What I Didn't Know to Ask: The Pregnancy Edition

I consider myself an expert Googler. If I want to know what spiders in my house are actually worth worrying about or remember what movie I've seen that pointy-nosed guy currently on my tv screen in, I will find that mess out, and quickly. That's why when I found out I was pregnant on March 1, 2014, I dove nose-first into a sea of pregnancy websites. I knew that my trusty little search engine would find every detail about my pregnancy and the baby growing inside me that I could possibly want to understand. And I was right. I found some wonderfully helpful websites that I still regularly peruse as a new mom. Here they are, for any currently preggo or new mommy friends reading this:

Pregnant Chicken
Lucie's List
The Bump
Mamapedia

I also found a whole lotta CRAP online - never-ending blog threads featuring hormonal women with very specific and passionately opposed opinions arguing back and forth. But we'll save that for a different post.

What my Googling prowess and all the helpful websites in the world couldn't offer me was an answer to any number of questions I didn't know to ask. I am a well-informed 21st century mommy, but much of what I've learned over the past 17 months has been completely experiential. Baby Cakes is actually napping well this morning (on his stomach for the first time, no less), so I finally have time to share these personal insights with the world. Hopefully you'll either get a kick out of shared experiences, or learn something before it shockingly happens to you!

Here goes.

What I Didn't Know to Ask: The Pregnancy Edition

Pregnant nausea is NOT like having the stomach flu. Throwing up will not make you feel any less wretched than you do right now. The porcelain throne is not a shiny white symbol of relief. Suck it up. Or suck on a ginger hard candy. And sip on some Canada Dry. Though these "surefire" pregnancy nausea relievers might not help at all either. The only thing that remotely took the edge off for me through my first 5 months of pregnancy was motion-sick wristbands. These were life-savers! Also, Morning Sickness is not aptly named. It should be called All Day Sickness.

Your ankles will swell to alarming proportions. The only true variable is when it will happen to you. Some women are lucky enough to wear their cute flats and see their ankle bones cheerfully poking out above their stylish sandal straps until the final few weeks of pregnancy. Others will lose their ankles entirely and have their Michelin Man feet restricted to slip-on Crocs only for a solid 2-3 months. Oh, and the most startling part: Your ankles may stay swollen for a few weeks after you pop that baby out! It took me a good month or more to get back into normal shoes. And yes, I was drinking water like it was my job.

www.huffingtonpost.com

You will have freakishly weird dreams throughout your pregnancy. A few of my most memorable: watching my eyebrows grow into a unibrow in a matter of seconds, giving birth to a girl...puppy, fighting ISIS with my mom.

You have little to no control over bodily functions. No one wants to talk about this, but it's a very real problem for pregnant women, especially the bigger the baby (and therefore one's gargantuan stomach) grows. Yes, you are going make hourly, maybe even bi-hourly, trips to the Little Girls' Room for a tinkle. But a word of warning: If you feel a #2 coming on, GO TO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT DELAY. And into your 7th and 8th months of pregnancy, be careful of laughing or coughing with too much vigor. You just might wet your pants. You'll thank me for this piece of gold later.

The crazy ridiculous overemotional pregnant women you see depicted in film and television are a totally accurate representation of our hormonal state. I thought overemotional pregnant women were exaggerated for laughs. Nope. The struggle is real. About 10 weeks into my pregnancy I watched a Youtube video of the Australian cast of Lion King breaking out into "Circle of Life" on an airplane ride and bawled my way through half a box of tissues. It is a pretty awesome video, though. And if your boss corrects you at work, no matter how graciously it is done the waterworks will start. Be ready to spend 15 minutes calming yourself down in a bathroom stall while you mentally roll your eyes at yourself.

No one can fully prepare you for how incredible it will feel to hold your baby for the first time. I had Baby Cakes via a scheduled C-section (he was both breech and gigantic), so I didn't get the coveted "skin to skin" experience. And Cakes had a few scary complications for the pediatric staff to work through during those first 24 hours, so I didn't hold him nearly as soon as I would have liked to. Even so, feeling him being laid on my chest and quietly studying his tiny, perfect features was one of the most unbelievable moments of my life. Meeting your little human will make all of the crazy and uncomfortable moments of pregnancy ENTIRELY worth it. If I'm not right here, how does any woman do this more than once??


Mommies, I'd love for you to comment with other pregnancy What I Didn't Knows!

Entrusted

This past Sunday, Jeff and I stood up in front of our church family to be commissioned. I know to a lot of people that term is a strange one. This was a super important moment in the life of our little family, so if you'll let me I'd like to explain what in the world happened. :)

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines commission as "the authority to act for, in behalf of, or in place of another" and "a task or matter entrusted to one as an agent for another." At Summit Church, we commission the parents rather than baptizing the baby. This is done out of an understanding that an infant can't yet make personal decisions about faith, but their parents can. And so we stand before our church family in a demonstration of agreement that we desire and will try our best to raise our precious babies in a home that declares the salvation and goodness of Christ. Our pastors and the church body pray over us, that God will use his Holy Spirit in us to show and teach the Gospel to our children, and that they will come alongside of us as a community of believers to help us as we raise these kiddos. After all, it takes a village to raise a child!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not poo-pooing infant baptism. I was baptized as a baby and will always be grateful that my parents felt it important to bring me into the Church. I later chose, as a young adult, to be baptized again as a profession of my own faith. In a sense, I ratified my parents' earlier hopes for me. That is what Jeff and I fervently hope for our children, that as kids they will grow in the knowledge and understanding of who God is and what his atoning sacrifice means for them. Then, once they are able to make life-altering decisions for themselves, our greatest desire is for them to choose Christ on their own.

As part of the parent commissioning process, Jeff and I were asked to choose a Scripture passage and write a prayer for Baby Cakes. We chose 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12.

"To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Jeff penned this prayer for our son. I will treasure it always and pray it over him as often as I remember. 

Let any good B sees in us direct him to Your goodness, and let our shortcomings provide the opportunity to remind him of Your perfect love. Let him feel the irresistible pull of Your love from a very young age. Give him the grace to trust You more than he does us, himself or the world.