Baby Bump and Telling the Kids

Being quiet the past 8 weeks wasn't due to lack of ups and downs to write about but more the energy and coherency to convey them. I finally completed a catch-up entry, five pages long, single spaced, before pics. Don't worry, I'll break it up into several posts to make it easier on your senses. No build up to a grand reveal this time, just recording our living.

The baby bump has already grown big and clumsy but I felt more like myself yesterday than I have in months. The two belly shots so far have been taken by iPad and Amelia, neither capturing my head or chins.

10 weeks:

17 weeks:

Is this refreshment a nonspecific grace, Jason's spring break (allowing me to sleep in), no extra emotional strains for a good week or so, getting to 17-1/2 weeks in this pregnancy? Whatever, I'll take it. I am physically feeling better. That means I had energy enough to make it to bedtime without a nap or crash. I can finally smell or think about something foul without immediate gagging. I also have had the motivation to cook. This is huge, a passion I've dearly missed.


Doctors only prescribe some treatment options to "highly motivated patients/families". I first heard the criteria when discussing the meticulous keto diet for Lydia's seizures. Indeed at the time I was a walking computer devoted almost solely to her care, complete with line graphs and charts in hand and milligrams per milliliter of every dose of medication in memory. From student, to wife, to employee, to home maker, to mother, whatever my role, I had a history of being all in. Highly motivated was an understatement.

I had to become multi-focused with the additional kids, dividing the motivation but not decreasing. Then boom! Grief buried, stripped, disabled that part of me. It was like morphing from someone who loved their job to one who returns day by day out of sheer obligation and lack of other options. I hesitate to officially adopt the label of depression after reading this article but the concept fits. I heard the passing comment on a crime show that depression is one of the few things that can override a mother's nurturing instinct. Amen. Cooking is one evidence of my style of nurturing resurfacing.

I've come across a scarce few mothers online and in person who can personally address the challenge of parenting many young kids while acutely grieving. One shared that when she left her son's body at the hospital, she headed home with great resolve to pour everything she had into her remaining brood. She was then shocked to realize she had nothing available to give them. It's heartbreaking, disappointing, daunting, despairing, and guilt-producing. That's where I remained when we learned about this baby, preventing pregnancy having been one of the few things we'd been diligent about in our state of apathy.

The house remodel and beach vacation were first big sweet tastes of renewal of my ability to care, feel something other than pain, deeply enjoy again. Those bursts didn't carry over to make my 8 wk appointment any easier. One of my dear special needs/bereaved mom friends had a second trimester stillbirth days before. And the 18 months between Lydia's last hours and this ultrasound melted into nothing. It felt like I was immediately switching from looking for signs of death to looking for signs of life. Would there be a heartbeat?

I had just read this poignant article describing grief as a grand piano which plops into center stage of you life's play. You have to learn to carry on around it's disrupting and awkward presence...eventually working it off to side stage for most scenes. It was as if joy was auditioning for the returning lead role and grief was insanely jealous. They were determined to battle it out within me. I was so full it was hard to function. My midwife shares a building with Lydia's longest running pediatrician. The parking deck mocked me. I wept in the van, then soldiered in for a neutral appointment where I ignored both joy and grief in order to maintain composure. That visit and the two since have been fine, not giddy like a first-time-mom but truly fine.

The real highlight was then telling the kids. I had grand plans of a scavenger hunt with clues leading to the big news. We did pull it off, with shorter kids crying over taller kids barreling past them and such. I didn't get a pic of all the clues but here are a few:

(The videos don't show up on my iPad but they are there on the desktop. This first video is the reading of the first clue.)

Feel free to wager a guess at who just got in trouble for shoving her way to the next card.

We staggered the clues inside and outside to make the kids run around a bit.

I was still proud of our monumental effort to be fun. Their excitement through the whole thing was infectious. They didn't understand what "Josiah's going to be a big brother" meant.

If you are able to see the video, even Amelia is expressing general euphoria. She has no "clue".

When we broke down and said "We're.Having.A.Baby. It's.In.Mama's.Tummy." Sophie did her own weeping, out of pure joy.

She hasn't stopped loving on my belly since.

Acknowledging Sophie's pain and loss over her birth family has provided an avenue for our bonding, that and her ever thrill-factor and infatuation with my state! Sophie's proceeded to write her first letter to her birthmom. One of the things she shared is that she loves loves loves little kids and babies.


Next installment coming soon!