Mother's Day

May 12th, 2013. That was my due date. After wanting nothing more than to be a mother my whole life, I was pregnant. We told our families right away, but waited to tell the world, just in case. 

We went to hear the heartbeat for the first time when I was 9 weeks along. But the room was silent. We had lost our baby, and my body didn’t know. I decided not to intervene but to let my body figure things out. After a month of being pregnant but not pregnant, I decided to take the medicine to help the process along. I called into work sick, took the pills, binge watched Disney movies, and waited. After a second dose 12 hour later, it was all over. And I could start to heal. 

Except that my hCG levels still showed that I was pregnant. I had to continue to get my blood drawn each week, and the levels weren’t going down fast enough for my doctor’s liking. By mid-December, I was almost where I needed to be, but every visit to Quest Diagnostics tore me apart. I just wanted to move on. I wanted to stop being reminded of it every week. So I stopped getting my blood drawn. I started to heal. 

With the New Year came a new calendar. I started filling in the family member’s birthdays and anniversaries like I did every year. Then I got to May. May 12th. Mother’s Day. I had no idea until then that my due date had been Mother’s Day. All the healing came undone. 

But God is faithful. He really used that season of my life as I clung to Him. In sorrow, we choose whether to move closer or farther from God. I believed what I had always believed. God loves me. God knows what’s best. And God was in control. It didn’t make it hurt any less, but God is the ultimate Comforter. He was definitely close to my broken heart as I stumbled through the next couple of months. 

I wasn’t ready to try to get pregnant for a while after the miscarriage. Then we wanted to avoid a holiday baby. Then we stressed about getting pregnant and for several months the tests came back negative. We finally stopped trying. But God was in control. The next month I was pregnant. With another May baby. I got to hear the heartbeat. I got to feel the kicks. And the hiccups. And after a ten hour labor, I got to hold him. And then bring him home. 

Time has shown me a lot that I could not have seen before. I have a better vantage point of the tapestry that God was weaving. Two months after the miscarriage, Doug lost his job and we both worked part time. Nine days after we found out we were pregnant, Doug was signed on full time with benefits. At the time of the miscarriage, we lived in a one bedroom cupboard that was almost always too hot or too cold and had cardboard walls. A month after Coen was born, we moved into our brand new townhouse. The day before we moved we got new neighbors and we found out just how thin those walls were. The timing was too perfect. I am not saying that God could not have provided for us if we hadn’t lost our first child. He absolutely would have. We didn’t lose our child because God couldn’t work with our situation. I’ll never know why we lost that child. But I can see how God worked everything together for the good of his purpose (Rom. 8:28). Without the miscarriage, there would be no Coen, my rainbow baby. 

This year will be my first Mother’s Day. It has been a journey to get here. This first Mother’s Day feels like I finished a marathon. It will forever be bittersweet. And forever a reminder of God’s faithfulness.  

 

Sugar Fiend

For the month of March I decided to give up sugar. If you do a quick google search you'll find a plethora of articles on the effects of sugar on the body. And how we are consuming way too much sugar on a daily basis. So I decided to go 31 days without sugar and see if I could tell the difference. I didn't count calories or cut grains or dairy. Just all refined sugar. No natural sweeteners either. My best friend did it with me so we could have a support system.
   The first few days were really hard. At the end of the night my brain was used to me grabbing a sugar snack. Luckily I didn't have any in the house. No candy, cookies, or ice cream. I experienced headaches as my body was being detoxed from the sugar. But it got easier to say no to the sugar. It's always a choice to eat sugar. Sometimes we just don't realize that it's in a product. I was most surprised to find that sugar has been added to Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, enchilada sauce (except for Trader Joe's), and salami.
   Throughout the month I started to notice little things about myself as my body adjusted to life without sugar. I talked with my friend and discovered that she was experiencing the same things.

I had a lot more energy. Naps were still amazing, but I didn't feel like I was dragging myself through the day by late afternoon.

I slept better. It didn't take me long at all to fall asleep at the beginning of the night or after nursing Coen in the middle of the night. Before there were some nights where it took me 45 minutes to fall asleep after waking up.

I also dreamt a lot more. Which I'm guessing means that I was getting regular cycles of sleep. I spent more time in REM sleep which is restorative.

Things started tasting different. Milk tasted sweet. It tasted like there was sugar was in it. But nope, it was just plain milk. There was also a time where I had Costco pizza for dinner (sugar in the dough, sugar in the sauce-long story as to why I ate it) and it tasted sweet. It didn't taste good. Bleh.

I could feel different parts of my body slimming. My stomach slimmed. Doug noticed my butt and waist got smaller.

I felt better emotionally and mentally. I felt happier. Less on edge.

Thinking about sugar and eating it didn't sound appealing. During a Target trip I walked through the Easter candy aisle. I love Reese's peanut butter eggs and Cadbury Creme Eggs. So I thought I would pick a couple up for when April came around. But when I thought about actually eating them it did not sound appealing. So I left without buying anything.

The first couple of weeks I sweat a lot at night. I have no idea how it was related or even if it was. I wasn't hot and it wasn't hot in the room. I just woke up sweating. Like it was part of my body detoxing. Maybe it was.

Fruit tastes amazing when you don't eat sugar. Watermelon and strawberries were my favorite.

The first part of the month I felt so hungry all the time. So I ate a lot. Oatmeal. Hummus. Carrots. Yams. Broccoli. Chicken. I cooked a lot of good meals off Pinterest. But as time went on I noticed that I wasn't as hungry as I was in the beginning. I didn't constantly feel like I was starving.

I ended up losing 5 pounds without trying. Which wasn't my goal or anything, but weight loss is always a plus.


Then March ended. I didn't really want sugar though. So I didn't eat it. I continued to eat my sugar free bread fruit with sugar free whipped cream for dessert.

Then last Saturday (April 4) I decided to have a Magnum Peanut Butter Ice Cream bar (I blame Shopkick for having me scan them). It was alright. It was super sweet and a little too much for me). I felt gross afterwards. But it made my cravings return with a vengeance.

I thought that maybe I'd allow myself one treat a week. Maybe it would be in the form of a meal like orange chicken from Panda Express. Or it'd be a piece of birthday cake. But sugar is addictive. All the articles say this. They even explain how it's similar to cocaine in how if effects the brain. And now I see why. I am a sugar addict. Yesterday I wasn't planning on having any sugar. Instead I ate a Magnum bar, half a bag of Sour Patch jelly beans, and three starbursts. I had a stomachache and I still reached for the candy. Today I ate a bag of Oreo Minis, a Reese's peanut butter egg, and a small carton of mini Robin's eggs. And I'm feeling it. I feel like I never want to eat sugar again. But I will. It's addictive. And not eating it can be inconvenient. I had to read all labels. Forget eating out because it's impossible to know what's in the food. And same goes for eating at people's houses. Which is why there were some times when I ate the food anyways cause I didn't have the heart to tell them that they were serving sugar.

I do want to cut back on sugar though. I just can't believe how powerful it is. Who knew? It's ridiculous. As good as I felt off of it it's nice not monitoring everything that I eat. So as you can see I'm torn. I'm sure I'll give up sugar again. I just wish that more people could understand how destructive it is so that it wouldn't be so prevalent.

8 months

1. Coen loves food. He loves it so much that I'm actually having to feed him less of it so that he'll still breastfeed. Plus is messes with his tummy sometimes and that makes for some very long nights. But he'll pretty much eat anything. The only things he doesn't like are baby food peas and dill pickles. His favorites are bananas and sweet potatoes.

2. He is crawling all over the place now. He'll follow me around the house grunting and wanting to be picked up. It's very sweet but also makes it hard to get anything done. I'll be trying to wash dishes and he'll be standing right behind me holding onto my legs and patting them, asking to be picked up. And he's really fast when he wants to be.

3. Him and Luna do not get along. After a couple of scratching incidents she is having to be shut in our room if he is up and on the loose. So whenever we're not home or when he's sleeping she has run of the house, but otherwise she has to be put away until she can be nice/he learns to leave her alone. Even though she's scratched him he is so excited when he sees her and wants to pet her so badly.

4. He loves hugs. When I'm sitting on the floor watching him play he'll crawl over to me and into my lap for a hug. Melts my heart.

5. He loves books. Pulling them off the shelf. Turning the pages. Ripping the pages. I've had to tape a page back together in a library book. I always saw those pages and thought that the parents needed to keep a better eye on their children and teach them how to take care of a library book. I never thought about the fact that it could be babies doing the damage. And in my case, it was. Oops.

6. He's starting to protest. He is a stubborn one and gets very upset if he is thwarted in his plans. If he is wanting to grab the computer and is told no and the computer is taken away he has a mini melt down. If I need to put him down while he's wanting to be held because I really have to go to the bathroom, he has a melt down. Most of the time he is a happy go lucky baby, but he will let you know when he's upset!

7. He absolutely loves his dad. Doug was away for the weekend and you could tell that Coen missed him. He got crankier and crankier as the weekend went on. The day Doug was coming home I had texted him about how stressed out I was with Coen and how he was crying non-stop and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. When Doug got home that all went away and Doug said that if I hadn't texted him about it, he never would have known Coen had been so cranky (I'm just glad he believed me).

8. Coen has cut his two bottom teeth. Those were some loooong nights/days. Only 18 more baby teeth to go...Now we can't let him bite our knuckles. And luckily he hasn't bitten me while feeding...yet.

9. He's starting to transition from 3 naps a day to 2. Every day it seems to go back and forth. One day he'll take two really long naps. The next day he'll take 2 short and one long, or 3 short naps. He goes to bed at 8 every night and wakes between 6:30-7:30. I love that it has finally gotten lighter in the early morning. I'm dreading daylight savings because it doesn't feel so early when it's light out. I wish we'd get rid of day light savings!

10. Coen loves playing with his tongue. Sometimes he sucks on it. Sometimes he turns it upside down. I haven't seen him do a tongue taco yet, so we're not sure if he has the gene or not, but we keep showing him how to do it. He also loves blowing raspberries and has started putting noises with it. So cute!