Jelly Bean

So, I’ve been thinking, everything happens in 9’s for us. We dated for 9 months before we were engaged. Then we were engaged for 9 months, we were married on the 9th then after we had been married for 9 months we found out we have a little one on the way, which means I am pregnant for 9 months! And we couldn’t be more delighted =) Let me start off by saying that we call this our little miracle, because Jelly Bean was not planned. I have been on strong B.C. for several months due to some health issues, so in no way was this a “planned” thing. Any-who, I had been feeling a little weird and I was a few days late if you catch my drift… so on April fool’s day I took a cheap dollar tree test, negative. Okay, whatever, wasn’t really expecting it to say positive, after all, there was next to no chance of that happening anyway. Oddly, later that day Rowdy leaned over as we were watching Conference for our church and said he wanted to start trying. I stopped and looked at him, “Seriously? You know that it’s not like buying a blender, once we have a child, we have one forever”.

*As a side note, anyone who knows me, knows I’ve wanted to be a mom since forever, but Rowdy was more than happy with waiting a few years and showed little to no signs of wanting children anytime soon.

Anyways, he said he was well aware and that he had had a feeling that we should start to try. So off the pill I went! And gladly might I add. So a few more days go by and I’m still feeling weird, exhausted beyond belief, cramping, difficulty with abdominal control etc. I told Rowdy that if I wasn’t pregnant something was wrong and I needed to see a doctor. So on Wednesday April 4^th I took one more test, different brand just to double check. A few minutes go by and there is a dark line and another faint line next to it, “No way, can’t be” I thought to myself. I came back a few minutes later and the faint line was a lot darker. But, I refused to get excited until I took another test to make sure. So I went to school and took another one and within seconds there was no doubt about it, I was indeed pregnant! I suddenly started to cry I was so happy and excited but so baffled.

I finished my class and ran to Cinnabon and got a cinnamon roll. On the box I wrote, “We have a bun in the oven” and put it on his seat in his car. He met me outside and opened my door for me to get in so we could go to lunch. He opens his door and sees the box, he looks at it and reads it and then looks up at me, “Are we really?” he asks excited, “yep, we are!” We were both in such shock that we weren’t sure what to say for a while.

A few days later Nicole, one of our wedding photographers took some announcement pictures for us. We made Beaver Jersey’s with “Mommy” and “Daddy” written on the backs and shoved a football inside a onesie that said “player to be named” on it. We told both sets of parents that night and boy were they surprised! We first told Rowdy’s parents, and Then we went and told my parents, once again, pure shock. We were lucky enough to record everyone’s reactions to keep as a memory.

We decided to try and keep the baby news under wraps until we went and saw the doctor and made sure everything was as it should be. This wasn’t very hard for Rowdy, but for me, it was next to impossible! First time mommy, I wanted to shout it to the world. May 3^rd finally came and we met with our doctor, Dr. Hoffman. Wow, I love him. He is so kind, explains everything clearly, makes sure anything we are concerned with, he answers fully and he includes Rowdy in everything that is going on. My sister-in-law, Danielle had him when she had Bret and she recommended him a while back when I was having other health issues. After the question and answer phase, he did an exam and then got out the Doppler. He told us that we wouldn’t be able to hear the heartbeat yet because I was only nine weeks along but that he wanted to make sure everything sounded good. Also, there was a possibility I was farther along than we thought, so he also wanted to check for the heartbeat to possibly assist in differentiating that.

As he squirted the cold goo on my stomach and started to move it around, we could hear my heartbeat. Then about thirty seconds into it, there was this strong, quick beat, my baby’s heartbeat!!!!! 180 bpm, right where it should be. “You hear that Rowdy” he asked. Rowdy was recording the entire thing. In the video you can tell when I notice the heart beat because I get this look of shock on my face and then I start to cry. I’ve been a tad bit emotional lately. It was so cool to hear my baby, alive and well inside of me. Dr. Hoffman was surprised and decide to schedule an ultrasound for the following Tuesday to determine exactly how far along I really was. Originally, I was due December 4^th, but he said that it's rare to hear the heartbeat this early by simply using a Doppler, that only an internal ultrasound could get this result. He thought I may be closer to 11 or 12 weeks. My hopes soared, skipping over two weeks of pregnancy would be so nice, I’d be nearly out of my 1^st trimester already! So today we went in for the ultrasound, she told us that I am 10 weeks along, just as we had thought. We got lucky last week in hearing the heartbeat. It was so amazing seeing my baby move around inside me, wiggling its feet and arms. It was all reassuring that my baby was growing and healthy. They even gave us pictures to take home!

I have to say, pregnancy has treated me fairly well. I was nauseous and throwing up for two days a few weeks ago, but I think it was the flu that I had because the twins had it just the week before for several days. Aside from the aforementioned symptoms I had in the beginning, those haven’t changed much, sleeping is starting to get a little interesting and so is eating. I have food aversions to Café Yumm and black olives. Just the thought of them is horrifying, but I’m becoming a very impulsive eater. For one thing, I have no middle ground with food, I’m either STARVING and on the brink of nausea because I’m so hungry or I’m stuffed beyond belief. Very few things sound good, I’m very “in the moment” when it comes to my eating. If a hamburger sounds good, I need to eat it right then or it won’t sound good ever again and I’ll be so past starving that I will want to simply vomit. It’s lovely.

Cramping and feeling fat as a cow is my daily normal. No one ever told me that you still feel like you are going to start your “monthly” every single day the first little while of your pregnancy and that after that, your abs feel like they are ripping apart all the time because there is a cute little Jelly Bean doubling in size every week. So I am telling you so that you are prepared. But honestly, I wouldn’t trade it. Becoming a mom became very real to me when I heard the heartbeat; it was actually proof that there was something that was causing all these lovely feelings inside of me and not just my imagination.

Rowdy’s been very excited about the baby. Almost daily I hear “Guess what, we are having a baby!” We have had some disagreements though; we don’t like to call the baby the same thing. He and Lacey insist on calling my little one, “Baby Chuck”. Ew. And they both hate Jelly Bean.  Let me warn you, if you call my baby “Chuck”, I will glare at you persistently and if there is something that won’t break, I’ll probably throw it at you, I despise the name Chuck for my child. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine for other people, I had an Uncle Chuck that I loved dearly, but I am not going to call my baby, Chuck ever. Nor do I want anyone else calling my baby, Chuck. Rowdy also doesn’t want to know the sex of the baby, but I do. So I told him he shouldn’t come to the 20 week ultrasound then because I will be finding out, which also sort of puts a kink in his plan of not talking names until we know the sex of the baby because his theory is that it eliminates half the battle…. So he has to pick a side of the fence to be on with that because we are not going to wait until the day the baby comes to talk names. But we have chatted candidly about some names that we like and let’s just say, if we have a boy, his name is going to take a lot longer to decide than if we have a girl. We agree on girl names. I’m anxious to find out what we are having. I think it will be a boy because I had a dream it was a boy, but others think I’ll have a girl because everyone is having boys right now. I will be fine with either one, as long as my baby is healthy. The only reason Id want a girl a smidge more is because my parents and Rowdy’s parents only have grandsons, no granddaughters yet and I’d love to have the first girl. And it would guarantee I get at least one girl, even if I have a million boys after that.

I honestly feel that God prepared Rowdy and I for this surprise. The entire month before I knew I was pregnant I cried myself to sleep every night, wanting to be a mom. I didn’t know why this desire was so strong at that time. It was odd. Rowdy knew I wanted to have kids, and I would have been perfectly happy having one the day after we were married, but that entire month, that desire was stronger than anything I had ever felt. Rowdy felt helpless, didn’t really know how to make me feel better, so he just held me as a sobbed. I didn’t want him to simply “give in” either just because I wanted it. I wanted children to be something we both desired together, at the same time. I truly believe that Heavenly Father prompted Rowdy to be ready to have children just days before finding out we were pregnant with Jelly Bean. It was no coincidence. Rowdy felt that we were supposed to start trying for a baby for a reason, because Heavenly Father was going to bless us with a little one, ready or not.