Oh you know, this that and the other thing

Had my first real case of heartburn today. I know, this is what you all wanted to read about when you clicked on my blog today. So glad this isn't a regular occurrence for me, though apparently it's very common in pregnancy so this might be the start of something new.

While I haven't had cravings yet like I expected, I do find myself wanting soup an awful lot. Must be the combination of comfort, warmth, lots of selection and in my home-made soups, loads of veggies too! Winning combination. I've made super yummy carrot-potato soup and cream of broccoli soup. both low calorie, loaded with good stuff and so tasty.

Still no outward signs of Pea Pod yet. I definitely have a belly but it's not something anyone other than Hubby and me would notice right now. Can't wait to have a bump, though I'm sure once I do I'll be wondering why I was waiting for the day my pants won't fit!

One weird thing with my pregnant self. I wear the same jeans every day, was on three belt holes in, now it's in two. But as soon as I eat, I'm all old-guy-with-beer-gut, unbuckling and unbuttoning my jeans. Sexy I'm sure. Luckily when we eat out or with company, I'm OK. But belly definitely pushes on my pants more now. Yet on the scale I still haven't gained weight. Nothing to be concerned about but I better start gaining now that I've passed the first trimester! Justin says I should just eat lots, but I can't force myself to eat any more than I already am.

Mommy Rhapsody

This is freakin' hilarious!!

Streams of consciousness

Driving to Cranbrook this weekend, really looking forward to showing the Rothsters our home base, and getting / giving huge hugs to my parents. They've been out of the country the last few weeks and we haven't seen them in person since long before we told them THE news. So yeah, that'll be awesome.

Eating a sweet onion chicken terriyaki sub for lunch today. Yum! And off to the gym at 4 pm today, looking forward to sweating it out with my workout buddy. We always have such good chats over working out. Used to sit in the hot tub after for our visits, but that tradition has ended so Pea Pod stays nice and safe in my belly and doesn't get overcooked.

I was moved to the communications office today, it's a nice switch for me. Loved working in the TPS room, but this way I can keep my eye on Justin's work too, ha ha!

That's it in my life right now.

First midwife appointment

On Wednesday we had our very first visit with my midwife clinic. It was great! Justin came with me and it was nice to have him sitting with me listening to all of the baby-related details we started going through. Love that he wants to be as involved as possible with the pregnancy! There are a couple midwives and through the course of my pregnancy I'll get to know them all. Then whoever is on call the day Pea Pod is born will be doing the delivery.

The midwife we met with yesterday was so friendly, gave lots of time and opportunity to ask questions, and got lots of information from me to help ensure our baby is growing healthy.

And then...

We got to hear our baby's heartbeat!!!!!!!!

It was so great. She put some goop on my stomach, searched around and found my heartbeat. Then she kept moving the little wand around and all of a sudden there was a quick 'thump-thumpa-thump-thumap-thump' sound. It was beating SO fast!

Sigh. I'm in love all over again! It was the first real time we've heard from Pea Pod. His or her little heart was a pounding before I can even feel kicks or see much growth on my belly. Oh my, words just cannot describe that feeling.

When my midwife found the heartbeat, I laughed so hard with excitement that she lost the sound. Then it turns out baby moved when I laughed, so she had to go searching again to find the heartbeat! When she found it again I tried to just keep my laugh inside so my belly didn't shake!

All in all, a very exciting day and a big milestone for us newbies to the baby-growing department!

Mother's Day weekend

The weekend was SO gorgeous, Justin and I decided to take advantage of the good weather and get outside. Saturday I had to do a story assignment for the Abby News. I covered the outdoor farmer's market which was lots of fun. We spent an hour or so wandering the market, chatting with vendors and enjoying some super yummy food. I had a pretzel, Justin had a cinnamon bun type baked good and then we split a second cinnamon thingy.

Then we headed to Langley to pick up some supplies from Opus for our canvases, and stopped at the store Justin bought his shoes at to exchange them since they've been falling apart. I found a sweet new shirt on sale there which will be a perfect shirt for as my belly grows. We also stopped for a Starbucks treat, courtesy of our friend at HFL who gave it to us when we were going through a hard time with our car.

After a delicious lunch at Arbys (oh I LOVE Arby's, wish it was in Chilliwack!), we headed back home. It was so nice to just hang out together.

So Sunday it was another bright and sunny day. I threw some ingredients in the bread maker, and after church we had fresh bread ready for sandwiches. We packed a picnic and took the hour drive up to Hicks Lake to spend the afternoon.


It was beautiful. There is nothing better in my opinion than a picnic: nature and delicious food with the man I love! We read, lounged in the sunshine, watched Canada geese and their goslings graze the grass in front of us.



I'm reading a book called 'How to have a baby and live in the real world'. Loving it. It has great retro-style graphics and up-front honesty, and funny tidbits even on the write-ups I'm not so comfortable reading yet.

Maternity leave and trusting God

The logical details of having a baby are starting to get to me. If I want to get maternity benefits, I need to log in 600 hours of gainful employment between now and my due date. Yikes, that is a lot of hours when I have less than a year to obtain them!



It works out to four months full-time, which means at the latest I need to be working full-time by August 1. And as a buffer if baby comes early, or if I have sick days, I need to start sooner. Seeing as how it's already mid-May, this deadline is looming faster than a one-person newsroom paper on production day!

But I am trying to stop myself from panicking. First of all, Justin admonishes me when I get stressed because it's not good for our growing baby. Second, I have to remind myself that we trust in God and He will provide.

If I don't end up having enough hours to get maternity leave, God will provide for us in other ways so we can raise a healthy baby. Like the widow we heard about on Sunday who fed Elijah during the famine, God has the power to continually refill our flour and oil jars so we have enough bread for today.



That's enough reason to put down logic and just praise my Maker and the Maker of my baby!

It's so cool to think that God is knitting together a child inside of me right now. That as I eat and sleep and go about my day, He is busy creating a perfect little human being that will be part me, part Justin and part all-their-own-individual. I'm already so excited to meet this little person who will be a big part of my life for the rest of my days!

My first prenatal visit

I had what I guess would by my first official prenatal visit today. My nurse practitioner didn't want to complete some of the things to be done because she said my midwives clinic will get to know me better if they complete those tests. That's OK, apparently the massive form we were going to go through today was my 'drug and alcohol' history. Since I don't have one, I'm not too worried!

She measured my 'fundus'. I didn't even know I had a fundus before today! She said Pea Pod is higher than expected for a 10 week baby. So then she decided to see if there was an audible heartbeat yet in case I was further along than originally thought.


Apparently you could hear the heartbeat at 12 weeks. Today, all my nurse practitioner and I could hear was my heartbeat. I'm kind of glad because I want Justin to be there for that special moment. On the flip side, it would have been great if I was two weeks further along, it would mean our baby would have a birthday even further separated from Christmas and all that hoopla!

I did have one red flag pop up in my urine test. Apparently I have higher than normal white cell count. She didn't really explain why I need to be worried about that, just that it was something to be aware of and that it might need to be 'dealt with' if it doesn't go down. To deal with it, she told me to make sure I'm drinking plenty of fluids. When I told her how much water I'm drinking - minimum eight glasses a day - plus milk, orange juice, V8-Fushion (SO good) and cranberry juice, she then said maybe I was drinking too many fluids. Aughh, can't win!

So tired of water...

Justin's going to come with me to my first midwife visit next week. So excited to meet the ladies who are going to help deliver our baby into this world!

Apparently my midwife clinic is quite hard to get into, so I've heard from a few 'Wack ladies. So I'm pretty pumped that my persistence paid off. I may or may not have phoned numerous times to find out about the clinic and the status of my request to be on their list. The very sweet receptionist finally asked a couple midwives when they came in last week and they said 'Sure, we can take that lady on our list'. Yay!

Maybe on a different post I'll explain my decision to go with a midwife. Also coming up on BC Super Sleuth's blog will be posts about my handsome hubby and his reaction to all this baby stuff, food aversions and sickness (I know, you can't WAIT to read that one), how we told the fam' and friends, and other such news. So come back again ya'll!

Our BIG little news

Oh my, life is so exciting these days, you know, with work and life and hanging out and odds and sods stuff going on and, oh yeah, with a BABY ON THE WAY!

Craziness descends on the J-Lo homestead.



So, I've been tinkering with the idea of starting up my blog again. Note the two posts below written before I let anyone know I was writing in this space again. But now that I'm pregnant, I feel like there's all sorts of things I might like to write about that Facebook updates just can't fulfill for me. Plus, with family and some friends living elsewhere, this space will work as a nice forum for updates to the people I care about but can't just go for coffee with anytime.

We're expecting. Total change of heart for me. Probably needs some explanation.

Where do I begin?

At the beginning, I suppose.

I really never did want children. They are noisy and time-sucking and oh-so-much-work. The responsibility of having another human being to care for is huge and not something I ever pictured myself doing.

Then we began our Pockets of Change project. Oh POC, how you've changed me in so many ways...
We were staying with my Auntie Barbara in Calgary while in town for interviews for the project. She and I were in her sewing room having a nice visit while she worked on a quilt. We got to talking about motherhood and having children and all that. She said to me that if I ever decided to have children, I didn't have to be "that mom". You know the ones: the moms that are more crazy than anything, that don't listen to reason, that scream at their kids in Superstore, that baby their children until they're adults. I guess I can't sum up exactly what I mean, but the idea of "that mom" scares me.

I'm not even sure where I got the idea of "that mom" from. My mom certainly wasn't "that mom" and my close friends aren't either. But the fear of losing my own identity and becoming someone I don't recognize always scared me.




So that comment, probably seemed such a simple thing to Auntie Barbara, really got me thinking. She also said that I would be a different type of mom and that would be OK. It got me picturing myself as a mom that didn't have to conform to some mold I had in my head. And the idea that I could me a mother the way I wanted to be began the wheels churning in my head. Ever so slowly, but churning nonetheless.

I'd always thought the world was kind of a crappy place. I'd asked friends why they would want to bring children into a world that was so messed up. I dabbled with the idea of joining a group called voluntary human extinction, where we all basically agree to just stop having children as our world couldn't sustain more people.

As we traveled this last year, Justin and I both got to see first-hand how amazing this world is. There are so many incredible people in it, so many breathtaking sights, so much of hope and beauty and joy in this world. The Lord is truly the Lord over ALL this Earth, and He fills it with His beauty and love everywhere we turned.

There was also a real connection between marriage and children in other parts of the world. Even little children didn't understand when we told them we were married but had no children. Most cultures are not like ours, where women put career first, family second. Where women wait until their late 20's or 30's to have a child. Obviously, some of that is lack of birth control options and education. But still. These people seemed happy. They seemed content. Even if they had no money, no secure life, they had children and it clearly brought joy into their hearts.

So our POC travels was a big one for me in changing my heart.

I also listened to a sermon by Mark Driscoll in the summer that basically said if you're not having children, you're just being lazy. He took a good hour or so to say this and made I think some very good theological points along the way. But basically what he was saying is that the choice I'd made for my life wasn't Biblical, wasn't what God wanted for my life. That sermon stuck with me.

Then there was the Bible. Often as I opened the Word during this last year, I would find passages of scripture affirming the blessing of having children. It seemed again and again I would find reference to children being a blessing, a gift, from the Lord. We all know the Lord only gives good gifts to His children, so why would I deny a gift from my King? That makes no sense. Who does that?! It'd be like seeing a beautifully wrapped present under the tree at Christmas and telling the giver, 'no thanks, it might conflict with my life. I'm just not going to open it thanks, then I won't know what I'm missing'. Yeah. I might have a university degree but sometimes I'm not all that swift.



There's some more reasons too that worked to change my heart, but this post is waaaaay too long already. Those are definitely the big reasons. More to come in future blog posts I'm sure. Stay tuned!