Twelve Apples and a Blog

Twelve shiny, locally grown apples are sitting on my kitchen counter ten feet away next to the cutting board, apple corer, slow cooker and paring knife. Fortunately, they are all inanimate objects who can only beckon with their glaring presence. But I have a hot cup of apple cider, James Taylor Pandora Radio, and a blog I haven't updated in over a month because I have been TIRED, BUSY, and PREGNANT.

There, I said it. Come on people, if you know me AT ALL you know how hard it is for me to keep anything a secret. In spite of our miscarriage history, I've always announced pregnancies within a week of finding out myself. I just can't keep it in! How women can go without knowing they are pregnant for months is a mystery to me... I feel like every pore of me seeps out pregnancy hormones for any human being to sniff in the air the minute I find out. I have a radioactive glow that shifts to a pale-ish green around 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and then again around 8 p.m. It's so friggin' obvious that I'm pregnant, I don't even need to say anything.

Of course, the people that I did tell early on knew it long before I said anything. And you want to know why? TWO people in different circles said they kind of figured, since I didn't want a glass of wine that one night a few weeks ago. This says something about me that I won't point out because we're not talking about wine tonight.

This is my seventh pregnancy and probably my last. BW and I figured this time, maybe we would spare ourselves and everyone else the uncomfortable, "We're pregnant!/We're not pregnant anymore" fun, so we tried to keep it to ourselves. It was really hard the first few days, for all of the reasons I mentioned above (the radioactive glowing, etc.), but then I got excited about having a secret that only my husband and God knew about. That rarely happens - I'm just not a very private person.

My landmark requirement was hearing a heartbeat on the Doppler stethoscope (no, I didn't remember the name of that device all on my own), because we've never gotten that far and lost a baby. Every night for a week leading up to the appointment, I had vivid dreams about losing the baby - miscarrying here, there, and everywhere. It needed to stop. I'm grateful for the prayers of a couple people that I'm convinced helped the dreams end-- the night before my appointment, I dreamt of an ultrasound showing that it was a girl, and that all was healthy and fine. I needed that.

This past Monday, I heard that fast-paced swishswish. My doctor, who has been through each of my pregnancies with me too, might have been as relieved as me. I'll be 11 weeks tomorrow :)

:)

Hearing that heartbeat seemed to give BW and me permission to breathe again. In the past seven weeks, we didn't talk a whole lot about being pregnant, I think in a self-preservation effort. While I began developing all of the first-trimester symptoms of pregnancy, we carried on with our lives as normal. Now we have enough to cling to in order to give in to hope. And we're ready to share that hope for new life with others, able to rejoice, if not cautiously and prayerfully, together.

So that's why I haven't gotten around to making my homemade applesauce.