Four Months

4 months pregnant. 

                                                      So what's it been like for me? 
Well, I'm Pregnant! I'm tired, I wanna eat ALL the time. I feel like crap at night time (totally a new experience for me). I am normally a night owl and I feel like I can crash at 8pm every night. My legs are already getting really achy, usually that happens to me later on but I guess when they say the more babies you have the more your body remembers and the quicker your symptoms pop up too. It's ALL TRUE. My body is not hiding anything and I am completely okay with that. 

It's fun being pregnant with our fourth because the things that I used to care about I don't and I have embraced that my body is growing a so is the human being inside me and so I am letting myself take it all in. I don't care about trying to wear my "normal" clothes as long as I can. I've already bought materiality shorts and jeans and it feels SO good. I am comfortable and that is all that matters. 

I remember with my first pregnancy I used to think it was so cool that I could wear my jeans up until I was 8months pregnant and now I'm like SCREW it. Let's just be pregnant. 

A friend text me the other day and said something so awesome. She said "I am thankful for the symptoms but it is hard to go through the emotions." She nailed it. That's exactly how I feel. I've come to a place in knowing my body will do what it needs to do and I am not going to force anything upon it. If I'm tired I lay down, if I am hungry I eat, if I feel like crap I say it and if I think I look beautiful I show it off.   

People look at me and say "oh it must be nice to be skinny while your pregnant" but what people don't know is my body changes JUST like everyone else's. We all are our own worst critic right?! TRUST me I can go into a lot of TMI with you but I will spare you all the changes going on with me physically. But what I will share with you are the changes that are going on with me Mentally and Emotionally. That I am NOT shy about and I will NOT hold back. 

The reality is for MOST pregnant mamas we want healthy babies. We want to experience a full term pregnancy, we want to experience natural child labor and no imperfections whatsoever. But if you talk to a mom who has experienced labor you know those experiences are not always the case. When you don't have a good experience fear naturally try's to grip you and pump you up with every thought that can possibly go wrong. Even if you haven't had a good experienced fear can grip you too, right?! 

Well, that was me for about the first 4 weeks into this pregnancy. Due to my last pregnancy ending in my child being a still born, getting pregnant mentally and emotionally was NOT easy and with that naturally comes some crazy thoughts that have ran through my head.

Have I beat myself up over it? NO. In fact one of the first words out of my mouth when I found out I was pregnant was, "I don't think I have the faith to follow through with this." As if I can send the baby back or something right? A lot of people would probably gasp if they heard me say that, friends might correct me and people may try to encourage me to think otherwise. I get it, had I not experience what I did I probably would be that friend too. But because I did experience what I did, I let myself feel the feelings and deal with them. All you peeps reading, don't freak out okay. I didn't entertain the thought to the point of giving up my child. I felt those thoughts because I knew at some point I was going to have to face them. 

If you've gone through any pain whatsoever in your life I would probably say you are inhuman to me if you don't have some kind of mental games that you have to put yourself in check with from time to time. 

It doesn't mean that I don't have the faith to go through this again it just means I am human and our human mind remembers our past hurts, even when we don't want to. Another friend shared with me that our muscle memory stores painful situations. That's why one day out of the blue we will be like "today just seems off" and the more we think our muscle memory triggers these emotions that remind us about what may have happened that day years ago or not long ago. It is really unreal how the body, soul and spirit work. So, try not to beat yourself up if you have a day like this. It's normal and it doesn't mean you are not strong it just means you are human. 

So what did I do when I felt like I didn't have the faith to carry this child? I told my husband. He didn't correct me or condemn me instead he said "Gina I can only imagine, you carried our last child and that is something I will never know or experience." That has been such a beautiful reality for us in our marriage. That there are just some things that each of us will carry that are different from each other and we have to be patient with each other through the process. It's taken us facing several moments where I have broken down because I want my husband to understand the feelings I feel carrying a child, but each time I broke down we realized we both have experienced our pain differently. And that is okay. He is there for me and I am there for him. 

After those four weeks there seemed to be this peace and this knowing that I believed in myself and in my body that I can do this. I would speak to my body and say "I am one with this pregnancy", knowing no matter what this child is already serving a great purpose. 

I will be honest even though I have more faith now I do notice before every doctor visit I will take a deep breath and remind myself "everything is going to be okay." If I lay down for an ultra sound I notice I get a little nervous and I don't look at the screen until I can hear that heartbeat. There is a relief every time when you hear those words "the baby looks great, the baby is growing perfectly, what a strong heartbeat." The truth when women say "all I want is a healthy child" has become SO real to me. I know it's super fun to try to figure out the gender of your child and if people ask "do you have any feelings yet if you can tell if your having a boy or girl?" But really deep down inside all I'm praying for is a healthy pregnancy the whole way through. 

Our 8 and 6yr old girls are SO excited for us to find out the gender of our baby and of course so are WE but I will tell you it's been a total BLAST having older kids as we walk through this experience with them. I always thought I would have my kids all close together but you know we can't control everything and honestly one of the reasons why it was so hard to think about another baby was because after our loss there was the age gap. Why "the the gap" is such a big deal I really don't know but I think we make the whole gap thing a bigger deal than it really is and ITS NOT! It's been the greatest joy for us to see how involved our girls have already been and how much they are taking on this new joy in our lives. They are planning our gender reveal party, they are already talking about who wants to wake up in the middle of the night, who gets to feed the baby, who gets to help mom and so on. It's been so fun! 

I have such a sense of peace that has really filled my soul and I am soaking it all up at the moment. We have SO appreciated all the love, prayers and support from everyone who has celebrated with us in this next chapter of our lives. It's true when people say you can feel the love because that is what my family and I have been experiencing...nothing but love. 

God is so good and it is beautiful to see how he turns ashes to beauty. Annabelle's life taught us to live daily and to focus on whatever is happening in our lives right. To not exhaust ourselves with the future but to embrace every moment as they come. I am so thankful we chose to take this next step. The trusting part, the faith part and the believing part has been a process and I know it will continue to be. So here I am at 4 months into this pregnancy sharing this part with you and thankful to be at a place where I can share it with true joy. 

Thanks for staying up to date with us. We love you and are so excited to keep sharing our updates with you.