The Backseat

Pin It Eleven weeks pregnant.

I’m hitting the point now where little almost nothing moments capture me like quicksand and remind me with a captivating nudge that I’m really having a baby. It hasn’t been like this from the beginning. Having been through this before, I really thought that carrying another life inside of me would be a little piece of cake. After all – for all of my worries and anxieties with Matthew; for all of the discomforts of what seemed like a never-ending pregnancy – having him has turned my life into a little piece of Heaven I never knew existed on Earth. He is perfect in a way that I never knew that I could see another person; in a way that every other human on the planet falls so short of being. Since having him, I haven’t been able to think of the pregnancy that brought him (and any more that we might have) here as anything less than magical.

When I found out that I was pregnant, Spencer was standing right there beside me and I high-fived him from the toilet, triumphant and proud and happy. In the first few weeks of most pregnancies though, the magic takes a place in the backseat of a woman’s mind. And the list that you see in the first few pages of any pregnancy book that has ever been written – the list of symptoms - is given life inside of you that seems to be even bigger than the life of your child. And while you’re throwing up the only thing you thought you could stomach for breakfast, it’s easy to forget that your pregnancy is anything more than an illness no different from a severe cold or a stomach virus, that you just have to get through for the sake of feeling at all like the you, you used to be.

This pregnancy, as far as symptoms go, is different than my pregnancy with Matthew. With Matthew, for instance, I threw up pretty regularly while this time my stomach is just consistently coasting on a sea of nausea that dips and waves throughout the day without ever just settling. I’m constantly just trying to balance my diet around the fickle nature of my insides, which – when I’m successful – only helps me to not vomit, and does nothing to stop the discomfort. I’ve only thrown up about four times so far, which is nothing in comparison to the score I’d tallied up with Matthew by this time. Hopefully though (and by “hopefully” I mean FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE) my morning sickness will dissipate over the next few weeks the way that it did in my first. I can’t wait to just be able to pack my lunch for work again without it feeling like a blind hit-or-miss gamble (Hm, will I even be able to LOOK at this soup by lunch time today without vomiting, or will I get lucky and ACTUALLY be able to eat a few bites of it??)

But over this weekend, the first of only a few of those moments happened; the kind of moments that stop you in your tracks. I walked into the living room, by a spot on our area rug that surrounded our coffee table with Matthew’s old infant hand-me-downs mid-way through their trip from the basement storage room to the attic. Bouncy seats that cradled him when he was too weak to even lift his neck; a play mat that Mary used to crawl underneath of with him, trying to make him smile before he was even old enough to laugh. And without meaning to, these old baby things that I’ve seen a hundred and two times since they’ve been outgrown seemed to grab me by the arm and tell me for the first real time that those little immeasurable moments of unforgettable Heaven I had with my son and had to let go, are going to take me over once again. And when it happens, my reality won’t be hugging the toilet or sleeping halfway through my Saturday… It’ll be magic. The kind of magic that will never, ever again find it’s way into the backseat.

A quick update

Pin It Since I’ve been a lot more exhausted in this first trimester than I anticipated being, my life schedule has been flipped a little upside down. In the time that I normally spend updating my blog, I’ve been either sleeping in, napping on the weekends or getting to bed earlier. But that isn’t to say that the past few weeks haven’t been worth blogging about. Here’s a brief peek at what’s been missed.

Matthew's graduated to big big undies!!

This is Matthew trying to see the turtle
on the back of his big boy undies

And this is his precious little hiney.

pees on the potty: 3!

But THIS is the very first POOP on the potty!

Woo-Hoo!

We also went skating. Matthew's first time.

It. Was. Hilarious.

And for the first time ALL WINTER, we finally

made it back to the park.

Matthew's first time on the Big Kid swing.

Matthew's 47,389,247,328,974,329th time

down the slide

Daddy making Matthew laugh on the swing

next to him.

Love.