abdomen changes My lowest abdominal muscles have been doing strange things over the last few days, especially on my left side. This has made me rather nervous, but I am pretty sure that it is just the muscles making way for the expanding uterus. It feels more like pinching than cramping, but it increases when I do much activity, so I have just rested for a lot of the weekend. As this has been happening, though, I feel like I am starting to show. Doesn't that seem ridiculous?? But we have both noticed the change. I've always had a bulgy mid-abdomen area, but the lower-down area between my hip points has long been flat from doing ballet in college. Over the last four or five days, though, it has become rather rounded, and it is really weirding me out! I am trying not to tighten those stomach muscles anymore - odd how you don't realize such things are such a habit until you try to stop - but it feels so weird to let that area relax and be pushed out from within. My jeans are not very comfortable anymore; they feel like they are cutting into that lower abdominal area and I can't wear them for more than a few hours. Even having the waistband of a loose skirt on that area is uncomfortable. What an odd sensation! I didn't expect to begin experiencing this so quickly.
2008-04-26 (6 weeks)
standing on grace Shifting Sand
by Caedmon's Call
Sometimes I believe all the lies
So I can do the things I should despise
And every day I am swayed
By whatever is on my mind
I hear it all depends on my faith
So I'm feeling precarious
The only problem I have with these mysteries
Is they're so mysterious
And like a consumer I've been thinking
If I could just get a bit more
More than my fifteen minutes of faith,
Then I'd be secure
My faith is like shifting sand
Changed by every wave
My faith is like shifting sand
So I stand on grace
I've begged You for some proof
For my Thomas eyes to see
A slithering staff, a leperous hand
And lions resting lazily
A glimpse of Your back-side glory
And this soaked altar going ablaze
But You know I've seen so much
I explained it away
My faith is like shifting sand
Changed by every wave
My faith is like shifting sand
So I stand on grace
Waters rose as my doubts reigned
My sand-castle faith, it slipped away
Found myself standing on Your grace
It'd been there all the time
My faith is like shifting sand
Changed by every wave
My faith is like shifting sand
So I stand on grace
My faith is like shifting sand
Changed by every wave
My faith is like shifting sand
So I stand on grace
2008-04-23 (5 weeks)
food adjustments The strangest adjustment for me thus far in this pregnancy is figuring out how to eat appropriately. I have been working toward a consistently healthy and self-controlled dietary life over these last few years, and it seems like it finally just clicked once we moved into our own place last month. For the last several weeks, I have been carefully tracking my calories and food intake, and I honestly think I have finally come to a place of true self-discipline! It was WONDERFUL to get to this point after having struggled with my food addiction for years. I have been able to control myself for short periods of time, like one full day at max, but now I have been in complete control of my eating habits all month... and it has been wonderful!
Because of all this, though, I am sort of lost as to how to eat during pregnancy. Up until the positive pregnancy test, I was eating 1200 calories a day, walking often, and losing about two pounds per week. The plan was that once I got down to my healthiest weight, I would then figure out how many calories I should consume to maintain that weight. But now I am just at a loss. I don't know how many calories I need to maintain where I am currently at, since it is just somewhere in between my high weight and my low weight where I have just now happened to land and now have as a starting pregnancy weight. It is unhealthy for the baby if I continue to lose weight now that this little embryo depends on me for nutrients, but I also don't want to gorge myself - in fact, I have tried a few times and found that I just can't; I really am unable to eat very much at a time anymore. I think I have found the happy medium, since I've been able to stay at the same weight for the last three days, but it is still kind of a struggle to eat enough to maintain that! 1500 calories a day feels like a ridiculously high amount now.
In addition to changing the amount, I have also been considering changing the content of my food. I read most of "What To Eat When You're Expecting" the day after we found out that we are pregnant, according to which I am not eating nearly enough calcium or protein. Probably because I have been rather veganish in my eating habits lately. I have a few bites of chicken or elk meat once a week or so, and a smidgen of goat cheese about as often, but other than that, meat and dairy have been totally out of my life for a while... and I couldn't be happier about it! I feel so much healthier without them. But this book admonished me that I was doing terribly nutritionally... which I didn't think was totally true, but you know how pregnant women can worry about such things... so I choked down some milk and had several bites of chicken. Both left me feeling miserable! Not just in the normal angry stomach kind of way, which is why I've been avoiding them, but in a nauseous kind of way... so I put the "What To Eat" book back on the shelf and am on the lookout for a vegan pregnancy book instead. I do think I'll kick up my hard-boiled egg white intake, since that has a lot of protein, and my tofu and soy cheese consumption, since those are good calcium sources which already work well in my diet. I'm also discovering the benefits of wheat germ. Hopefully I can find enough such foods that I would be fine nutritionally even without my extra supplements. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm a total vegan (obviously) but I have been working my way there, so I can't see going back now, especially if my pregnant body doesn't like the idea any more than my non-pregnant body did. I eat an abundant, widespread amount of vitamin-packed organic fruits and veggies, sprouted grain cereals and breads, and I think I'll be just fine.
That is probably an overabundance of convoluted information (sorry!), but what I am trying to say is that it is weird, having just finally figured out how to take care of my body and which foods work best for me, to now be adjusting and figuring that out all over again. It stressed me out for a day or two until I just decided to keep eating the way I had been (although eating a bit more of it) and trust that my body or midwife would tell me soon enough if I need to make changes in my diet. Although to complicate things even further, I now find myself RAVENOUS after about two hours of not eating... but even one bowl of applesauce makes me feel bloated. So strange.
2008-04-22 (5 weeks)
hope in the Lord So. I am pregnant. We are delighted in about ten thousand ways but have been wavering on when to tell people. It is so nice to keep it a secret, but at the same time I am so happy and full of joy that I want other people to be able to rejoice with us too. The last time we were pregnant, we kept it a secret, which was wonderful until we miscarried, at which time it became really awkward because people hadn't been with us through the joyfulness, so it was hard for them to be with us through the grieving.
I am realizing already that it is going to be difficult to think about this baby without also thinking of the one we lost. Fortunately, God has brought us through so much healing in these last seven months that I think we are able to now think in a more nostalgic way about our first child and first pregnancy than in a stabbing pain kind of way, even rejoicing that our child has already gained what we would have ultimately hoped for him or her: safe harbor in the arms of the Lord. What better could a parent desire for their child than to rest safe with Jesus? Of course we grieve, because that is still right and good, but we do not grieve as those who have no hope.
This last week was a really difficult one for us - stick with me as I talk about this miscarriage stuff a little longer, I really do have a point. It was the week that our first baby would have been due, and it felt like Passion Week to me. Even having already walked with Jesus so long in this valley, I still had been looking forward to and dreading the week of April 19th. Monday the 14th was particularly difficult. I have never identified so much with Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem and just having to choose to walk the path of suffering. Obviously, His sacrifice was much greater than any I have made for His sake, but it is comforting in some small way to be able to fill up in the sufferings of Christ. Only in my case, the week would end (or so I thought) with the suffering rather than with the hope.
As the week wore on, and as Jesus gently comforted me and helped me to continue this grieving process, I began to notice some changes in my body. I was already suspicious that I might be pregnant, but then, I am always suspicious! So I had to take this, too, to Jesus. Worries about the timing, worries about my physical health, all of that stuff. And He did take it, because He is good like that, and by the time April 19th came... the dreaded end of the week!... God had done so much in Keith & me both. We ended up having a wonderful day together, just trusting the Lord and walking in Him, talking about the baby we lost and the baby that we might already have conceived. We had a lovely walk around Tubbs Hill and went out to our favorite restaurant, then came home to take the pregnancy test. By this time I was scared that we wouldn't be pregnant after all and that we'd have our hopes up for nothing... see how fickle I am? Scared no matter what God brings! When Keith told me the results of the test, I could hardly believe the goodness of the Lord. The verse on our daily calendar for Saturday was Isaiah 65:24 - " 'Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear,' says the Lord." Truly, this winter has been such a wretchedly painful path of suffering for us, and yet how good of God to answer the desire of our hearts - to have another child - ahead of time so that April 19th would end not in sorrow but in hope.
Truly, the Lord has been good to us. I am so thankful for the hope and rest He has given us in Himself during this time when there was no possible source of hope or rest anywhere else.
