oops here's a new post

I did not forget about this blog! I pay $11 every month to keep it running. It's just that I've been nervous to post even though it's probably important because my husband and I have a baby on the way. :)!

Talking about this publicly has me feeling so mixed with anxiety and excitement. I'm due in May and the pregnancy has been really difficult on me, but baby is to the best of our knowledge at this time, healthy. That's all that I feel I could ask for, and now that I've reached viability week I feel a little more comfortable sharing details publicly ... But everything just still feels so fragile and abstract to me somehow. It's strange for me to realize that we'll get to be parents, and sooner than later.

From an outside perspective, I can understand that it might sound silly that I haven't really come to grips with it, because I am quite far along... I'm very much looking forward to meeting our child, and we have been bonding. It's just that there's something so strange about using my body to grow and house another body, and feeling someone else's presence with me in this way. Especially in the way that the pregnancy has weakened my own physical health.

I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum shortly into my first trimester and even before the onset of that, my heart hadn't been happy with the increased workload it was assigned. I also had developed a subchorionic hematoma that luckily has since resolved. I spent the last quarter of the year partially bedridden for the most part. Nearly every moment was spent nauseous or vomiting, despite not being able to keep down food or even water. No amount of ginger, lemon, crackers, anything, budged the illness. Just sleep. Before it got to this point, I ended up quitting my job because I wasn't able to walk even short distances without my heart rate getting dangerously high. I couldn't catch my breath. Everything I had, I gave to baby.

Lately, I've been doing a lot better. I only puke a few times a day, instead of all day. I'm able to get up and start handling some of the chores again. During the day, I've taken up baking and meal prepping to help out with the household, and I've come up with some pretty tasty stuff that I'm proud of! And it's so nice to be in a position where now, I just get to focus on taking care of myself and taking care of baby.

I'm just so forever thankful to my family and to my husband for being able to support me through this Twilight hybrid vampire growing-esque time. And even through all this, we're gaining a new person to love and be loved by.

It's so touching to me that our child is already so tangibly loved and wanted by not just us, but by our families and by our community. It has meant the world to me to be able to rest and start to attune to my next chapter as a mother with relative peace and ease. And that's why, despite being nervous about maybe counting my chickens before they hatch, I do think it's important for me to push through and share my experience now. I want to be publicly thankful. I want to speak further and concretely into existence just how much this little one is adored. And it plays back into how, maybe, she'll get to stumble upon an archive of this blog somewhere somehow, and read for herself about what it was like to be on this journey to have the privilege of being her parents.

We're over the moon excited and curious to get to know her!