, for having us over for food, for not judging us when we ate ALL the food and then some. Thank you for helping me with housework, for taking me for a pedicure, for inspiring me to treat my body well, for being so kind to me and helping me to be kind to myself. Thank you for letting me cry, for letting me laugh, for letting me space out completely. Thank you for sending me thoughts, words, and songs of healing. Thank you for letting me explore, doubt, find, process, and pour out my heart. Thank you for offering me love and new hope in return. Thank you.

I don’t think it’s possible to heal alone, but you have not made me try to do that. In fact, you would not have let me if I’d tried, and that’s a really good thing. It takes a village to heal a broken mama’s heart, and I don’t know what I would do without you. I’m not there yet, but I have a little bit of hope, so thank you.

Grateful for you all,
Beth

6 Reasons to Marry Your Best Friend

Today I’m supposed to talk about my best friend, which is going to get really sappy really quickly because Will is my bestest best friend. But before I get to him, let me say that I have amazing friends, all different, and all special to me in their own ways and for various reasons. I’ve got friends I’ve had since before I can remember having friends. I’ve got friends with whom friendships were forged under the most trying of circumstances – adolescence. I’ve got friends from college who watched me (and bore with me) as I did a fair amount of growing up and becoming myself, making a fool of myself as expected along the way. I’ve got friends from New York who took on the big city with me, who didn’t bat an eye when I started cutting my clothes up and got my nose pierced, but loved me, accepted me, and appropriately challenged me. I’ve got friends from Raleigh, who, though they are my most recent acquaintances, have become family. Literally.

And when I say literally, I literally mean literally. Whitney has spent the last couple of Christmases with my family, yes, and she is very close to literal family, but I’m talking about the friend who is now actually my family – my husband. We sometimes have surreal moments when we just can’t believe that we are married because still, after two years together, only a quarter of our relationship has been romantic in nature. We were friends for six years before we ever got together, so we often find it hard to believe that we get to kiss each other whenever we want, and we often find it hard to believe that there was ever a time we didn’t kiss each other.

Smooching is only one perk of marrying your best friend, though. Here are some more:

1. Hanging out with friends is simple.

We each have some friends that the other doesn’t know (or doesn’t know well), but we don’t hang out with them all that often because they don’t live nearby. If they did, we’d try to hang out with them a little bit more. The friends we hang out with the most are the ones we’ve both known for years, the ones we knew before we ever got together, the ones who, when we started dating, said, “Well it’s about time!” So I almost never have to go to awkward parties with Will’s friends and make small talk (introvert problems), and he’s only had to do that once or twice with my friends and family. Nope, none of that. We just hang out with people we both know and love.

2. Spending time together is fun and easy.

You’re friends! You’ve already spent time getting to know each other and developing “your things” – the things you always do together and/or the things you only do with each other. You have your favorite restaurants and hangouts, you have your inside jokes, you probably enjoy a lot of the same things, and you know what to expect from each other. Sure, Will and I have our disagreements, and we get frustrated with each other at times, but for the most part, being together is enjoyable. We don’t get tired of each other. We just do the things we’ve always enjoyed doing together, and it’s great!

3. The relationship moves at a comfortable pace.

I have two things to say about this. First, a lot of Christians get married lightning fast. The joke is that they just want to have sex, but they have to get hitched first, so they speed the process along. I’m sure there’s some truth to that, but I sincerely hope it’s not the whole truth because marriage is a huge step, and you really should be sure you’re ready to commit to marriage with that specific person before you do it. Otherwise, you are likely in for a bumpy road and a lot of heartache. I believe it is entirely possible to meet, fall in love with, and commit to a person for the rest of your life in a very short span of time (my parents did it), but it’s rare. By marrying your best friend, you can take it fast AND slow at the same time. A lot of people we met when we were engaged (or about to get engaged) were shocked that we’d only been together for such a short time, but as soon as we told them we’d been friends for six years, they were fine with us getting married.

Second, I always hated online dating because it took me six dates to decide whether I liked a guy enough even to be friends with him, much less date him. But by the time you’ve been on six dates with someone, news flash, you’re dating. The pace of it always made me uncomfortable. But with Will, I already knew I liked spending time with him as a friend. I then learned pretty quickly that I loved being in a relationship with him, that in fact I loved him. With that knowledge, stepping into engagement was a no-brainer, and even though marriage is a scary prospect that brings a lot of change, we were WAY ready for it by the time our wedding day rolled around.

4. There aren’t a lot of surprises.

Will and I were friends for six years. By the time we started dating, I knew what foods he liked, I knew how he liked to spend his time, I knew (more or less) how tidy he was, I knew the kinds of things he would want to do and the kinds of things he’d need to be coerced into doing. By the time we got married, I knew even more, and that knowledge has been invaluable. They say the first year of marriage is the hardest, and I think that’s the case because there’s just such a steep learning curve if you haven’t been living together beforehand. But when you marry your best friend, you know what you’re getting for the most part.

5. You always have a buddy.

We fully acknowledge the fact that we are disgustingly sweet a LOT of the time, and the romantic part of being in a good relationship is GREAT. But sometimes, you just don’t feel lovey-dovey. Sometimes you feel wretched and gross and gassy, and you don’t want to be touched. Sometimes you’ve had a hard day, and you don’t want to deal with it. You just want to watch TV and veg out. Sometimes you’re tired and don’t feel sexy at all. And in those moments, the good thing about being married to your best friend is that you’ve always got a buddy. You’ve always got your friendship – your simple enjoyment of each other’s company – to fall back on. You CAN just veg out together and watch TV. You CAN just lie next to each other in bed and look at Facebook. You don’t feel the need to constantly impress each other, and you don’t have to worry when the googly-eyed phase of your relationship stops being a 24/7 thing. Our googly eyes come and go, but our friendship fills in the gaps in between.

6. You can talk about everything.

I mean everything. Everything from the frequency and consistency of your bowel movements to theories on life and purpose. And when things are tough and you need to talk to someone, you’ve always got your best friend there with you, wanting to hear what you have to say. And when things are absolutely abysmal and you would rather not talk about it because you think it will hurt too much, you’ve got your best friend there too, encouraging you to keep talking or just letting you cry it out.

If you didn’t marry your best friend, I don’t think it’s too late to be married to your best friend. We got there slowly, and with a lot of movies. I think you can too. Find some common ground, have fun together, make jokes, laugh, flirt, watch silly TV shows, talk about your poop, ask about each other’s day, talk about your hopes and dreams and theories on life and purpose, and maybe do a little smoochin’.

*This post was co-written by Will and Beth. We are also available for parties…but bear in mind, we are very awkward at them.*

Healing

They say that time heals all wounds, but I don’t think I believe that. I think it takes time for wounds to heal, but I don’t think time itself is the healer. I’ve read a lot of the internet, and I’ve come across a whole slew of message boards where women who’ve lost a child to PPROM discuss their struggles. And there are plenty of ladies out there who seem no better off after two years than other ladies after two months. But then there are ladies who seem further along in their healing process at six months than ladies who’ve waited six years. I’m very careful to use the word “seem” in this discussion because I clearly have no idea what’s really going on in their hearts. I can only see what gets typed on the internet. But everyone is different, so I think there must be more at play than just time alone.

As a Christian, I believe that God is the best healer there is, but I think I also play a role in my own healing, so the whole process is a sort of dance, a cooperative effort, a give and take that eventually results in acceptance of my situation and myself in it.

Everyone participates in this process in their own way, so it can take more or less time depending on who you are, and it looks different for everyone because God relates to unique people in unique ways designed to best engage them. For some people, reading about God’s loving nature and promises in scripture is the only thing that helps them feel better. Other people connect with God more through music. Some of us need to feel a physical presence, and for that, God gives us people to hug. Some of us need to feel peace in the midst of turmoil, and for that, he gives sleep. Some of us need chocolate cake for a week, and for that, God gives us old high school friends who own a bakery and are willing to make deliveries.

My temptation is to say that your healing will only go as quickly as the extent to which you engage with God in his healing offerings, but I don’t know if that’s true. I just don’t know. And I won’t attempt to box up healing in a tidy 3-step process because it’s not that simple. What I have experienced, though, is that when I acknowledge the good things in my life – our friends and family, the support they’ve shown us, my cuddly husband, the love I feel for others, the love they show me, the freedom I feel to be myself knowing that God accepts me completely, good sleep, good music, a great job with amazing coworkers and students, chocolate cake, etc. – when I acknowledge all these good things, it feels like they replace little bits of the bad.

Maybe that’s what Isaiah was getting at when he said that the Lord had anointed him to provide for those who grieve, to give them “a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair” (Isaiah 61:3). Maybe everyone who has loved and supported us through the loss of our daughter has been anointed by God to provide for us, to switch out the bad for the good, little by little. And maybe very slowly, I’ll even start to find good things in what right now feels like an entirely bad situation. I’ll let you know if/when that happens, but in the meantime, thank you for everything. I hope you know how big a part of my healing you’ve been so far, and I want you to know that I see it, and I appreciate it more than I can say.

Identity Crisis

I don’t know if it’s because Ella was genetically half me, or if it’s because my body created and sustained whole new organs to take care of her, or if it’s just the way it is with mothers and their children, but I feel like a piece of me was lost with her. I suspect it’s all of those things, but I found myself saying something the other day that I felt encompassed a lot of what I’ve been feeling. I said that I don’t know how to be a mom without a baby, and I don’t know how not to be a mom knowing that I had a baby.

Will pointed out recently that I am sort of an extreme processor and preparer. As soon as we started dating, I started reading books about dating, and we got a book of questions to discuss before we got engaged. As soon as we got engaged, I started reading books about marriage. As soon as I got pregnant, I started reading pregnancy books. And now I have at least three books on dealing with the grief of losing a baby. It’s just what I do. I need to understand what’s going on so that I can cope with it and be prepared for what lies ahead. Plus I’ve always loved being a student, so educating myself comes naturally, and I enjoy it even if the subject matter is difficult emotionally.

Because of that, it might look like I’m taking on this identity of a-woman-who’s-lost-a-baby to an extreme – like this is all I’m ever going to think about, read about, talk about, be interested in, or devote my life to again. But I think of it more like going to my favorite store, piling my arms full of all the clothes I want to try on, and then deciding which things fit, which things are appropriate for my life, and which things I can afford.

The reality of miscarriage is that it does change you. All major life events do. I read a bunch of marriage books because I was trying to figure out what kind of wife I would be. I read a bunch of baby books because pregnancy and parenthood are scary as the dickens, and I needed to start wrapping my brain around it all and begin to consider what it would look like when I did it. I’m reading books for bereaved parents because I need to know that the things I’m feeling and doing are normal or helpful or not crazy. I need to know that we’re not the only ones who’ve gone through this, and that lots of other folks have come through it and survived. And I’m trying to figure out how this will change me and how it will not. I’m trying to decide what fits my personality, what works for me practically, and what it will cost to allow these changes to take place in me.

Practically, I don’t know how all of this will play out. I don’t know if it will make me change jobs or hobbies or interests in the long run, but I think my identity is much deeper than those things, and that’s where I’m concentrating. I’m hoping that losing a baby will make me more compassionate, and that it will not make me bitter. I’m hoping it will show me how strong I am, and not make me afraid. I’m hoping it will make me more appreciative of the things I have, and not make me jealous of what others have. I’m hoping it will make me more caring, and not make me cynical. I’m hoping it will give me eyes to see beauty in painful times, and not blind me to hope. In general, I’m hoping it makes me a better mama to the babies I will one day hold in my arms and the ones I will always hold in my heart.

I don’t know how to be a mom without a baby, but I’m not going to worry about how not to be a mom anymore because it’s too late for that. I just am a mom now. And I’m starting to think that being a mom is largely about character anyway – character that will come out in everything I do, not just parenting. The mom I am now will affect the wife I am, the teacher I am, the friend I am, the daughter and sister I am, the writer I am, and every other role I play. Maybe I’m starting to figure it out after all.

The Honest Guide to Pregnancy – First Trimester

In case you haven’t heard, I’m pregnant! I know, I know. It’s weird for me too, and most of the time, it still doesn’t seem real. I don’t have that great a bump going on yet, and I can’t feel the baby or anything, so it’s kind of just like I’m bloated all the time and can’t get enough pickles…which, now that I think of it, might have something to do with the bloating.

Aaaaanyhoe…some of the early signs of pregnancy are well-known – morning sickness, food cravings, tiredness. If you had asked me 4 months ago what pregnant women experience in the first trimester, I might have given you those three. Maybe. But I am here today to tell you what it’s really like, or at least what it has been like for me with this baby. I know from being on an expecting moms message board that no two pregnancy experiences are alike, so I won’t presume to say that my experience is universal. But here is what I have learned about pregnancy so far.

Morning Sickness Is a Lie

If by “morning sickness,” you mean nausea throughout the entire morning with possible vomiting between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m., then a more sinister nausea with almost inevitable vomiting between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m., and a slight queasiness anytime it’s been more than an hour since your last snack, then yes, that is accurate. But the term “morning sickness” implies that this is an early-in-the-day phenomena that will pass after a certain hour in the day. Lies. So many lies.

The worst part about morning sickness (once you get over the deception of its name) is that it’s every freaking day for WEEKS. Nausea is the worst. Throwing up feels terrible. But usually when you have a stomach bug or food poisoning or something, it’s awful, but it only lasts for a few days. When you feel terrible every day for a month or more, it really wears you down, and you feel like you’re never going to feel good again. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Even though you can’t imagine ever reconciling your relationship with your stomach, there is hope. The vomiting incidents start happening less frequently, and one day, you walk out the door to go to work and realize that you aren’t worried about puking in the bushes on your way to the car. It’s a good feeling.

You Don’t Know What Boobs Are Until You’ve Had Pregnancy Boobs

**TMI Alert**

I don’t think I’ve worn anything smaller than a C-cup since I was about 13, and honestly, I have no idea what size I am now. I found these amazingly comfortable bras a few years ago that just come in sizes small-extra large, and I’ve been wearing them ever since, but when you get pregnant, your boobs decide to get really ambitious. It starts out as a horrible sort of discomfort – we’ll call it “pain” – that makes sleeping on your stomach impossible. Also jumping, running, descending stairs quickly, not wearing a bra, and anything other than very gentle bathing are out. Then you notice that each boob weighs about a pound more than it did last week. When we went to our 2nd doctor’s appointment and I hadn’t gained any weight from the first one, we were surprised because we thought surely my boobs would have tipped the scale, but I guess all the vomiting evened things out.

Why the boobs need to get bigger now, I do not know. It would make sense around month 8, when the baby will be coming soon, and the milk is preparing to come in. But at week 8? I’m at a loss. On the bright side, my husband has no complaints.

Tiredness Is Nothing

Tiredness is what you feel after a day at the state fair, after a long day’s work at the office, after staying up too late and getting up too early. Everybody experiences tiredness at some point. Exhaustion is what you feel when your body is making another human being. I imagine people who work outdoor heavy construction jobs for 10 hours a day in NC in August feel the same thing. For the first couple of months of pregnancy, I slept for 11-13 hours a day, and I have never been more thankful for my part-time job. After sleeping for 9-10 hours at night, it was still all I could do to get through a 4-hour class and eat lunch before napping for another 2-3 hours. I don’t know how women with full-time and/or physically demanding jobs do it. Or moms with other young kids at home. They must have some kind of super power.

I Pee 500,000 Times a Day

I knew that pregnant women peed a lot, but I always thought it was only toward the end of the pregnancy when the baby is huge and stepping on your bladder. Nope. It starts immediately and with enthusiasm (if urine can be enthusiastic). First it has something to do with the fact that your body is making extra fluid in general. By week 6 or something crazy early, you have like 50% more blood in your body. I figured out how much that would weigh and factored it into my first trimester weight gain, but since I didn’t gain any weight, I guess we’re back to the “morning” sickness offsetting things.

I Can Smell Everything x 10

This, they really should warn you about, so I’m here to do it now. I had to switch to an unscented body wash because my regular one made me gag. My sweet husband couldn’t put his face too close to my face because despite his excellent oral hygiene, I couldn’t stand his breath. He could have just brushed his teeth and used Listerine, but my super-sniffer would only detect the half-digested food coming directly up through his stomach and esophagus from his intestines. Speaking of food, the smells of most of them made me sick, so we have gone through cereal at an alarming rate over the past few months. I don’t know how I made it through the worst of it without having to change deodorants, but maybe my brain instinctively knew that my own natural odor would have made me sicker than my fruity Dove deodorant. Thanks, brain, for sparing me from the torture of my own B.O.

Oh! And I smell a phantom smell that follows me sometimes. Mostly, I smell it at home, but I have on occasion smelled it in the car and at work. It’s a terrible, sour milk smell that Will can’t smell at all ever. Fun times.

Food Cravings/Aversions Are Serious

It’s not that you just really want Bojangle’s fries with honey mustard dipping sauce from Chick-Fil-A and a Wendy’s Frosty. It’s that that is the only thing you can even conceive of eating without hurling. And it’s not that the smell of chicken-flavored ramen makes you a little queasy. It’s that should your husband have cooked it in the last 24 hours, you have to open all the doors, turn on the fans, and leave the house for two hours so that you don’t hurl. He has been amazingly supportive and refrained from cooking things we’ve discovered cause a vomiting incident, bless his precious heart.

You Have Pain in Body Parts You Didn’t Know Existed

Ladies, did you know you have something called the round ligament of the uterus? I did not, but I am well acquainted with it now. As your uterus grows, the ligament stretches, and you feel it. Hoooboy do you feel it. You feel it when you’re walking, when you’re sitting, when you roll over in bed (that’s the worst), and when you sit up or stand up. And when you first start to feel it, it freaks you out because any pain in the pelvic region is cause for great alarm, but I’m told it’s quite normal, so whenever I feel something new, I always check first to see if what I’m feeling is connected to the round ligament. It very often is, and the other times, it’s usually gas.

Not Telling People Is HARD

We found out I was pregnant on a Saturday. That night, we went out to dinner and a movie with some friends. The next day, we went to church and lunch with Will’s mom and sister. The next day, I went to work. We told his mom and sister because we HAD to tell somebody, but when I wasn’t telling people, I had one thought running through my head just behind every other thought and conversation: “I’m pregnant. Holy crap, I’m pregnant. There is the tiniest of tiny human beings growing inside my body. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh I’m totally pregnant.” We told family pretty quickly, and close friends followed, but we didn’t tell everyone or make a Facebook announcement right away, and I’m glad. I feel like the news has spread at a pace I’m comfortable with even though not telling people was really, really hard.

Perhaps harder than not telling people is figuring out how to tell them. We just blurted it out for most people. Maybe we should have planned something more elaborate, but did I mention the exhaustion? If I had been awake for more than 4 hours when I told you, blurting it out was probably all I could muster. Whitney got the best announcement we did. She sang us the most amazing toast at our wedding – yes, sang…live – so we thought she deserved something similar. Will had given me a ukulele for Mother’s Day, and I learned how to play Jim Croce’s “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song,” and I changed the lyrics to give her the news. Maybe not my best performance, but it was received very well.

The Internet Is Very Helpful…Sometimes

I’ve read what the whole internet has to say on every tiny little thing I’ve experienced so far, and it can be very helpful, but it can also be completely terrifying. Say you Google “first trimester bleeding.” You’re going to get a bunch of people who say it’s completely normal, and unless you’re also having terrible cramps, you’re probably fine. Then you’re going to get a bunch of people correcting those people, and saying that it’s not normal, but it is quite common, and while you’re probably fine, you should talk to your doctor anyway. Those people are my favorites. But then you’re going to get a bunch of horror stories about miscarriages, at which point you have to just stop with the internet because the more you read, the more stressed out you’re going to get, and that’s not good for anybody.

My Husband Is Amazing

As I mentioned before, I’m on an expecting moms message board, and bless their hearts, some of these women have terrible husbands/boyfriends/fiances. Just terrible. One woman said that the smell of beer makes her sick, but her husband still brings a beer to bed with him and then wants to kiss her with his beer breath. Other women say their husbands won’t help them around the house, but actually complain that the wives aren’t keeping things as tidy as they should. And in one unbelievably sad story, a woman told us that her husband had punched her in the stomach. I mean…really, really terrible.

When I read stories like these from other women, I can’t help but be extra thankful for my husband, who has been a complete champ so far. He does the dishes because the food on them makes me sick. He brings me a bowl of cereal in bed because it helps my stomach if I can eat before I have to get up. He goes to the grocery store because I don’t have the energy to walk that much. He doesn’t cook foods that make me queasy. He doesn’t get upset when I can’t talk to him face-to-face because of his breath. He doesn’t get scared when I start crying for no reason whatsoever. He doesn’t complain that there are three times as many pillows in the bed as humans. He tells me every day that I’m beautiful, and that he loves me like crazy. He doesn’t mind that I went two whole months without folding any laundry. He rolls with the food cravings. If I couldn’t get enough Life cereal last week, but this week it must be Cinnamon Toast Crunch or nothing, that’s ok. And he doesn’t judge me if I eat 10 pickle slices in one afternoon (purely hypothetical situation, of course).

So if I’ve made pregnancy sound terrible so far, then I’ve done a pretty accurate job describing it, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. I’ve also gotten to see just how lucky I am to have a husband who is so incredibly perfect for me and who loves me so much, to have a body that is capable of supporting the growth and development of a whole other body inside it, and to have friends and family who have bent over backwards to love and support us. Seriously, it’s been wonderful.

And now that I’m in the 2nd trimester, I’m getting over the exhaustion and the morning sickness, so I’m able to enjoy it all the more!

Sharon’s Truth

Sharon and I have known each other for several years. We met at church and sort of lived on the outskirts of each other’s lives until she joined the mentoring group last year. I love, love, love that she volunteered to write a guest post for me because we are so vastly different. That means that she brings a voice, a life, an experience, and a wisdom to Onward Hoe! that it would never have otherwise. Here she is to tell us her truth.

I have a kinship with the quotation “Keep it copacetic”. I understand the concept of coloring within the lines and I thrive where there is order. I can even enjoy chaos provided there is some semblance of order to it. Organized chaos is my specialty, but only on a limited basis. And therein lies the rub.

Copacetic is defined as something existing within a perfect order. Keeping it copacetic is my attempt to control the how and why of things to create and maintain a perfect order. As a kid I was the fun-loving only child who liked the organized chaos of coercing my friends to push me around on a riding lawnmower because I simply loved to go and needed a way to do so without starting the motor since it was forbidden. I spent afternoons with friends riding our Big Wheels in our basement within the chalked lanes, stop signs, and turn lanes that I created. There was creativity, but existing alongside that was organization and a general framework.

In general this served me well throughout my school years and college. I was an introvert who honed my extrovert tendencies and exercised my leadership to create a narrative for that position and organization. There were few leadership opportunities that I did not seek to tame. I thrived in college because there was a space and time for me to ask questions but operate within a framework that was familiar and over which I had some control. Eventually I graduated with a degree in political science, pre-law concentration and began my work as a paralegal. In all my years of working within the legal field, I have continued to thrive in that ability to operate within a space of systems and structures that can change but don’t do so suddenly and without some warning and some influence or coercion.

Within my personal life, my relationships thrived when I felt safe to be crazy. This likely explains my eventual marriage to a man who is jokingly referred to by many in our social circle as “chaotic evil”. He is the yin to my yang yet we overlap in ways I would not have imagined. There is safety, once again, within that field of operation of allowing free reign within an established set of parameters. I was blissful in entering our relationship and marriage, happy to have the freedom to be less inhibited. So, when I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me without warning, I began to chastise myself for letting down my guard and allowing a less-than copacetic system within my life.

September 8, 2008 marked the date that my world paused unexpectedly while inertia hurtled me forward and somewhere I heard that clichéd record-scratching sound in my head. My husband of eleven months called me at work that morning to say that we’d gotten the results of his recent medical tests and it wasn’t good. Leukemia became the cause of whiplash and an adrenaline surge that propelled me to somehow drive home from work, call family and friends with the most ominous news I’d ever given in my life, and get over to a major medical center to check my husband in that afternoon. There was no passing go and most certainly no collecting $200.00.

Our friends and family surrounded us and it was most certainly a God-send. We met with doctors and nurses, confirmed that it was a type of leukemia that had a specific plan for treatment that would include about two and a half years of various stages of chemo, and discussed our family planning methods more times than I’d like to count since there was no predictor for whether radiation would be a rest stop along the way and how that could affect our future family creation.

One of the main doctors on my husband’s treatment team is nationally known for his development of a specific treatment regime to deal with the type of leukemia that infiltrated. We were encouraged by him to keep our one-year anniversary plans on the calendar so that we’d have a goal in mind. I am ever grateful to that man for giving me that shred of hope three days after my world spun out of control. Whether he knew it or not, he gave my copacetic-adoring heart the jump-start to continue. After a three and a half weeklong intensive treatment regime in the hospital, my husband came home for a few days before we left to celebrate our one year anniversary.

Those three and a half weeks and the months and years that followed spoke to my copacetic-loving heart because I found peace in the fact that there was absolutely nothing that I could do. In this instance, this was a God-thing to heal and to use the doctors and nurses along the way. I could not cushion the blow of a dwindling immune system, but I knew it was to rebuild a healthy one. I could not prevent the chemo medicine from wreaking havoc on his stomach lining, but we knew the outcome would be infinitely better. There was chaos operating within order and there was simply nothing I could do and no responsibility that I had to perform, other than to be there in that experience with my husband and the two of us together seeking to keep our humor and wits about us through it all.

I’m happy to report that we have recently celebrated five years of remission in the only way that is fit: our annual Survivor Party where we invite lots of people, grill lots of food, and have lots of laughs. It symbolizes an annual marker to the survival that my husband celebrates and it reminds me that there was a time in my life that I stared down one of the most dreaded things and still felt peace and eventually deliverance to a celebration along the path.

I wish I could bring that same peace into my churning world now. There are moments when I have ALL THE QUESTIONS and none of the answers. My heart pounds and my temples throb because I simply cannot process all the change, all the frustration, all the unknowns. I desperately hang in the balance of understanding how to have faith and hope and still process the realistic frustrations and disappointments of life.

But then there are moments where I look at the things that celebrate from whence we came and I remember that I am stronger than I thought and my copacetic-seeking heart has found kinship and peace before. There is nothing to prevent that from happening again.

And that’s my truth.

Annual Birthday Recap: 33

Man, this time last year, Will, Whitney and I were in Charleston so that Will could ask my dad if he could marry me, and Whitney could eat some she-crab soup. Both missions were successful.

Thirty-three was a pretty wild ride. Here’s a recap for you since I didn’t blog a lot:

Proposal

Will and I got engaged on March 27, so it was the first significant thing that happened to me at 33. You can read the story here if you want.

Engagement Photos

The timing on this was tricky because we had to do it before it got too hot and sticky in NC, and we had to do it at a time when Amaris was available, and we had to find a time when I wasn’t teaching, and we had to do it before I had my face cut all up. And although it was tricky, and it was starting to get hot and sticky, I think we got some really good shots. Here’s one of our favorites.

Photo by Amaris Fotographic – http://www.amarisfotographic.com/

Surgery on My Face

I had a little basal cell carcinoma on my forehead that was removed about 14 hours after our engagement photo session ended, so basically it was a good thing those pictures came out so good because for the next couple of weeks, I had a giant bandage on my forehead that looked sort of like a Pringle. We called me Pringle-face. It was not so pleasant, but it did provide me with one of my favorite student interactions of the year. The first day I walked into class without the Pringle bandage, one of my students said, with pleased surprise, “Hey teacher! You regrow your face!”

Moving

Dear God the moving. Always the moving. If we don’t have to move this year, that will be wonderful. If we do, we’re hiring people. We are too old to be doing it ourselves, and our friends are too old to be paid in pizza. And we live in a third-floor walk-up that actually requires you to go DOWN two floors before you go up three. I cringe just thinking about how many trips we took up and down those freaking stairs moving my stuff in over the course of about two weeks. And then I unpacked over the course of about three months. A little advice, friends. Hire movers. Then spend your energy on unpacking so that it all gets done in a shorter amount of time. I hate living so unsettled like that.

The Very Unfortunate Destruction of My Toe

The day after I moved, we helped some friends move, and in the course of that, I stubbed my toe worse than you can ever imagine stubbing a toe. When you stub your toe on the bed in the middle of the night, that is NOTHING. I won’t give you any details about it because I am a little queasy just thinking about it, but suffice it to say that I couldn’t wear anything but flip-flops for several weeks, and I couldn’t sleep with that foot under the covers for at least a month. Awesome.

Bridal Pictures

After my face had healed enough, I had another photo session. The timing of this one was also tricky. Amaris was getting ready to go to Italy, so we had to do it before that. But we had to wait for my face to mostly heal so I didn’t look like the bride of Frankenstein. Also, it was still really hot and sticky. And on the day of the photo shoot, it rained before we could get the outdoors portion of our plan done. We ended up going back to Amaris’s house, where we got one of my favorite shots of the whole day.

Wedding Planning

We still wonder if it would have better just to elope. I enjoyed seeing everyone at the wedding, which I guess is why you have a wedding, but the whole thing exhausted and stressed me out more than I ever want to be exhausted or stressed out again. Maybe I shouldn’t have kids? I know there are people out there who really like that kind of stuff, but it was not my cup of tea at all. Never again.

WEDDING DAY!!!

That’s just nuts. We still can’t believe it’s real. We still feel very much like we felt at this moment:

Honeymoon!

We spent our honeymoon in Gatlinburg and Asheville, and it was GLORIOUS! We read books, we slept a LOT (mostly because we both got sick, bless our hearts), we did the cheesiest tourist things you can imagine, including Ripley’s Believe It Or Not “Odditorium,” a sky lift, airbrushed t-shirt, and a caricature. The caricature is framed and hanging on our wall of random stuff, and I plan to make a throw pillow out of the t-shirt, maybe this summer when I have the time.

The Holidays

They happened. We spent our first married Thanksgiving here with Will’s family and our first married Christmas in Charleston with mine, and both were great. By that time, we had started to recover a little bit from the wedding, and we were able to enjoy just being off work and hanging out with family and friends.

This Semester

Y’all, this semester is beating me up every day like a mean, horrible bully. I have stress dreams about my students. I feel like I’m working all the time. I’m counting down to the day when these classes will end, and I’ll get to breathe again (52 days). Incidentally, I will also get to blog more when this semester ends, so we can look forward to that. Well, at least I can look forward to that. I won’t speak for you.

But no matter how hard it is, I get to come home every night to this sweet man, who cooks dinner for me, then snuggles with me while I fall into a coma for eight hours, then wakes me up in the morning, encourages me to get out of bed, and lovingly pours me a bowl of cereal when I’m running late from staying in the bed for too long.

It’s been a tough, stressful, wonderful, exciting, amazing, sweet, crazy, incredible, exhausting, unbelievable year. I can’t wait to see what 34 brings!