some postpartum thoughts

-Wow, food tastes so good. all. the. time.

-Baby hiccups are less annoying with baby on the outside. Now they're quite endearing.

-I am so grateful Amelia is calm. She eats and sleeps well and is not much of a spitter. I have several adorable burp cloths that won't get extensive use, but it's worth not having to do 30 loads of laundry a week.

-I missed you, skinny jeans. Someday I will even be able to button you again.

-How am I going to survive after Kyle's parents leave? My kids are up before 6am these days.

-But not Amelia! Is she supposed to be sleeping this much? Babies are so easy. Well, easy babies are easy.

-New fave article of clothing: spanx!

-Why do Mom Larsen's molasses cookies taste so good? No really. Zero self-restraint when it comes to these. They make a great breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Not OR snack. And.

-Look what I made last night! Kjerstin and Mom made the snowflakes. I'm so pleased we got this done before Christmas so Santa can leave lots of goodies for Amelia to share with me. Thanks, Santa! The rest of our stockings can be seen at the end of this post.

-I love church time. I'm not there, of course, but everyone else is and I'm enjoying my three hours of quiet alone time.

-It's so nice to have my body back to myself. I can walk, sleep on my back, put a child on my lap, hug Kyle, hold pee all day, get up unassisted, etc.

-It's Christmastime around here! Usually that means I'm overextending myself through crafts, service projects, treat baking, gift shopping, etc. This year I'm just focusing on loving this baby and the rest of my family. That's been real nice.

-Perhaps I'm still just running on adrenaline and when the sleep deprivation catches up to me I'll feel differently, but at least for now, I really don't mind waking up even at odd hours to the sound of little grunts and puffs and the sight of her little arms stretching all the way to her earlobes, mouth wide open and turning toward the sound of my voice. We love each other, little Minguh and me.

P.S. Here are my favorite photos taken from the hospital. Well, only if by favorite I mean worst pictures of me since the Great Chemical Burn of 2010.

Here I am looking really vexed that I've been relegated to laboring in the ER waiting room.

Here I am looking really vexed that I just had a baby. Or maybe just not fancying the idea of having my picture taken thirty seconds after giving birth.

Here is one of the many reasons that I wanted out of that hospital asap! Supposedly this entree was baked fish, but I took one bite of that white stuff down by the warm, soggy lemon slices and honestly couldn't tell if it was overcooked cauliflower, chewy mashed potatoes, or indeed fish. The only part I ended up eating was the plain piece of kale. Yes, I was that desperate.

Hospital food is a funny thing. Every single meal was kind of gross and disappointing, but I was still so excited every time room service knocked and brought in a tray. Recovering from childbirth plus those nausea-inducing hormones finally gone makes for one hungry Tiff!

Home stretch...

Yes, I had every intention of catching up on blog posts once and for all. Then my third trimester hit. Hard. Yep, "hard" has kind of been the theme of this pregnancy. I honestly amaze myself by surviving stressful/exhausting/exasperating episodes most days, both on my body and nerves. Certainly I could not be surviving without help of both seen and unseen sources.

To complicate matters, with six weeks to go, I am now officially nesting! This is good. This means the end is near....er than it has been. However, in my B.C. years (before Charlie), I actually had the physical and emotional energy to accomplish the tasks on my nesting list.

This time around, it's a longer list than ever, not to mention my daily responsibilities are greater and more hectic than ever. And yet, it remains rather draining to tackle a single item on my list. No, it should not be asking too much for me to organize a closet and wash the dishes all in one day. And it is. My anemia, that was for several weeks quite debilitating, is more or less under control, for which I am quite thankful, because "bed rest" is not in the least restful if children are carving paths of destruction all around me. I just feel like I have so little left to give after simply keeping my children alive and delivered to school and activities sort-of on time.

This all contributes to a surmounting anticipation for this little one (who we call Amelia) to arrive. True, I would love to have my bedroom finally decorated and stacks of important paperwork organized and filed away before her arrival usurps these and many other projects in priority. Still, I can't say I wouldn't welcome her any old day she might choose to come.

This blog post has inadvertently become an exception, but I do try in general not to complain excessively about pregnancy. It is a tremendous blessing. I also realize that the discomforts and burdens I feel will only translate into a greater fondness for and commitment to this little babe for whom I have already sacrificed much.

We are all so very excited for her grand debut. Ellie is baby-crazy as ever, Erik always hugs her goodbye before preschool and even asked for Amelia for Christmas, and Kyle confesses he feels greater happy anticipation for a baby than he's ever felt before. Of course, no one can hold stronger feelings for her than me. She is never absent from my consciousness and sentiments for an instant. A life that is literally shared with mine cannot be separated from my deepest emotions.

We all love you, sweet baby girl. Come soon, Amelia dear. Not too very soon, but just soon enough.

the reveal

One extremely long hour in the waiting room, one stressful and struggly hour in the dimly lit room with restless kids (remember the one hour wait?) and a passive-aggressive ultrasound tech who doesn't love kids, one passive-aggressive ultrasound tech calling me back in as we packed kids into car because she'd forgotten to take a photo and actually dared to politely blame it on my kids for distracting her... and we have a verdict:

I will NOT be returning the following mass of cuteness I have accumulated since my inconclusive ultrasound two months ago! And I WILL be headed to Goodwill's 50% off sale tomorrow morning for more.



Yeah, you're right. I wasn't planning on returning a jot of it, anyway. I'll admit it feels good to finally have a scientifically-founded confirmation, but the kids and I were already quite certain that a baby sister is on her way. I've had a great deal of intuitive revelations about this little nugget. We are anxious to see the rest of our predictions realized.

P.S. I left kitchen chairs in the living room overnight while my freshly-mopped floor dried. The next morning a rare and unprompted scene of harmony greeted me.

Baby bump

Just over half-way through this shpeel and finally me and my big-bellied self made it into a photo! My intention was to look all content and maternally glowy, by the way, not sweaty and sleepy. Alas, I am all of the above. Honestly, this middle trimester has been lovely. I'm a wee bit frightened about the coming months, however, as this belly's only gettin bigger...

Peur

Now that I've gotten my truest, foremost feelings out about being pregnant (in this post), I might as well confess that I'm also pretty scared. No, not constantly plagued with worries, but the nagging feelings are there.

See, I'm already weird. I'm a Mormon. A water-birther. A raw-plant-food-eater. A home-schooler. Just kidding. But still, four kids before our seventh wedding anniversary? Might be the weirdest of all, even for mainstream Mormon culture. (No really, check your stats next sacrament meeting.) That's cool and all-- many who want to have four kids by their seventh wedding anniversary are unable to, for a multitude of reasons. This all still feeds into my growing awareness that there is nothing "normal" about my lifestyle, and a fourth baby will certainly turn whatever is familiar and comfortable about my current life upside down and inside out.

I said earlier in this post that I just don't love babies. I was a little severe, but truly I am not eager to reenter the world of chaos, sleep deprivation, and social isolation that is raising an infant. The schedule cramped by nap times and frequent feedings, the juggling of household tasks and disciplining older children with one hand, the sheer madness that is running errands.

Yes, mothering small children is not for the faint of heart. I made the choice to have this child, as I've done three other times, almost purely on faith in a force much greater than myself. As I consider the practical details, though, I am already baffled and overwhelmed.

I know everything will work out fine. It always does. But... how? I have no answer and feel so very unprepared to have four smallies always with me at home. Five months' time... that's all I've got to resolve these sentiments...

Boy or girl? Wouldn't you like to know?

So, today was the big day! I woke up enormously excited and anxious for my ultra sound. I even got to leave all the kids behind at a friend's house and made it to the ultra sound office in forty minutes (including the time it took to figure out I had the wrong address and had gone in the completely wrong direction, and the time to pull over at a gas station to buy a liter of water I suddenly recalled I was supposed to already have drank that morning to prep for the ultrasound).

Upon my arrival at the office, the receptionist informed me that I did not indeed have an appointment because my insurance refused to cover this visit. She said she had tried to call me on my cell but had some sort of phone error (which must have been on her end because I've successfully received many incoming calls today). Then she told me to just reschedule for another four weeks out and hope that the insurance issues worked themselves out by then.

I'm generally a nice-ish person, but I was not feeling very nice at this moment. What I had gone through physically this morning to get there was only a part of it. When you are (under the influence of pregnancy hormones and) anticipating something so whole-heartedly, you feel as though even when that moment of revelation arrives, you could not possibly wait another moment for it. Let alone another MONTH.

I excused myself into the hallway to cry. I was thankfully able to get a hold of Kyle who, being the kind and wise husband that he is, encouraged me to just pay for it out-of-pocket and be seen today. (He just didn't want to deal with the emotional monster I would be for the next month if I didn't get to see my baby TODAY. Wise man.)

Well, they still discouraged me from being seen today, but I'm a fighter so finally, at approximately the time that my bladder of 32 oz of water was about to burst, Jessica called me in.

Jessica is a nice person (she did let me pee after she captured the necessary images), although not nearly as interested in celebrating my baby as I wanted her to be (read: not very talkative. I had to pry every piece of information out of her.) The first obstacle, though, was the layout of the room. Tell me if this makes sense: the screen is completely oriented away from the patient so there I lay in silence, belly covered in goo, while Jessica examines this and that and I (not so) patiently wonder if I'll EVER get a look at my child.

At least fifteen minutes later, she consents to give me a glimpse. Even after she's angled the screen as far as it will turn toward me, I still have to contort my body and use both my hands to pry my head into a position that affords a mediocre, sideways view of the screen.

Well, we had a good long go at it, long enough that both my arms had fallen asleep and the crick in my neck was making me cranky. Ultimately the one I have to blame for my greatest disappointment is my own unborn fetus! There it lay, all comfortably snuggled up with legs pressed together and ankles crossed.

So, clearly a girl, right!?

I knew this could happen, of course, but I was still in a daze of disbelief when I walked out of that office after an hour-long ordeal and knew nothing new of my child. I even remembered to ask if everything looked healthy and normal, and she couldn't even answer that! "Oh, your doctor will look at the pictures and let you know." When I see her in a month! Oh well, if the baby had an extra arm or something, I probably would've noticed myself.

Well, I had planned to dedicate this afternoon to shopping for baby girl accessories, so I'm just gonna go ahead and do that now anyway. Erik had a dream last night that he's having a baby sister, so I'm going to stick with that. Should've just stuck with his intuition in the first place-- cheaper than an ultrasound, at least.

Thoughts on baby

In a few short weeks I will be halfway through with this pregnancy! I am extremely grateful to be over the worst of it. That third trimester is nothing cool and comfortable, but I'll take it over the vomit-trocity of the first trimester any day.

I have so many thoughts and feelings about expecting a baby (and will have more on Thursday after my gender-revealing ultrasound!). My feelings have already evolved so much since the beginning, but thankfully I recorded some of those earliest thoughts in a journal entry, parts of which I will paste below. This entry was drafted before the onset of my World War Food so I was all sunshine and lollipops about being preggie. Now that I'm feeling mostly better, many of those happy sentiments are returning, so posting about them feels genuine again.

You'd think this ordeal would be nothing special on my fourth go at it, but not so. I was more anxious and excited to take a pregnancy test this time than ever before, more devastated when the results were initially negative, and more elated when I fished the pee stick out of the trash minutes later and discovered the very faint-colored and happy truth.

This pregnancy has felt quite different from my others (I mean more than just the increase of severity in my physical symptoms). I do believe I appreciate and enjoy motherhood now more than ever. There is no question that divine intervention was in on the timing of this one. Ellie and Erik are both truly supportive and excited to welcome a new baby. Kyle is also on board (which is kind of a first for us--yay!). Yes, we are STILL poor students, but at least we have prospects of a career in our foreseeable future. I have finally forsaken all other hobbies and distractions-- I am Mom through and through, with nothing there to resent or regret. Plus, Charlie very much needs to be dethroned.

Our life circumstances leading up to the pregnancy were just ideal. They had to be in order to soften our hearts toward the idea. Actually, I'd been quite soft for several months. But anyway, for a few weeks there, it seemed like every single day went just swimmingly. Nothing too notable, just happy and lacking stress. Charlie seemed to be behaving better, sleeping longer, talking more, acting cuter. (Not long after we got pregnant, Charlie started acting crazy again, but at least he was a peach when it mattered most.) The other kids also behaved well and ridiculously cutely. I made yummy meals and everyone ate them. We went out and enjoyed beautiful weather and did a lot as a family. Something cute or funny would happen and Kyle and I would meet each others’ eyes and exchange a knowing smile, basking in the mutual feeling of near-surreal happiness that our current situation frequently provided.

Now I mean it that our happiness was not determined by what was happening to us. We were just happy. However, some events certainly boosted our gratitude and comfort. For instance, Kyle’s interviews with Cox and eventually being hired for a summer internship, and Kyle waking up one morning being willing to have another baby.

Yes, in the middle of March, Kyle woke up one morning before any of the kids had stirred and woke me up gently by asking me if I really wanted to have a baby. Well, you know how coherent and friendly I am when I’m being woken up, but I managed to grunt in the affirmative. He simply replied, “well, maybe having another baby wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” after which the kids stormed into the room, Charlie started crying, and our day commenced, taking us in separate, busy directions until nightfall. I may not have looked awake, but I heard what he said loud and clear and could not stop thinking about it all day with a goofy grin plastered to my face.

Well, some people may call this t.m.i., but this is my story and I tell it like it is. So, I just happened to be approaching ovulation that very next day. Quel coincidence? I think not. See, this is how we knew deity was in on our plan. We both feel strongly that the child who is coming to us in December is supposed to be born to us at this time. Kyle was nowhere near considering having another baby, and then the day before I ovulate he just wakes up a changed man on this ever-weighty of decisions? No no, this baby is part of our God-given plan.

Julie Beck said (during some conference some time) that we don't have children with money, but with faith. I've always loved that statement and made it my motto when it comes to this particular decision. We also don't have children with spare time or lack of stress. We just have them with faith. Nothing else could adequately persuade us to have four children in our short marriage. We have absolute faith that our lives are being guided by a supreme creator and that we have a mission to complete on this earth, parenting these children being a great part of it.

(I have neglected to photograph my quickly-expanding waistline (no really, someone today commented that I look ready to pop! Aren't those comments supposed to be reserved for the final hours of pregnancy?), but I look more or less like this girl. Only much bigger. And not owning such a cute sweater dress (not that I'd wear it in Phoenix). And also no cute, mustardy couch in sight. But yeah, pretty close.)

The rumors are true...

Just in case there's still a feeble audience out there, I am finally feeling stable enough to declare an official apology for my lack of posts concerning

and
and

Don't get me wrong-- there has been plenty of kid, food, and fun to be had. Rather than do anything about absolutely any of that, though, I have dedicated my days to the pursuit of

and

and growing one of these.


Whew! I sure miss any semblance of energy and enjoyment of food, but it's all good because by


this bad boy (or girl) of a fetal humanoid will be out of me! And in even better news, I'm 14 weeks along and darn well better start feeling better soon. But if not, that's all good too because I figure I'm still pretty ridiculously fortunate to be doing what I'm doing here.

Thankfully, BEFORE the onset of first trimester symptoms, I recorded a few of my feelings of elation concerning my pregnant state. That account will be coming in another post, along with an incomplete record of whatever I've photographed over the past three months.

And just in case I didn't come through in a very positive tone there, YES we are ecstatic to be having yet another one of our kind.