Happy Mother's Day

First of all, I would just like to do a shout out to my Mom- the absolute best Mom that I could have ever had.  She always feels guilty at Mother's Day Sacrament Meeting.  She says that she hears all of the stories about wonderful things that other mothers did, and it makes her feel like she never measures up.  The thing is that there are millions of ways to be a good Mom.  She may not have done the one or two things mentioned in Sacrament, but she definitely did a half a million other amazing things.  And she definitely got all of the essentials.  We were well taken care of, loved and taught well.  When my Dad wasn't stepping up to his responsibilities, she took over both jobs, and she did great.  She is still my best friend, and I am so grateful for her.

Today seems like a good day to talk about my current (and most exciting) creation project ... I'm making a baby!  I'm due on September 8th.  This post might get kind of personal (this blog is my journal, too), so skip it if you're afraid of too much information.  

When Jason and I got married in July, we were hoping for a honeymoon baby.  We both wanted big families, and since we were starting in our early thirties, we didn't want to waste any time.  It didn't happen right away.  This turned out to be a HUGE blessing, because we had been married about two months when we learned that I could not get Canadian Health Care.  I wouldn't be able to get it until I had my Permanent Residence, which takes at least a year.  I wasn't even qualified to get on Jason's supplemental work insurance, because that insurance is "ADDED" to your Canadian Health Care... which I didn't have.  We started looking around for insurance companies. but since all Canadians already have insurance, the only option was travel insurance.  Most travel insurance companies laughed at me when I asked if they would cover maternity care.  We finally found one company that would cover 80% of maternity costs, but only if your due date was 11 months after the start date of your insurance plan.  (They wouldn't cover a "pre-existing" pregnancy.)  So we bought the insurance plan and tried to not get pregnant for a while.  This was a hard time, because I guess I was too vocal to my friends about my desire to have a honeymoon baby, and suddenly everyone wanted to know if I was pregnant yet.  Around this time, my cousin recommended a book to me that I would now recommend to any married woman.  It's called Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler.  It helps you chart your cycle so that you can determine when you are fertile.  (It's much more exact than the "rhythm" method.)  You can use this information to get pregnant, or not, depending on your goals.  So I started charting.  We tried again in December, and by then I was pretty sure about my timing.  But on January 1st, right before my period was due, I started having those familiar cramps.  A day or two later, I had an interview with President Komm, a member of the Temple Presidency at the Vancouver Temple.  I had been wanting to start volunteering at the temple.  I can't work in Canada, because my status is still just a "visitor" and I wanted to use my free time wisely.  He asked if I could give a two year commitment, and I told him that I wanted to, but that I was trying to get pregnant.  He assured me that that was a more important goal, and I could work at the temple without the two year promise.  Then he gave me a blessing to set me apart as a temple worker.  Almost his whole blessing was about how I would be a mother a Zion.  (Note: He jokingly now takes partial credit for my fertility.)  A few days later, I realized that my period still hadn't started, and my cramps weren't consistent.  They just came and went, which is unusual for me.  I looked it up online, and found that some pregnant women have cramps around the time that their fertilized egg is implanting.  So a few days later, when my period still hadn't started, I took a pregnancy test...

The pregnancy so far has definitely had some high points and some low points.  I'm almost five months along now.  I love feeling this little baby move inside of me.  Jason felt it for the first time this week which was a really neat experience.  My doctor has a little in office ultrasound machine, and I know I'm biased, but I've looked at lots of pictures of fetuses, and ours is definitely the cutest.

The major low point was the poorly named "morning" sickness.  Oh my goodness... my respect for the sacrifice of motherhood has increased by leaps and bounds.  My first trimester was TERRIBLE!  I was nauseous all day long.  Everything smelled terrible and made me feel awful. It was the worst at night.  I would either throw up multiple times, or I would cry because my stomach hurt so bad and I couldn't throw up.  I went to bed earlier and earlier in efforts to avoid the misery.  It really started to effect my attitude.  It's just hard to be happy when you've been sick for six straight weeks.  I'm feeling 100 times better now.  (Thank goodness.)  I'm still a much pickier eater than I've ever been before, and there's smells that I just can't handle.  But the improvements have been vast.  And now I'm FINALLY starting to show- hurray!