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 4th 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.
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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 3rd 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 4th, 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 1st 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.
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