Before I was married, my ideal situation (I thought) would have been to be married for at least a year before trying to start a family. Although I had really wanted to wait until we were done with school and my husband had a good career and we had a house and a good paycheck coming in every month.
But when I met Seth and we knew we wanted to get married, and I knew that he was leaning toward medical school, I knew that that would put me at about 35 by the time we would start having a family. We didn't want to wait quit that long, but we still thought that we'd wait at least a year and enjoy being married and being just the two of us. So that's why I was really surprised when we both had the feeling that it was time to start our family just a short month after we had been married.
Seth and I pray together every morning and every night...well, we try to. And before he started working nights, we were really good about it. We very rarely missed a morning or night. So as we started praying about it, and trying to think of the logistics: "How will we afford a baby?" "Will I quit my job and be a stay at home mom? Can we afford that?" "We can't stay in a one bedroom apartment, where will we move?" With all of these questions circling around, though, we couldn't deny the feelings that we had that there was a baby waiting to come to us. I had felt it so strongly on several occasions, I would dream about having a baby, it was just an overpowering feeling that now was the time. And we often thought of the first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Genesis 1:28). We believe that God wants us to have families, to have children, and that children are a blessing from Him. Now, obviously, I'm not saying that this is right for every family. But for us, it was.
So we forged ahead, with a plan that we would move to Nacogdoches so Seth could attend SFA, since they had a great nursing program, and I would continue working through the pregnancy. Seth had been going to school during the day and doing a CNA program at night to receive his CNA license and begin working in the medical field, and worked at Wal-Mart in his spare time (I have so much respect for custodians now at Wal-Mart, it is a tough, unpleasant job!!).
And 8 months later, I was pregnant!
I had gotten up early on a Saturday morning and decided to take another test (I had taken who knows how many in those 8 months). I left it in the bathroom to wait the 3-5 minutes you are supposed to wait, and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Seth had gotten up and went into the bathroom. He called out to me, "Has there ever been a hint of a second line?" (For those of you who know my husband, he likes to joke around. A lot.) I said, "No. Never." He said, "Well..." and I started to get so upset! I told him it wasn't funny, and that I didn't want him to joke about this. But he held up the test, and sure enough, there was the faintest little pink line you've ever seen. And tears just started to stream down my face and down Seth's face and we hugged and cried and said a prayer of gratitude. Of course I had the immediate urge to call our families and tell them, but I was afraid to tell people too soon, for fear of a miscarriage. So we lasted about...5 days...before we broke down and told our parents. But we asked them to keep it a secret because we wanted a doctor's visit first!
And then the symptoms came. Oh, the symptoms.
I was exhausted all the time. I had actually been feeling extremely tired for several weeks before I found out I was pregnant. I would come home from work and just crash into bed. I wouldn't even eat dinner, I would just pass out until my alarm went off the next morning. I had no appetite, which was weird for me because I usually have a pretty good one. And it seemed like the week after I found out I was pregnant, I started feeling nauseous. Like, all the time. I wouldn't get sick, but I wished I would have because I thought it might make me feel better! It was so crummy to feel like vomiting 24/7, but to never do it.
But I was wrong. I did NOT want to vomit.
I still remember the first time I actually got sick. We were driving to Nacogdoches to look at a few houses. I started feeling just awful, so we stopped at a Whataburger to get a Sprite. While we were in the drive-thru, it happened. So. Sick. Seth had to pause during our order and drive over to the dumpster in the parking lot. I was mortified. He walked over to the drive-thru to pick up our drinks and came back over to help me clean up. We stopped at a dollar store to pick up some hair ties for me, it was just miserable. I did not feel like looking at any houses, and we had a rough day. And from then on, I just continued to get sick. Every day, I would vomit multiple times a day. Sometimes it would wake me out of my sleep. I would just cry, and sometimes Seth would say, "I don't think I can clean that up. I don't think I can do it. Ok, yes I can. Ok actually, I can't." And of course, being pregnant and extremely tender and emotional, I would burst into tears and feel like a disgusting, vomit-covered lady.
My first doctor's appointment, they did all the usual things. Made me take another test to make sure I was really pregnant, wrote down my height and my weight...my weight. I stepped on the scale and I had lost about 5 pounds. I wasn't too worried because I thought, "I could stand to be about 10 pounds lighter, so that's cool!" I told my doctor about the nausea, and he subscribed Zofran for me (which if you haven't heard of Zofran, it's a super strong nausea medication that is usually used for chemo patients). I was scheduled to take it 3 times a day, but I still vomited around the clock with it. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't taken Zofran?! And because I was so sick, it was impossible to keep it under wraps for very long. Otherwise, people would have thought I had caught some crazy disease and that I was dying.
Then the doctor pulled out the little portable heart beat monitor, squirted out that freezing cold blue stuff, and started trying to locate the heartbeat.
Nothing.
No problem, the doctor said, sometimes it's tricky to get it in the right spot when mothers are not very far along.
Searching.
Searching.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I started feeling a little bit nervous, so he had me go to another room and get hooked up to the big sonogram machine, so he could see the baby. I wouldn't be able to hear the heartbeat, but I would be able to see the baby. He pointed out the little peanut that was ours, and began to stare intently at the screen. He was silent for a very long time. "I'm having a hard time locating a heart beat." My heart began to sank, I was sure that he was going to tell me that we had lost the baby. It seemed like forever that he sat and stared intently at the screen, with Seth holding my hand so tightly I was afraid my veins would burst. But finally he said, "I saw a flicker of a heart beat. Congratulations!"
We were going to have a baby.
It was such a fun and exciting time! We started to think of baby names that we liked, we started to discuss our hopes for our child, and of course I started to change a lot. But the weird thing was that I wasn't getting a cute little bump. The opposite was happening. My ribs were protruding. I had lost 10 pounds. Then 15. Then 20. Then 25. Then, I started bleeding. I bled for my entire pregnancy. Terrible bleeding, terrible cramps. Horrifying moments. I was taken to the hospital, thinking that we had miscarried. But each time, we were reassured that everything was ok. I was never given an answer as to why there was so much bleeding, just told to do as little as possible. I was put on bed rest, and needed assistance for everything. I mean, I couldn't get up and walk to the bathroom by myself, I couldn't bathe myself, I couldn't eat, it was just miserable. And since Seth was at school and work all day every day, I had to stay with my parents and Seth would visit on the weekends. We did that for about a month before I couldn't stand being away from him anymore. And every time someone came over to visit, they would say the same thing:
"You look awful."
Not the words I wanted to hear!! But it was true, and I don't really have any pictures from my pregnancy because I looked so terrible. I looked transparent, it was gross. But around 6 months, things started to change. And by month 7, I finally looked cute and pregnant, and allowed a picture!
This was me at about 8 months, at my baby shower, with 2 of my sisters and my niece:
I started going into labor at 31 weeks. The first time it happened, we waited it out for a bit, counting the minutes between contractions. When they were about 5 minutes apart, we decided to head out to the hospital. I was nervous because I knew it was too soon. At the hospital, I was dilated about a 1, but they decided to give me a couple rounds of shots to keep the labor from progressing. And we were sent home late that night, exhausted and baby-less.
This happened again about 2 weeks later, and I was again sent home.
The morning of February 8, I woke up at about 2 am, my usual wake up time, because I was having some intense contractions. But I tried to ignore it because I always had them and I was only 38 weeks, so I figured I just needed to suck it up and keep waiting. I called my mom later that morning, and she had my sister come over to keep me company. I was trying to do everything under the sun to take my mind off of the discomfort I was feeling. I did the dishes, pausing every few minutes to breathe through a contraction. We went to the grocery store, and I was completely bent over, pushing the cart through the store, telling Alyssa "I'm fine, I'm fine!". I just really didn't want to be turned away from the hospital again! We got home and I started folding a load of laundry, but it became really difficult because the contractions were coming on so strong that I couldn't talk during them. I had to just breathe.
My mother-in-law finally convinced me to go, so Alyssa drove me to the hospital. Luckily, Seth was working that day, so he had gotten me signed in and had a wheelchair waiting for me. By the time we arrived, the contractions were right on top of each other. They took me into a room and checked me and I was already a 5, so they said it was baby time!
I started feeling nervous and panicked. My sister Megan came to the hospital and did my hair (I had wanted to look cute for pictures, but I so didn't!!). Everything went SO quickly! They gave me an epidural, but I progressed so fast that it didn't have time to kick in. I felt every moment of that labor. It seemed like I went from a 5 to a 9. I called the nurse to tell her that I felt like I needed to push (she didn't think so since I was a first time mom), and she was like "Whoa! You're a 10, don't push don't push! The doctor wasn't even totally dressed and ready by the time Foster came. It was extremely painful, but so amazing. I heard those sweet cries and it felt unreal!! And holding him for the first time--oh my. Just holding my baby, looking at him, him looking at me, touching his sweet little fingers, kissing his soft, warm cheeks, cradling him and talking to him and realizing that he was my son--MY son--it was the most spiritual, amazing experience of my life. I pushed so hard that I busted all of the blood vessels in my face. It made it look like I was covered in zits, but really I had just busted the blood vessels. I was embarrassed at first and didn't want anyone to see the pictures, but it's a picture of me holding my baby for the first time. It is so sweet, so I'm not embarrassed. I love it!
February 8, 2013 was the best day of my life. That was the day I met Foster Camden Philip Yates.
I felt the most overwhelming love I had ever felt. How could I love someone so much that I was just meeting for the first time? But oh my goodness, he was the sweetest little man you have ever seen. 6 pounds, 8 ounces, 18 1/4 inches long, and a head full of dark curly hair. And he was ours. I can still see my family walking into the room about an hour or so after we had the baby. Their faces of surprise and excitement and tears were so sweet, and it was so fun to watch each one of them meet Foster.
I remember the day we were leaving the hospital. I started to feel a little bit uneasy. I thought, "Are they really going to let me leave with this baby? Do they trust me?! What if I don't know what to do?!" And when we were getting ready to put him in his car seat, we realized we didn't have the base, so my mother-in-law drove back to our house to get it. I started to cry and begged Seth to call my mom and have her come to the hospital. And now I feel like a silly 12-year old girl who needed her "mommy", but yes, I truly did need my mom! I needed a good pep talk from her. I needed her to tell me that I was going to do a great job. That everything would be ok. And so my mom came and did all of those things. She even did the unpleasant jobs that no one other than your own mother would want to do!
And in the weeks to follow, she would come anytime I needed help. She even came in the middle of the night that first week because Foster wasn't eating. She drove us to doctor appointments, she made meals for us, she would rub my back, she would help me feel better as I got through the baby blues and reassure me that I wasn't a "bad mom", I mean she was so wonderful. I don't know what I would have done without my mom. There were so many wonderful friends and family that helped us with Foster, but everything I have learned to do as a mom I learned from my own mom. In my (biased) opinion, she's the best mom! I appreciate her patience with me as I've learned how to adjust to motherhood. And I appreciate Foster's patience with me, too. I feel like this is what I was made to do, and I have loved watching him grow!
