excitement + explanation = i hate math, but i think the answer is "babies"

it's probably not very noticeable, but it's true: we're super darn crazy excited.

surprised? yep, us too. this has been one big month of mysteries and vague explanations. now that we have some bit of reassurance with what's going to happen, i feel like i can help clear things up.

baby jelly bean little squirt the first: he is about seven weeks along, about the size of the littlest jelly bean ever, with a heartbeat and everything. i've been completely mum this whole time, and it has been HARD. craig and i decided to wait until we had an ultrasound, heard a heartbeat, and some kind of reassurance before shouting it from the rooftops. they let me come in at seven weeks instead of ten so i could keep my sanity [so nice!] and i was so nervous to death the entire time. with little Sable we didn't go in until ten weeks and she had been gone for around 4 weeks and didn't have a heartbeat at all. we hadn't told a lot of people, family and sweet friends and darling churchy people. and it wasn't so much an issue to me that these people, who i KNEW loved me, knew about it and had to be told when she was gone. as hard as it was to talk about it over and over sometimes, i always felt loved and not judged.

now, i did have an issue with everyone who found out at work. which was completely insane to me, some kind of phenomenon of nature. we told our supervisors because they needed an explanation for why craig was throwing up and going home sick all the time [uhm, well you see sir, he's pregnant.] and we let a couple other people know when lying just became too awkward, neither of whom i imagined gossiping about it at the time. and it spread like wildfire. people i did know where coming up to me telling me that people i did NOT know and had NEVER talked to in my life had told them i was pregnant and not to tell because it was a secret. whhhhhaaat? it wasn't a huge biggie because i WAS excited to be pregnant, but it became an issue when i wasn't pregnant anymore and then all of the sudden no one was gossiping anymore. if it didn't come from our mouths no one knew. and honestly, when i was so sad and miserable the last thing i wanted to do was tell 4 different people/strangers every day that my daughter went home every time they asked "how's the baby??" or yelled at me for lifting something heavy because it's bad for the baby. that happened.

that's my rant about being careful who you tell and when you tell about baby bean. we're still being wary about work people finding out [i know some of them will, the internet is funny like that] but i'm just so excited out of my mind that i want all my family and friends to know. and you!

pregnancy: alright, you know me. or you know a little about me. but the most obvious thing about me could possibly be that i want a baby more than anything. that being said, this wasn't planned. this was the most exciting surprise ever.

when we got pregnant with Sable, we weren't trying. i still didn't know anything about ovulating and timing and all of that good stuff, we had just talked about how much we didn't mind anymore if we had a baby when we were still poor and unprepared [originally we were going to wait three years. HA!] we were married in august and this conversation happened in october. so a couple months after we were married we stopped not trying to be pregnant and slowly, taking our time, tried to figure out what happens next. i've never been on birth control in all my life and those months before and after marriage of me trying to figure out what was right and safe were so stressful [one very religious doctor told us anything but condoms were murder. that guy might be a jerk. i listened to him anyway.] i thought that once we quit with contraceptives it was going to take months and months to figure out how it worked and what kind of help i needed to get pregnant, i was convinced in my head it wouldn't happen easily, almost an expect the worst tactic to keep me sane if the worst did happen.

not paying attention/not knowing what we were doing seemed to be our perfect tactic, because Sable was well on her way in january. this time around i was certain would be much harder. my baby-house [that's what i call the uterus. see, i was made to be a mom] had gone through heck for a long time and i thought it was going to take a few months of recovery before we could think about trying again. and once again i was convinced this time i would need some help.

and this totally cracks me up now. i was terrified, i felt like i was a morgue inside and had to be quarantined before i was safe to let another baby in there. we were being careful and taking steps to make sure i did not get pregnant until it was "safe."

but apparently an entire month of the only not "evil" contraceptive = baby.

not trying or thinking it can happen = baby.

maybe not being entirely prepared and being completely unaware = baby.

praying and hoping that it would happen = baby.

it's not so much about science, or even magic although that seems more likely. it's faith and being able to say "your timing, not mine" whether it's later or much sooner than what you had planned.


doctor: my first pregnancy happened entirely at Kaiser which is a completely different world than all other hospitals. i had to relearn everything they taught we when we got our brand new insurance. no one was making decisions for me. we had to pick a hospital and a doctor all by ourselves. and kind of rushed too, since we were afraid the same thing would happen with this baby and we didn't want it to drag on and on again so we wanted to be in almost as soon as a heartbeat was possible. i wasn't nearly smooth enough to ask friends for baby doctor advice without being totally obvious, so i was super stressed and clueless. craig found my doctor for me and picked our hospital and i couldn't be happier with how it turned out. they had me in at less than four weeks for blood tests and the general rundown, and right back in yesterday to checked for the first prenatal ultrasound.

i really was so afraid this last month. i felt so helpless being out here, having almost no control on if things were going well in there, no way to keep him if he had to leave. talking to him every day, having craig say good morning and goodnight, and just making sure he knew we loved him were some of the things we made ourselves do to keep hope. we didn't want to just close our eyes and wait until it was over, even though that seemed safer. for however long he was here we wanted him to feel wanted.

i was shaking when we were in the doctor's office, i'm always such a mess of nerves. our doctor was the sweetest thing, and didn't drag it out. and soon as the ultrasound was going she said he looked great! he had a heartbeat, i could see it fluttering. i could hear it. she said it sounded so good. she said everything looked great. i probably cried and cried. craig might have cried more but if i told you that he might be embarrassed. we're really so happy right now. we're finally letting ourselves be excited, really truly bursting out of our brains excited.


weight loss: remember when i was losing weight like crazy and blogging all about it? and then i suddenly stopped? that's because i had mysteriously stopped losing weight. i was still counting calories and exercising, but it wasn't going anywhere anymore. so then i had all these plans to eat raw and do some crazy cleanses and beat my body into shape, all of which were going to happen as soon as we returned from cannon beach. well all of cannon beach i was prepared and expecting something that was supposed to happen and never did. so when we got home we bought another set of pregnancy tests [those things are way too expensive.] and like i said, it was a complete shock, it seemed almost impossible after all the things i've read about getting pregnant and how to do it and then not doing any of it "right." but he was there, in his cozy baby-house, and much too tiny fragile for diets and cleanses and rigorous exercises. so all that weight loss blogging will have to wait until i have a giant load of baby weight to lose ;]


i'm so excited for this journey. if all goes as hoped, our lives will never be the same again. they'll be completely different and constantly changing. i don't want to forget or lose any of it, so i'll be drawing, journaling, photographing, and blogging every step of the way. now that the secret is out vague and scarce blogging is hopefully over [it was just so hard to talk about ANYTHING we were doing without giving out hints, haha]. i'm happy to have someplace to share all of this. bear with me, maybe after blogging about it for so long we'll all get an actual baby out of the deal ;]

little Squirt says he'd be happy to oblige.