This is pretty much everyone’s favorite question when they
see me. How are you doing? How’s the baby? Fine, fine, fine, all good. And it
really is, overall. But in case you’re interested in the long version, here it
is:
1. No internal heater. When people hear that you’re going to
be super pregnant in the summer, they say, “Oh, that’s rough, you’re going to
be so overheated!” When they hear it will be winter, they say, “Awesome, at
least you’ll have an internal heater.” I have never experienced this
phenomenon. In fact, I have felt generally colder during my two winter
pregnancies, and even when I was massive in the muggy, new-to-me Maryland heat,
I didn’t feel like it was any worse than when I wasn’t pregnant. I was expressing
this to Brice, and he said, “You do have an internal baby heater. It’s just
broken.” Well, that explains it then.
2. Emotional hostage. Here’s how I said this to the world of
Facebook: “The baby has apparently taken my hormones and emotional regulation
abilities hostage.” In practice this means that I am crying over some really
dumb stuff lately. Like when my shower towel is too stinky. Or when I think
about a story that I was going to write but didn’t. Or, you know, when I
slightly overcook the grilled cheese sandwiches. (Even dumber stuff too, like
fuzzy socks or the girls’ cute fashions, etc.) And then of course I also bawl
over the not-dumb stuff, like when I’m tired and the girls have made a massive
mess in their bedroom ten minutes after we’d just cleaned it up beautifully. Or
when I am hungry but queasy and I can’t think of what to cook. Or when I’m
stressing out about what it’s going to be like to have four kids. Which leads
me to numbers 3 and 4 . . .
3. Nausea. So, I spent about a month and half feeling pretty
decent most of the time. A couple bouts of queasiness here and there, but
overall pretty great. And also not yet super uncomfortable, and also not super
tired anymore. Of course, every time I started gloating about how I was
feeling, I had a massive patch of vomiting (keeping me nice and humble!), but
overall, I was doing well. Well, it seems we’re back to some fairly frequent
queasiness again (though it is still low-grade and really nothing compared to
women who actually have difficult pregnancies). And guess what are the two main
things that help? Eating and lying down. As in, as long as I’m eating food, I
feel fine. As soon as I stop, not so much. And then, after I eat, if I lie down
for ten minutes or so, I feel better. So between these and just, you know,
being pregnant, I’m pretty much going to explode into whale proportions.
Also, as of yesterday, it had been quite nearly a month since
I had thrown up. And then came this month’s stomach bug, which has so far
gotten four of the five of us. I can’t really tell, though, if my throwing up
was because of 1: being sick; 2: pregnancy; or 3: having to clean up someone
else’s vomit (honestly, Brice is the designated cleaner-upper in our house—for
which he should be sainted—because I can’t stand it at all).
4. Four kids, plus labor and newborn stage and all that
jazz. This should probably be broken down into two items, and I could actually
write a whole blog post about it, but you’d get bored. So here’s the summary: Coriel’s
labor: really hard. Addra’s: really easy. Koa’s: pretty hard. I’m freaking out
that baby #4 will be more inclined to take after Coriel and Koa. But even if he’s
not, “really easy” was still quite painful during the process. And then the
newborn stage is insanely difficult for me (and when I say “newborn,” I mean “first
two years at least”). I have, by and large, been not thinking about it all.
Because every time I do, I become a major watering pot. I told Brice the other
day that there should be a disorder called “pre-traumatic stress syndrome.” His
response was, “Yeah, it’s called anxiety.” Which I guess is sort of true, but
whatever it’s called, I’ve got a lot of stress and/or terror about
labor/babyhood and then just plain being able to manage four kids.
At which point, someone reading this is thinking, “Well,
then, you shouldn’t have had the fourth kid.” And my explanation may be hard to
understand if you don’t believe in God the way that I do—because both Brice and
I feel strongly that this was the right decision for our family, a prompting
from God, even though it may be hard. So here’s a different way to look at it.
Even if you don’t believe that God speaks directly to individuals to help and
guide them, have you ever done something that you thought was hard and scary
but you did it anyway because you felt like it would be a good thing? Maybe it
was a job application, a college application, asking a specific person on a
date, moving across country, training for a marathon. In so many of these
cases, we take the plunge even if we don’t feel ready, even if we’re not sure
we can handle it, because we believe it’s the best choice. And so here we all
are, with me both pregnant and also freaking out. Because the bottom line is
that even though I don’t feel ready, even though I’m pretty much terrified, I
believe it’s the right choice and that when we make good, hard decisions, God
makes it possible for us to do what is required.
5. Baby names—eek! It has already been pointed out to us
from several sources (my sister K being the first) that if we name #4 a name
that starts with E, our children will spell out CAKE. Now, I’m sure you can guess
that this is the most important consideration in finding a baby name. Who doesn’t
want their children to spell out a delicious dessert? So we’ve had quite a few
E suggestions. Which is good, because at the rate we’re going, we’ll have to
look through approximately a billion names to find two that we can sort of
agree on. This baby had just better help us when he gets here, because so far
the naming process is tough.
And that, my friends and foo, is how the pregnancy is really
going. Thanks for asking! :)
Brice and I dropped the girls off at the kids’ club for a
little while (they were very excited) and headed back to our room to sit around
and relax for a few minutes (we had Koa with us, so yes, we were just sitting
around and sort of relaxing at least), and finally it was all too much. I
turned to Brice and said, “I really need some permission from you to hate this
vacation.” And I cried ridiculously over it. Of course he said that was fine,
because he’s awesome that way, and I took a deep breath. We picked up the kids,
had dinner, and the first day was pretty much over. 
