After digging out my camera and stacking all my pillows on top of eachother, I snapped a few pictures, because the weeks are racing by, and I dont want to only have one set of pictures from this pregnancy.
This has been the most challenging of pregnancies out of the lot I've experienced. The naseau was absolutely impressive. Lasting well into the second trimester, and the lack of kicks made my heart feel anxious during the initial meetings with an OB when they begin asking if we've felt kicks yet. With the other two I felt them by 14-15, so to wait till 18/19 to feel them for certain, it made my heart hold its breath.
But praise God, right before the we moved I prayed that I would begin to feel this baby, with all the uncertainty, it was all the more difficult to fight worse case scenario thoughts. Then, sure enough within the next few days I began feeling this little one regularily.
God has found all sorts of little ways to be kind to me. While many of the prayers I've prayed (like "please God make this sickness go away!" ) haven't happened in the timing I would have liked, He has proven himself trustworthy.
We just scheduled our first OB appointment here in Alabama. I'm curious how it will feel to go back to the American system of healthcare after going to the Finnish one. They asked me to bring in all medical records, which I think will be funny. When I hand them documents in a very complex language, I wonder how useful those papers will be. Perhaps much of it is medical jargon and so it will be easily translatable.
I was sharing with Ben that this pregnancy is entirely different in every way. With Eowyn, my thoughts were often on how it would change our family. I daydreamed about our little baby coming new and making me and Ben parents. When Elias was growing, I absolutely delighted in daydreaming about the big sister Eowyn would be. Now with this pregnancy, I often find myself trying to calculate the logistics: "okay, so how do parents take three kids into a grocery store when solo?" and "how should we organize the carseats in our van?" (P.S. we bought a minivan. No going back now.)
While on one hand, I sometimes feel at a loss at the hustle of this pregnancy-as if this baby isn't getting quite the attention the others have-on the other hand, I feel like my hopes and prayers have shifted entirely. Parenting a newborn feels much less about all the responsibilities, and I am now more excited to discover who this little person will be. See, I know that the logistics work themselves out. We've figured everything else out twice over. I do know it will be entirely different, but in the same breath, I have a comfort of the history we know. When it comes to kids, God is kind in leading us through.
So, I pray for wisdom as I discover who this new son or daughter of mine will be. I pray for kindness as I grow to manage three kids in our home, and I pray for joy in the midst of the crazy.
I especially am praying for the wisdom to recognize how wonderful the sweet moments are. There's a quote I love by Kurt Vonnegut that says
" I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
We're finding a lot of those little moments, and I'm certain that when you arrive, there will only be more.
16 weeks left, sweetheart. Looking so forward to meeting you. I imagine i'll think something like that quote above when I first lay eyes on you. "If this isn't beautiful, if this isn't pure blessing, if this isn't such an overflow from my Jesus, I dont know what is."
I am humbled by the reality of getting to be your mother.
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