My Pregnancy Journal - Week 5, 32 Weeks

 Psalm 127:3-5  Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

I am really dragging the past few days. So this may not be the best update ever, haha. Sorry!

Pregnancy Stuffs:

• As I mentioned, I'm dragging. I feel soooo tired. The sleep thing is getting to me. I'm taking naps, trying to sleep as much as I can at night, but I am just plain tuckered out.
• My feet and ankles seem to be doing a little better with the swelling, as long as I rest and keep them up. Since I'm so tired, I've been laying around a lot more, which means my feet actually are almost normal looking. Yay! If you had seen them last pregnancy, sheesh, you would understand how excited I am about keeping the swelling in check!
• Baby Aaron is moving around in new and weird ways. I used to just feel him tapping about here or there, but now its like he is running across the front of my stomach from one side to the other. Its pretty funny...except when he is doing it at 2 AM. LOL.
• I'm starting to waddle. Don't laugh at me. 
• The past week has seemed like 3 weeks. The rest of this pregnancy is going to seem sooooo long! I forget how it always gets at the end. The excitement over being pregnant is done - now you just are excited to see your baby and be done, so the time crawls. 
• I got my belly wrap girdle type thing in the mail. When Will was born, the first time I got out of bed I felt like my organs were sloshing around and going to fall out the front of my body! I know, that sounds weird and creepy, but its how it felt! It disturbed me greatly, so I ended up using the baby wrap that I had packed in our hospital bag to just wrap around my stomach and hold myself together. It worked GREAT and I felt so much better, but I looked weird wearing it, haha. I wore it for the first few weeks at home and it really helped me heal and feel better, so this time I decided to invest in a postpartum belly belt thing (I don't actually know what they are called...) to use under my clothing after Aaron is born. I'm hoping it works the same as the wrap did, and if not, then I still have my wrap just in case! Haha.

Prayer Requests:

• My grandmother's younger brother passed away very late Thursday night from a heart attack. He is the first of her siblings to go, and he was in between surgeries to work on some clotting issues that would have lessened his risk of heart attack. Needless to say, his family is grieving and having a difficult time. I did not know him well, but I have fond memories of him from my childhood. He was a big gruff looking man, and so a lot of us kids were kind of scared of him (for no reason really, he just LOOKED mean, haha) but he LOVED kids and so he would pay us in quarters to let him tickle us and throw us around. Then we would get over our fears and play and have a wonderful time! He was like a big old mean looking teddy bear, and I have always remembered him that way, and I'm sure I always will. Unfortunately being this far along in my pregnancy, and my family being a 5 hour drive away, we just don't feel comfortable going to the memorial service. I feel so horribly about it because I want to be there to comfort and support my family, but I know that taking the car trip, especially with my swelling issues, is not a truly safe option right now. I wrote a sympathy card to send out, and it was so hard. I never know what to say. I just tried to let the Lord guide me in that. We will also have some flowers sent to the memorial since we can not be there. If you could just pray for my family at this time, it would be greatly appreciated.
• Also, Abby has brought up to us that she is interested in being baptized! I know she believes in Jesus and loves Him, but we want to make sure she truly understands the gospel and baptism, and what repentance is. So we are working with our pastor and talking with her in preparation for this. If you could pray for us as her parents, that we would be able to explain things to her in a way that she understands, and pray for Abby as she is considering making this decision to repent and make Jesus her Savior.

Discussion Question:  Will you find out the gender of the baby before birth?  Or have you already?  (I've been keeping the question light the past couple weeks because I am just fried from all this moving)!

Yes. It's a boy. His name is Aaron Josiah. =o)
Haha, but really though, I didn't doubt we would find out the gender this pregnancy. We have always found out. With my daughter, they weren't "entirely" sure, and that drove me crazy. I had a harder time preparing, and my husband and I always struggle over the names (we like very different styles of names typically) so it just was so much more difficult not being certain. I don't know if it would be harder or not if you planned not to know, but I just can't imagine doing it. Well, I guess that's not true. I could see if we are blessed with more children eventually wanting to experience that, once we have everything we need for a boy or girl baby, etc.   I did mention it to my husband this pregnancy, in a joking way, and he was adamantly opposed to the idea, so I don't know if we will ever wait until the birth to be truly surprised. 


In other news, a quick story I wanted to share. We visited some of my husband's family last weekend. We get together with them a lot as he has a small family and most everyone lives "in town" (its a very big city, so the other side of town is an hour away, lol). Well, somehow it came up where I said something like "if or when we have more children", something like that, and it set off a bit of a spark from my husband's aunt. I guess she didn't truly realize that we were open to (and even hoping) for more children after this. I guess she thought surely we could control ourselves after we had three! Then people started talking about how can anyone even afford all those children, etc. I felt uncomfortable, and the topic just kept coming up throughout the evening as we talked about different topics. I would bring up some friends of mine and it would come out that they had 4 children or 6 children or were expecting their 8th, etc., and I finally realized it was a hint from God that I needed to SAY something. I couldn't just keep saying "oh well you never really know" and "oh well children don't cost that much really depending on how you look at things". I was NOT being firm or clear in our position on children, and I was not glorifying God and honoring him in my responses. So after it came up again, I said something along the lines of "Well we really believe that children are a blessing from God and we have just given that over to God, so if he decides to bless us with more that would be great! And really when you trust in God and just realize that there is a difference between what children really need and society tells us they need, it doesn't cost that much, and God will always provide. He has so far!" Well...I got weird looks. But the topic didn't come up again. And I felt peace knowing I had just laid it out there instead of tip toeing around the issue forever.