Ooh, Baby, I Love Your Way...(part 1 of 30)

I'm listening to this catchy little song right now as I wait for Adam to awake on our first morning of our Babymoon!  I chose this version below due to the palm trees since those are currently my view as we start our babymoon in Oceanside, California, this morning!   

Edited on 07/05/19 since the video above seems to have disappeared...

Hearing this song takes me back to the Cosmotron ride at Knoebel's, the local amusement park, in high school since I remember this as being one of the songs they would pipe over the speakers as we waited in line to board the Cosmotron.  The lyrics are also taking on a different meaning for me these days.  

Ooh, baby, I love your way, everyday
Ooh, baby, I love your way, everyday 

{We don't know our baby in the flesh just yet...not even whether it will be a boy or a girl but ooh, how we love this precious little baby already!}

Shadows grow so long before my eyes
And they're moving across the page
Suddenly the day turns into night

{The days are certainly speeding up and night comes at the end of each day much too quickly these days as we move along into our 28th week of pregnancy!!}

Now that we're on our long awaited babymoon in sunny breezy California (it's a balmy 30 degrees this morning), I am hoping for some much needed rest and relaxation.  Having been one of the busiest semesters for me personally, school ended for the fall semester on Monday afternoon, we hosted December's Good Godly Grub and Christmas Cookie Exchange that night with some fabulous friends and food, and hopped on some planes to come westward yesterday.  Ah, how we are welcoming Wednesday and some downtime!!  Along with the R & R has come time to finally just write.  After a restless night of tossing and turning, I decided to wake up and watch the waves crash to shore in the brilliant sunshine across the street from our living room window here in the resort while also getting some much needed journaling and writing done....what a stress reliever this is for me!  Below are the thoughts I penned in Adoration back on Monday, 07/27/15, during the initial weeks of pregnancy.  I will be sharing some other thoughts that I experienced throughout pregnancy throughout this babymoon as time allows and hope that they might be helpful for anyone else who may be experiencing the first pregnancy as we are.  We've not read how-to books or manuals, I'm trying to stay away from googling potential scenarios, and through a lot of prayer and talking with loved ones, we're just taking things day by day and learning as we go.  So without futher ado, here we go looking back at some thoughts I penned this past summer!

Monday, 07/27/15:  It has been a little over three weeks since Adam and I found out we are expecting our first child!!  

The end of June and early July were so busy with my working at University Days, having our kitchen updated, making a quick overnight trip to Pennsylvania to pack up my storage unit and then unpack and organize back in Ohio, visits and road trips from/with family and friends, and hardly least of all getting a puppy that has currently been taking up all of our time through our very unsuccessful attempts at housetraining Hershey!  Each day I awake, I wonder will today be the day he will make the connection to “get busy” outside rather than indoors??  That day can’t come soon enough as I’m sick of cleaning messes!

So, as you can see, all the craziness of this summer led us to lose track of the days until the 4^th of July when we were on our way home from a cookout my Aunt and Uncle hosted.  As we made note of the date, we realized that I was late so we picked up a pregnancy test from the local supermarket to find out that sure enough, we were expecting!!  Now, I understood why I was hot one second then freezing cold the next; I also better recognized the soreness I would feel in my chest in the morning when first awaking and wondered if that was why I wasn’t having much of an appetite in the mornings anymore?  Other symptoms that aren’t like me are to have bouts of exhaustion come out of nowhere (I’ve actually taken a few naps this summer!), cramping, and even experiencing gas when I don’t normally experience it…?!  This also may explain my constant craving for breakfast as of late…as is evident by my last couple meals at Cracker Barrel when traveling and my cooking it when Monika was here…lol!

This was our first 4^th of July together in our new house and as husband and wife.  That night, as we watched the fireworks from the front porch, each of us with a pup in our laps, the celebration took on even more meaning.  

Attempting our first family photo with the furbabies and human baby (only about a month or so old in the womb at this point) but the pups couldn't take their eyes off the fireworks!!

On that 4th of July night as we took in the fireworks, we wondered was the test accurate?  Were we really going to become parents in 2016?  Would Hershey finally know to go outside by the time the baby came and maybe the impatience I was facing in trying to train him was training me to be more patient for when we would be working with a human baby vs. a fur baby?!!?  How would Dusty Shamrock react to not only having a new furbaby in the house but a real live baby?  He behaves well with other children and has always loved them but what will it be like in his own home when he has to share us with the newcomer?

Looking back at this picture of Hershey's first bath when we brought him home we didn't know we were expecting but unknowingly I was carrying two babies in this photo! 

 

Speaking of babies, I am so beyond excited to meet this little one.  Will it be a he or a she?  Will the baby look more like Adam or me?  What names should we even consider??  What will this child make of his or her life and how will it serve others?  What to do about the guest bedroom vs. the office in setting up a nursery?  Yikes, I have to buy new clothes not only for the baby but also for me as I grow bigger and bigger…..on that thought, how much weight will be gained?!  Will breastfeeding be difficult and painful or will it come naturally to me?  What is going to happen in the spring semester job-wise if the baby is due in the middle of it?!  What about our one year anniversary trip we already had planned?  It’s so surreal to be planning for a third person, and not just two furbabies, in our little family now.  Wow is the word that just keeps coming to mind.  Amazingly wow.  Oh, how life is going to change yet again!!  This change seems to be just another milestone as I push myself more and more out of my comfort zone and seek to embrace change all the more.  I had already been thinking about previous summers of babysitting recently but now I am recalling details from being the live-in aunt in a whole new light with this new bit of news in mind.  I definitely want a bottle warmer like what Brian and Alisha used and liked the versatility of the car seat/stroller contraption we bought Mark and Alicia (they just had their baby shower yesterday) and also like how Mark and Liz have their nursery set up in their home.  I need to look into best deals for diapers like Alisha did in getting the most for the buckaroos and hope that we might be able to borrow some clothes from either Alisha or Liz (they have six boys and one girl between the two of them).

What is the most anxiety provoking for me right now is the thought of physically giving birth.  While I have loads of experience in being with and around babies from birth on upward….I don’t have much experience with the birthing process and have heard some real horror stories (unintentionally frightening or not).  I also have the fear of miscarrying due to so many of my family and friends having gone through that pain themselves.  Friends of all ages, backgrounds, and all fitness levels, have gone through this painful experience and I wonder if it might happen to us too.  Every single woman in our wedding party has miscarried at least once with some miscarrying several times.  I remember Heather, the matron of honor, saying, “Well, hopefully you’ll break that streak!” at some point in the last year when she and I talked about this topic.  Never would I have dreamt that we might be facing pregnancy this early in our marriage!  On the night of 4^th of July I mentioned to Adam how I had been looking forward to this first year of getting through the school year with us living together and getting into a routine since the last semester involved us living in two separate households while planning the wedding.  I was looking forward to establishing a new normal with not as much planning as in the last year.  However, it seems like God has other plans and maybe we’re more ready than we thought we were for the next step!  Please don’t get me wrong as I am OVERJOYED at the thought of this new little life growing within me.  Even with the symptoms and the positive pregnancy test three weeks ago, I was still wondering if it was really true and it seemed the pregnancy was only a thought….until we went to the doctor’s office on Friday morning last week.  Our doctor was wonderful, another southern California transplant and fellow new puppy owner, and she beyond the shadow of a doubt confirmed we were indeed expecting…..wow!!!  She estimated we were about 7 – 8 weeks but we will know more after the ultrasound scheduled for this week.

The timing of it all was interesting in that we were hosting a friend from NC as he had been staying with us for a few days to attend a conference at my work.  That afternoon, one of my best friends from college, came to visit for a planned girls’ weekend!  Adam and I at first kept the news to ourselves as we wanted to tell family first.  However, a misunderstanding while Glenn & Monika were still at the house led to accidentally putting two and two together and realizing the news!  It was so exciting sharing this information with Monika, one of my first friends from college, and in person!  Even better!!!  She offered advice on what we could do furniture and nursery-wise and it was really neat sharing the joy and excitement with her so soon after we received the official yes to the pregnancy from the doctor and tests.  

So what was the misunderstanding that led to this earlier revelation of the news?  It’s a funny story actually…we told my parents via Skype shortly after returning home from the doctor.  We also shared with them the news that Adam received a promotion at work.  Apparently, they opted to share the latter information with my twin who then posted his congratulations online.  Adam’s sister and others saw the comment and immediately wanted to know what was happening….meanwhile we have been trying to coordinate Skype dates with our CA family so we can tell them face to face.  Fortunately, we were able to divert the attention away from what people thought/hoped/wondered the news was to the job which is equally as exciting (I’m SO proud of my hubby!).  Hopefully we’ll get to talk with the immediate family soon!!

We’re going to keep the news quiet until the 4^th or 5^th month just in case….not to be pessimistic but I’ve known too many others who have lost their children…for now, I’m okay with it being something just between Adam and me….and a select few.  Perhaps it will seem more real to me after Thursday’s appointment of bloodwork and the ultrasound.  Right now, I seem to go back and forth between extreme excitement to worry to curiosity about it all.  I wonder if this is how Mary felt when she was told she was carrying Jesus.   

I hope to be half the mother Mary was and also am grateful to have such wonderful role models in my own mother and Mom Sue not to mention Adam’s and my sister and sisters-in-law.  Now if only I could get through the worry of the pain of childbirth.  As Meredith said when we visited her in Chicago recently (who didn’t know we were expecting yet), “Not to worry, as mother nature takes over and your body will know what to do”.  Ah, by the grace of God, we’ll all get through it and I can’t wait to hold this precious new little life!!  How merciful of God to offer me this opportunity in spite of previous mistakes and actions in the past.  What an honor to be entrusted with this task and so soon at that.  I know of so many close friends/family who have struggled with infertility and sit back in awe at the blessings bestowed upon us for whatever reason.