Hi friends! It’s been a bit since I’ve sat to write. Life has been crazy but so fun. 2020 brought about a lot of change and while the year had some hardships, and well- it was 2020, I look back and see so many blessings! 2020 was the year that I finally allowed myself to sit and feel! It was the year I made the conscious decision to be more vulnerable & open with my feelings & thoughts. It was the year I learned how to give myself grace & it was the year we got pregnant!
Funny thing we wouldn’t discover this sweet blessing until the end of January/ Beginning of Feb… so sit back & let me share OUR PREGNANCY STORY!
We all know 2020 was pretty rough and that’s putting it lightly. As an educator, I was so frazzled, exhausted, & mentally drained. It was the end A first semester and my school district decided we were going to be teaching in a HYBRID style. At first this style of teaching seemed kind of cool because at least I got to see my students for a couple days in person, and as an orchestra teacher that’s extremely important! It’s kind of challenging to do an orchestra class online! But as the semester progressed it began weighing on me.
Because my school district was teaching in a hybrid setup , I had to have assignments available for online and in person. It was as if I was doing the job of two teachers, but of course only having them at a time I had normally to put everything together and to create new lesson plans. Because I teach such a hand on, kinesthetic class, there really weren’t many lesson plans I could pull to use that word help my classes progress. So I ended up writing a lot of things on my own, creating a lot of lessons, and creating a lot of videos to help with students practicing at home.
It was a lot of work! I almost felt like I had 2 full time teaching jobs and I was exhausted… mentally, physically, and emotionally. During that time I really dove into my workouts and used my workout space as a space for me to process, take out my anger in a good way, and keep myself moving and feeling as good as I could. It was at this time that I started a nine week program called “nine week control freak!”
This program was split up into three week cycles and I was super familiar with the trainer because she was the trainer that I started my training with all the way back in 2015! I was so excited because I had seen the amazing result I had gotten from her programs in the past and could not wait to see what results I would get from this new program!
Here’s where interesting things began to occur that led me to figuring out I was pregnant!
Before starting this program I had decided I wanted to do a cleanse, so I started a 3 day refresh! I had done this refresh before and had figured out some snacks/meals that I really liked. When I tried doing it this time, everything that I was trying made me feel so sick! I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling sick to my stomach to eat the same food I had eaten 6ish months earlier?!! But I just thought it was weird.
Then I remember being extremely fatigued to the point of having several days in a row where I felt like I had to come home and sleep, some days not waking up til morning. Again I chalked this up to my crazy hybrid teaching situation and all the added pressure I was feeling as a teacher.
But while doing the workout program I mentioned earlier, I noticed that there were way more days that I felt bloated than feeling sculpted. By week 6 I was really upset, not understanding why my results were so lackluster and definitely not on par with my normal results when following the meal plan and doing the workouts to a T, I wasn’t
But the final straw that made me, FINALLY, put all of the facts together and realize I was in fact pregnant, was my boobs. Yes, you read that right. My boobs had started to hurt and had been hurting for a week. I searched the internet looking for painful boobs being a symptom. It is a symptom of pregnancy! Lol! O my goodness… were we pregnant?!! Me, not being the best at tracking my cycle thought back about the last time I had had my period and I realized it had been a couple months. And I know, you’re probably like… What?! You didn’t realize you hadn’t had a cycle til then?! I know… I know… but with all the craziness I just literally wasn’t even thinking about it.
As this point dave and I are talking and realizing the fact that I could be pregnant! Now just to understand where we were mentally, I want to share a little backstory.
Dave and I had been trying to get pregnant for about a year back in 2017- 2018 and I was stressed that it wasn’t happening. I was also very nervous and scared of becoming a mom and was still working through a lot of mental blocks and lies I had allowed myself to believe. All of the stress obviously didn’t help my body conceive and we got frustrated. We decided to put it on hold and said God’s timing would be perfect. We were also not 100% sure we could even have a baby due to some health issues dave had as a baby.
Flash forward to 2020- here we are sitting on the couch talking about my symptoms and realizing that I might be pregnant. The next morning dave had already left for church as he was playing with the worship team and decided to take a few pregnancy tests. I went into our bedroom bathroom and dug through a couple brown bags at the bottom of my bathroom sink cabinet. I found 2 pregnancy tests from when we were trying in years past and decided to give them a try. Both had a slight vertical line, but since it was super pronounced I remember thinking that I must not be pregnant.
I went about my day not really thinking much about it but I remember coming home later that day and Dave looking at me and saying something to the fact of.. “ Is there something you want to tell me?!” To which I was super confused. But turns out when Dave had gotten home he saw the pregnancy tests laying out in the open and that both of them read “ positive” . So in case you’re like me and thought the vertical line had to be the same color, or bold- apparently it doesn’t. Just having a vertical line means that the pregnancy hormones have been detected. I still didn’t believe it, so 3 more tests later, all positive, I finally began to believe it. I scheduled our ultrasound calculating that I was probably around the 10-11 week mark. Surprise… baby and I were only 3 weeks shy of entering the 2nd trimester.
And so it began… the prepping and preparing to become a momma. God had already been working on my heart and while I was super shocked and felt a little crazy knowing we didn’t really have 9 months to prepare, I had a peace. I remember asking God after trying for a while to get pregnant to just allow it to be a surprise because then I couldn’t be the one planning everything and instead would have to go with the flow and trust. He listened.
