Baby, Baby, Baby

No, not the Justin Beiber song.  Ick.
Think more along the lines of what happens to be growing inside of me right now (minus 2 babies, of course).  Per my last post, we're expecting Baby G #1 in January, and I figured now would be a great time to recap our adventure of finding out we are entering into the unknown and exciting land of parenthood.
First though, I must share this photo:

Story of my life.
Someone asked me the other day if we knew what we were having.  I looked at them and said, "A puppy."  I can't wait to be 38 weeks pregnant and have people ask me when I'm due just so I can say "I'm not pregnant".
Goodness I'm so mean, but hey, you only get to do this a few times in your life!  I like to have fun with it.  Life is too short, afterall.

So, back to Baby G.  What an adventure this has been so far.  I will be 11 weeks in exactly an hour and a half, which means baby is the size of a lime (I miss margaritas!).  It's hard to believe, but baby has already grown so much--when we found out we were expecting, baby wasn't even the size of a poppyseed.  How incredible is that?!

K and I were not planning on our family growing yet.  I am finishing up my Masters--only have 6 1/2 weeks left--and he just started his.  We are anticipating a PCS move in the next year and a half and our small 1 bedroom apartment just can't handle any more growth, especially with two giant fur children involved.  I love how God changes our plans!

We were on our honeymoon, which I also addressed in my last post.  Toward the end of our trip, my nose got so incredibly stuffy I couldn't stand it.  I seriously thought I was going to die.  I felt so crummy because of my nose, that I spent most of that entire day doing this:

I looked like death.  My mother put it kinder: "You look like you just went through labor". Hmm, foreshadowing anyone?
What I couldn't understand was that I otherwise felt normal.  I was tired, of course, but I attributed that to our late nights and travel.  Boy, was I wrong!

As we prepared to leave Punta Cana, I was hit with the worst nausea ever, and I never get nauseous.  I remember telling K that there was no way I would make it through a 4 hour flight.  Coming from a family of nurses, I figured I was just suffering from side effects of post-nasal drip.  Go figure.

The next day was Mother's Day.  Mind you, I had absolutely no reason to think I was pregnant and wasn't even thinking about starting our family for at least another year, however, when I woke up that morning I had a fleeting thought of, "This is my last Mother's Day not being a mommy." I thought I was so strange and figured that was just a result of how tired I was because obviously the only thing that could make me that tired was travelling.

May 16th, I woke up very early for work (yes, I'm one of those lucky people who has a job they actually miss when they go on vacation) and started getting ready to shower.  I wasn't due for my monthly ladies adventure for another five days but for some strange reason decided to take a pregnancy test before my shower, knowing full well that it would come up negative.  So, I did my thing, put the test on the counter, turned around to get the shower going and turned around to grab the test and throw it away.  Except, I saw this

Well, that's never been there before!  I stared at it for a few minutes before it even hit me what I was seeing.  Then I started to shake that poor test like an Etch-a-Sketch because, obviously, I had a broken test.  The line didn't disappear.  In my entire life, I have never experienced the kinds of emotions that I experienced all at once.  There was joy, fear, happiness, sadness all rolled into one.  There's no guidebook that tells you what to expect when you find out you're expecting!

I had always thought I would tell K about our pregnancies in a really cute way (Thanks, Pinterest), but all creativity went out the window at that moment.  K was still asleep, and I walked into our bedroom and said, "Honey, you might want to wake up."
He didn't move.
"Honey, you seriously might want to wake up right now."
So he groggily opened his eyes and looked at me like I was nuts for waking him up at 6:30am on his day off.
All I did was show him the test.  Then I said, "It's positive."
He grinned, said, "Congrats, babe." and put his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes.
I love my even-keeled husband.  He obviously needs his coffee in the mornings.

About 30 seconds later, his head popped off the pillow and he said, quite worried, "Shouldn't you be going to a doctor?!"
Goodness, I love him.

So, by 7:30am we were on our way to the base clinic to get what we already knew confirmed.  We were having a baby!
I will never forget that phone call from the nurse.  They go through your information whenever they call you and she asked me, "Are you Active Duty or a dependent?"
"Oh, I'm just a spouse."
I could tell by her voice that she was smiling when she said, "Oh honey, you're not just a spouse, you're a mommy."
I burst into tears of joy.  Let the pregnancy emotions begin.

This picture was taken the day we found out.

I have a feeling I'm going to miss that flat belly.

Being pregnant hasn't changed too much in my daily life.  I'm still way too busy for my own good (K is always telling me to slow down and take it easy), working full time and taking four MA classes.  I've been super fortunate not to be sick hardly at all unless BBQ is involved, which is rather unfortunate.  I haven't really had much meat either, which is a bummer.  Bagels, strawberry cream cheese, milk and peaches are my favorite.
The greatest change I've noticed is how tired I am.  I am usually a go go go type of person and am able to wake up whenever.  Not anymore.  The earliest I can get out of bed is 7:30am, and that's pushing it (maybe shouldn't have scheduled that 7:30am Chiropractic appointment tomorrow, whoops).  I've recently started getting the occasional heartburn, but even that is tolerable.
Baby is being nice right now.

We told our families about a week after we found out we were expecting.  K's family happened to be all together that Saturday, so we met them for dinner and broke the news.  This will be the second grandbaby, so naturally, they're thrilled.
On my side, this is the very first grandbaby on for both sides.  We told my family at my little brother's baseball game.  My twin sister was in on the secret (I wish we had recorded her reaction, it was very similar to this SNL skit... she really did freak out like that. It was awesome) and got everyone together for a picture.  When we were settled, we turned to my Dad's mom and said, "Hey grandma, did you know that today is National Celebrate Great-Grandparents Day?".  She didn't catch it right away, but my mom sure did!
Once we got through the numerous askings of "Are you serious?", everyone was thrilled and I can't count the number of times my dad asked when he could post it on Facebook.

So now, the news is public.  Baby is growing and is healthy.  Mommy is growing (bye bye, skinny day jeans) and healthy.  Life is beautiful and even though this baby was a surprise, we couldn't be more thrilled.  God knows what He's doing and we are ready to embrace this new adventure!

Challenging is not Equal to Impossible

Most days, I feel as though my marriage to K is the same as any typical marriage.  We are normal and pretty basic from day to day....however, being a military family does have its challenges that I don't always recognize until the heat of the moment.  I knew that we'd have some unique challenges with our unique situation, but I have only recently began to grasp the significance of our military life. 
I am one of the first of my friends to get married, so I don't have other marriages that I can really compare my own to except for those of people in my own family.  I grew up in a fairly large family of 6, where my mom worked part time as a nurse and my dad worked full time at the post office.  I saw how dad would come home every night around 5pm, we'd always have dinner together, mom and dad would tuck us in at night and go to bed together around 10pm.  That was my normal and that is what I thought I would have one day for my own marriage.
When I met K, I never expected the results of our relationship.  I had never been exposed to the military before him and only knew it from what we read in the papers and saw on the news (meaning: deployments, war and deaths).  It wasn't until I became one that I really understood what being a military wife meant.  People so readily recognize our husbands as serving our country, and so often we get lost in the shuffle.  A good friend of mine put it best when she called military wives the "forgotten ranks"
I have always been a planner.  I like to know where my days will go, what I will be doing, how it will be done.  I never saw myself marrying a military man, but then again, God's plan for our lives may not be what we expected.  My favorite Bible verse is from Proverbs and says "In his heart, a man plots his course, but the Lord determines his steps" (16:9).  I had my life planned, and then K happened.  I laugh because our God has a sense of humor.

All of that to say that on certain days, I realize the truly unique situation our family is in.  My husband does not work a 9-5 Monday through Friday job.  I never know what time we can eat dinner, because some days he gets home at 6, others he doesn't get home until 9.  We don't get to go to bed at the same time every night (in fact, he's been in bed for an hour and a half already).  It has been an adjustment for me to switch from my old "normal" to our "normal".  What I have come to realize the more and more military and non-military wives I meet is that there is no normal.  Every family has its challenges and things they need to adapt to on a day to day basis.  Ultimately, it is our reaction to those challenges and the ways we choose to deal with them that truly matters.

Being a military spouse, you learn to deal with a variety of things in new and unique ways.  Very rarely do you actually complain about things.  Don't get me wrong, we cry and get frustrated.  But once we vent and have a good cry, we move on.  K will be deploying late this Spring.  We will be apart for his birthday (for a 2nd year), my birthday (for the 3rd year) and for our first wedding anniversary.  Does that really stink?  Oh yes, but you learn new and creative ways to make those moments special.  Perhaps the best thing I have learned is that a day is "just a day".  We celebrated K's birthday last year 3 months after the fact.  My military wife friends are rubbing off on me--you just learn to be creative and flexible I guess.

I have had people tell me that they could never do what me and the thousands of other military wives do on a day to day basis.  When you think about it though, most of us said the same thing before we met our husbands.  We are no different from wives whose husbands come home every night.  We are not superheroes.  We are simply women standing behind our men, through the good times and bad.  Taking our vows to a whole new level.  I am, by no means, the posterchild of what a military wife should be.  I still complain, I still have my fits when I find out we have to change plans again, I still have so much to learn....but the Lord has provided me with friends who are in that same place.

Our lives are challenging but with the support of friends, family and our Lord, they aren't impossible.  I humbly admit that I have so much that I don't know, but my heart is open and I have a heart for other young women in similar situations.  I believe that military marriages can be just as fulfilling and incredible as a civilian marriage.  I want to see the divorce rate for military couples decrease.  I want these couples to know that while our situation and challenges are unique, that we serve a God bigger than all of that.  That our marriages can thrive rather than survive.

This may be just a simple blog, but this is my heart, and I look forward to learning and growing with you, my readers, as we tackle this journey together.