pregnancy

I know this is not a surprise to anyone who has been pregnant or been around someone who is pregnant, but growing a person is hard.  There have been some unexpected ups and downs.  How any pregnant woman continues to exercise, let alone walk is beyond me.  It takes all my will not to waddle in public.  The waddle, I have found, isn't because I have lost my center of gravity but because of constant pain in multiple parts of my body that you can't do anything about.  There are so many other things too, severe heart burn, dizzy spells, insomnia, too frequent urination, severe constipation, and the fact that anytime I sneeze I pee my pants are all little unwelcomed gifts from this growing person inside me.  

AND THEN I FEEL THE BABY MOVE.

When this life inside me moves (and it does often) I feel the heavens open.  I can't believe that God has given me the gift of creating a life.  I get to carry a baby.  It's almost like my personal secret.  I go through the day literally having personal conversations with this new baby.  The little one inside of me will rock, kick, or roll and I reach down and caress them back.  We are in our own little world that often times others around aren't even aware of.  It is a dream come true.  These experiences bring a new aspect to my relationship and thoughts of my other children as well.  I am now able to imagine them having the same experience with their tummy mommy's and how special that time was for them to have with these beautiful babies.  I always knew it in my mind, but now I can physically imagine it.   

My body has changed so much.  It is pretty incredible to see and I will sometimes walk by a mirror and be surprised at how big I am.  I was looking through pictures of a beach day we had last year and could hardly believe the difference between myself then and myself now.  My weight gain doesn't bother me.  I know that I am changing to give this baby the best chance at a healthy life and I love that I get to play such an active part in taking care of this life already.    

We are all so excited for this baby to join our family.  It is funny to see the boys reactions day to day about it.  Evan is excited, but I think at this point its kind've old news for him.  I feel bad because I think this is in part because he is in school all day and because he is in a wheelchair.  He is gone a lot of the day so he doesn't have as many chances at feeling the baby move inside of me and when he is home it is hard to get him into a position quick enough that he could feel it.  During church this week we were having some cuddle time and the baby was moving like crazy.  It kept kicking Evan and for the first time Evan seemed totally into it all.  I am so grateful that he got to have that experience.  Landon is by far the most excited one in the family.  He was asking every single day how long until Easter (because he knows that's when the baby is due).  I finally made him a calendar so he can now mark off everyday and see for himself when the baby might come.  Cameron has zero idea that he is going to be a big brother in 5 1/2 weeks.  As for Justin and I we are trying to soak up every last bit of this pregnancy, good and bad.  We know this is it for our family, which makes me sad.  Still I mostly just feel an overwhelming love for my Heavenly Father and the path that he laid out for me.  It isn't always an easy road, but it is my road and I am so grateful for the journey thus far.  

family time

Our Christmas vacation was a beautiful whirlwind full of emotions!  Since, as always I am so late getting this out, I am going to touch on the highlights of the vacation.

I love Christmas!  I am one of those die hard, sappy, emotional about everything Christmas people.  I love the decorations, I love the food, I love the sugar, I love the presents, but by far the thing that I love the most is the family-time that Christmas brings.  The kids are on school break.  My handsome hubby is on vacation from work.  Extended family sacrifices and flies to one place just to be together.  I love it!!!  I would give up the decorations, food, and everything else just to have those moments with my family.

I adore watching my kids interact with their aunties, uncles, and grandparents.  They relish in the time that they get to spend with these special people in their lives.  They talk about them when we are away from them.  

By far the best part about my break this year was spending time with my sisters.  They each chose to stay in the house, which meant that I got to spend time with them and their fabulous husbands.  I didn't have the opportunity growing up to spend a whole lot of time with them.  I am so much older than both of them that by the time I left for college they were still pretty young.  It was (and is always) so fun to stay up late together, cuddle on the couch, sunbathe in the yard or at the beach, do each others nails... I just love them, and I feel like every time I get to see them we just get closer.

Now since I usually have 1-2 kids on my hips I don't get to take a whole lot of great pictures.  Thankfully Alycia DOES take lots of pictures and I swiped some of hers!  Thanks Alycia!!!

 

Evan's surgery

I had written this before we left on our Christmas vacation and just never got it posted.

(don't know how I missed that one!)  Anyway, here is how our surgical experience went down.

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Evan has never been a big eater and I have dreaded and stressed over every calorie his tiny little body has consumed in the last 5 years or so.  After about a year of research and stress we made the decision that Evan should have a feeding tube.  He will be required to continue to follow all of his "food rules" and we will be supplementing his feeding at night while he is sleeping.

When we first made the decision he was quite distressed by it, and eventually he just became resigned to it.  I know he wasn't thrilled, but he knew it had to happen so he didn't fight it anymore.  We are hoping to accomplish a couple things with this new adventure.

1)We hope that Evan will start to grow better than he has in the past.
2)We hope that the night time feedings will boost his energy during the day.
3)We now have a back up plan for feeding when Evan is sick and goes on a food strike.

The surgery was the first one of the day so we left our house at 5:30AM.  Having that time alone with Justin and Evan was such a beautiful thing for me.  I needed Justin's strength to hold it together (I don't like knowing that my baby is going to feel pain) and I just needed to hold my Evan as much as I could.

By the day of surgery Evan wasn't as afraid of the procedure because he had decided that he would be able to stay awake.  He told the anesthesiologist that he was going to have a competition with him and didn't think that he would be able to get him to go to sleep.  (hint: Evan lost that competition, but scored points for effort).

They let me take Evan back to the operation room.  I laid him on the operation table and started to sing him to sleep.  Evan was true to his word and he did put up a fight.  I held one hand and a nurse held his other hand.  As I was coming to the conclusion of the second verse Evan took his hand away from the nurse and reached up, touching my face as he peacefully went to sleep.  I hardly finished the song because I was crying and I left my angel in the care of his doctors.

Thankfully the surgery wasn't very long and after an hour we received word that everything had gone text book perfect.  We saw him a half an hour after that.  Watching him try to recover from the anesthesia was brutal for this parent to watch.  He was in a ton of pain and nothing really settled him.  Finally they were able to get his pain under control and he started to come to his senses.

It took a while to get a room, but we didn't have to go to ICU which is what the original plan was.  We stayed in the hospital for 3 days and came home.  Evan gets better every day and is now even showing an interest in doing his own care for the surgical sites.  I know this was just a minor surgery, but it is still surgery and I am so grateful that Evan came out of it alright.  We look forward to the exciting prospects that this tube might offer to help Evan through his day to day.

it was a long day for all of us ... and yes, Justin is actually sleeping!!!

after a whole day of fasting Evan finally gets to have a popsicle!

Home Depot came and did a project with the kids.  Evan had just lost his IV and was thrilled to go without having to be hooked up to a machine.

the kid who doesn't eat very much was soooo excited to have his first real food the next day!

a special visitor came!!!

and he had EXACTLY what Evan requested for a present.

The brothers came with daddy for a movie night ... everyone but me and the baby fell asleep.

Evan got a "bath" before we went home :0)

TUMMY BEFORE AND AFTER

back to reality

Well it has come.  Winter break is over.  Vacations and trying to sleep in are at an end.  Tomorrow I will have to wake up my kiddos before they are ready to get up, get them ready and send them off to school.  In some ways it will be nice to get back to routine, on the other hand my life will once again be dominated by schedules.

Next major milestone on the Palmer family schedule ... have a baby!!!  (In approximately 14 weeks)  Crazy!!!

pregnancy: thus far

Pregnancy has been an interesting experience.  Never did I expect it to be a piece of cake.  In fact I've had so many medical "issues" with my body in the past that I almost expected pregnancy to be tricky.  I'm not completely naive about what pregnancy and delivery can look like, heck I've been watching my friends have babies for about 11 years now.  It is really interesting though to discover first-hand some of the "beautiful" aspects of pregnancy.

In the beginning I felt like I had the flu 24/7.  No I didn't throw up, but I always felt like I was going to.  Because I was constantly nauseous I was really tired.  I mostly just wanted to sleep.

One of my very favorite discoveries (cough, cough) is best summed up by something Justin tells people.  He said that for years and years he heard about this mystical pregnancy "glow".  He now knows that this "glow" is actually a haze of toxic gas that follows me wherever I go!  I wish I was kidding too, but even my kids started to ask me if I had a tooting problem.  I told them that it isn't actually me tooting but that the baby is tooting and obviously we will need to teach them to have better manners when they are born.  :-)

We rented a Doppler so we could hear the baby's heart beat whenever we wanted to.  It has eased my mind through this whole thing and the boys and I have sure had fun.  They love to sit and listen to the babies heart beat, then mine, and then we spend some time listening to each of their hearts beat.  It really has been fun to see my children have this very new experience of building a family.

Speaking of the boys.  They have collectively decided that if this baby is a boy it will be named Scooter and a girl will be named Rainbow!  Landon will switch between these two names and talk to my stomach.  While I am not going to publicly say that those are bad names (heaven forbid I offend any "Rainbows" out there, we will NOT be naming this baby either of those names.

We have chosen to not find out the gender of the baby.  We have our reasons, but the biggest of these is that we think it is fun to have that surprise at the end of the experience.  It drives everyone else around us mental that we aren't going to find out!

I felt like I didn't really look pregnant until last Monday.  I went to bed Sunday evening looking chunky and woke up on Monday morning looking pregnant!!!  Even my girlfriends all agree that I "popped"!

I spent many many years coming to terms with my infertility.  In fact I would say it was a full seven years before I could say that I was actually completely alright with my lot in life.  Though I had completely accepted my infertility there was a single aspect of pregnancy that I was unbelievably jealous about.  I wanted to know what it felt like to have a baby move inside of me.  To have that connection to a life that nobody else gets to experience.  To be that mother carrying a child is such a special privilege.  I was BY FAR the most excited to feel this baby kick!  It is literally what I've been waiting for the whole time!  Everyone said it would feel like flutters, a slight movement.  I was feeling NOTHING.  Believe me I think I would have even counted gas bubbles as movement, but my stomach was almost rigid.  The night before I hit the 20 week mark I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, and all of a sudden a was poked from the inside out!  My eyes sprang open and it happened one more time!!!  I immediately started to cry.  It had happened.  I could feel my baby move inside of me, a literal dream come true.  I have to admit that since then I have been quite selfish almost willing this baby to move more often.  I want to feel them all the time!  Last week Justin was able to feel one small kick, but it will be a beautiful thing to share this with him as well.

This whole thing is flying by so quickly!  I am so used to having to wait years for a baby that it seems that 9 months is no time at all!  Yes we actually did get all of our children quickly through adoption, especially when you consider how lucky we are to have been chosen for 3 beautiful babies, but from the start of the paper work to placement it was over a year and a half for all of them and longer for Cameron.

Overall this experience has been incredible, breathtaking, and miraculous!  I never said that I wanted the "joy" of pregnancy and delivery.  I have always yearned for the "experience" of pregnancy and delivery and I still cannot believe that it is happening to me!  

baby scooter