And so the winter weather is upon us. Temperatures below freezing for three nights in a row, barely popping above freezing during the daytime, with snow expected tomorrow. We’ve already had tiny hail (which might actually be called sleet, but I’m not so sure) off and on tonight. But no snow yet. It’s been snowing outside the city a ways already – my brother sent a video of his ‘yard’ out on property, lovely snow falling everywhere. We shall see if it truly happens in town and if it stays on the ground at all.
Gos, please, keep us safe and well. Make this baby whole and safe and well, please. Keep our home powered and warm and functioning safely with water, please. And let this baby come join us safely and freely, please, and very soon. Please, have the midwife safely here when I birth the baby, too. Help my husband and me learn better how to love one another in ways that make the biggest difference for each other. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Are we almost there now? I realized today that I don’t even have to say “next week,” when people ask when the baby is due. The answer now is, “Saturday.” Less than a week away is the due date.
So much for two weeks early like the rest of my family. Thanks for the false hopes, guys. Well, ladies, I guess is the accurate term there. Haha
Anyway, it’s been rather crushing not having the baby’s arrive when I really wanted it to arrive. As with everything else, I am accepting God’s will and moving forward with His courage and trusting in Him.
It also has been physically miserable the past almost-week. Each day has been worse, too. Tonight, I was even feeling strains in places I hadn’t been feeling them. No clear consistency yet, though. The midwife said all signs are showing that my body is truly feeling up for this all. However, she also said that it needs to kick into gear before Monday night or wait until Wednesday.
“Why?” you ask. Because we have a massive freeze happening Monday-Tuesday, with snow to be expected. Houston isn’t exactly a snow place. I think we’ve had it, including when it didn’t even stick to the ground, a total of four times in my life. Maybe five. And that’s in almost 34 years. So, weather like we are expected to have Monday-Tuesday will not be good driving conditions for this city, and it will not be safe for folks to be out. Which includes our midwife driving all the way across town to our house. So, yeah… the hope is to be done before the bad weather. The back-up plan is to have things happen after the bad weather. And God’s plan will show itself in the coming days..
God, help us to deliver well in the next twelve hours or so, please. Make me and the baby and my husband well and safe, please. Thank you for all of this and all that we will learn and gain from this all. Thank you for my husband. In your name, I pray. Amen.
I started this baby blanket in middle school, when my mom taught me to crochet. I needed a project that was more than just a scarf (which I didn’t like because of the pattern/design of crochet stitches) or roses or a square, but wasn’t an entire granny blanket.
But it feels like the minute I finish this blanket, contractions will start and the baby will come out. Which is ironic. Because, if finishing the blanket is all it takes to have a baby, I had two decades to finish this blanket. Actually. Not that I wanted a baby in middle school, of course. But I could have finished this thing at any point in time in my adult life. I’ve always had in my home, wherever I’ve moved, aside from the one year in Japan. And yet I never touched it. Only once, I pulled it out and actually did a bit of stitching on it. I enjoyed that. But then I put the blanket away and left it for several more years. Now, here I am, nine months pregnant, seemingly unable to progress to the stage of labor. And I can just see the irony of finishing the blanket and then going right into labor. It would be a beautiful irony, to be sure, and I know God had a sense of humor.
Ugh.
God, help me to release this baby from my body, please. Grant us safety and easy and full health and holiness. Make us all well and keep us all safe, please. Thank you for this marriage and home and baby. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Maybe, now that the cleaners have come and the mildew in the tub is gone and the clothes are put away, the baby will come.
Please.
God, help us to have an easy and smooth labor and delivery. Make the baby and me and my husband healthy and well and whole, please, and keep us safe and together. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Dawdling really gets to me. If the plan is not to follow a schedule, it is absolutely no big deal, and I even encourage dawdling. However, when a schedule has been determined, it is a solid no for me. And it lands as incredibly disrespectful, for some reason. I can tolerate it when communication is kept, acknowledging at the first notice that timing has shifted. But, when nothing (or close to nothing) is communicated, and the schedule just isn’t met, with no acknowledgement of one’s having messed up the schedule due to fooling around (or whatever it was)… it’s like no one mattered enough to be informed that what they were told and were anticipating isn’t going to happen anymore.
It just sucks.
God, help us to heal, please. Grant us an easy, love-filled, natural birth in the next few days, please. In the next 22 hours would be awesome. Kay. Thanks. Grant us peace, please, and keep us safe and whole and well. Thank you for this home and this pregnancy and this baby and this marriage. Help us always to be our best selves, and help us to do it by our own wills. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Asking a pregnant woman’s due date is much the same as asking, “So, when did you have fertile sex?” Or, even, “When was your last menstruation?” In terms of the information they provide, at least.
Whichever question one asks, one still will know when to expect the baby to arrive and when the couple made the baby and when the woman’s last menstruation was.
And yet, though questions about the latter two pieces of information are deemed inappropriate, the due date question is completely acceptable societally. But a question about any of them would provide the same information.
Kind of weird to consider, right?
It is to me, anyway. Haha
Please, Lord, let me have this baby now. Keep us safe and make us well, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Today was both efficient and totally sucky. I accomplished much for rodeo. I accomplished much for random baby stuff (that didn’t need to be done yet, but the stress of waiting got to me too much this evening). But it was also a very stress-filled day. Lots of emotions at this point. My husband is stressed about school and work and money, I believe – he hasn’t been great at discussing any of it lately, and has been more on the explosive side of stress, unfortunately. Understandable, of course, but not fun to have when about to give birth and filled with emotions oneself. There are several things I had requested to have done well before the baby arrived that are not at all done. I found how very much I am not currently capable of doing these things. And my body was massively uncomfortable all day long.
God, help us to release the strains that bind us. Help us to love ourselves wholly and to love one another freely and wholly. Guide us to your will with ease. Help us to be our best selves willingly. Make the baby and us safe, please, and make us well. Grant us an easy and beautiful and bonding labor and delivery, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
“The head is REALLY low,” said the midwife with a touch of surprise. She had already said that it was low. However, upon feeling my belly for body parts to confirm direction and all of the baby, she declared the follow-up phrase. She mentioned that the shoulders were way down low, slight astonishment still in her voice. I asked her to put my hands where the shoulders were. She did. I was baffled. My hands were sitting about two inches higher than the entrance to my vagina.
So, where is the head, then?! I wondered. Buried into the bottom of the pelvis, apparently.
Very bizarre consideration there.
But the midwife agreed with me when I said 14 sounds like a fully acceptable number (regarding birth date). She very doubtfully told me as I left that she MIGHT see me at my appointment next Monday, but that she probably would see me before then. Meaning for the birth.
So, here’s to hoping we have a vegetation and smooth and safe delivery on the 14th of January!
Thank you, God, for such a lovely, love-filled day today. And thank you for all the relief it granted me on all these levels. Make us well, keep us safe, and bring my husband home safely to us each night and day, as always. Also, help us to find this baby’s name, please. Thank you for our home and for our midwife and for our friends. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
(Oops… actually got it wrong tonight, but fixed it before hitting the publish button.)
These aches are just a lot at this point. They aren’t simply on my whole body. They also are specifically tied to my womb doing these Braxton Hicks contractions all the time. I would have thought the muscle would be well built in strength by now, given that it’s been doing this for weeks, and at decreasing intervals all the while – every five to ten minutes for the past week just feels like more than enough prep, all the 30-60-minute intervals for the two weeks before that not included.
Nonetheless, my body is not happy these past several days, and neither has my brain been. I feel somewhat sick all the time, I’m sleeping so much. I’m mostly in bed – excluding bathroom breaks – for 12 hours each night now. And then I usually nap at least once during the day for an hour or few.
Anyway, letting go of my own will and giving it up to God.
Also, I got some news today that was both exciting and saddening and, slightly, depressing. I’m finding it hard not to be annoyed with most things right now, and this one just added to that bizarre headspace for me.
So, lots of ugh right now. Not to mention my own fears and concerns creeping up on me the longer this baby stays inside of me.
God, help me to trust you. Make this baby while and we’ll and safe, please, and help it to join us easily and naturally. Grant me a beautiful and comfortable and love-filled labor and birth experience. Keep my husband and me and the baby safe, please. Heal Jean, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Today was a very rough day. I cried a lot and for many different reasons.
The main bits, I suppose are mentioned in what I wrote this afternoon, shown here:
I’m now reknitting this beanie, because the sizing and shape didn’t work out like I want. Which I don’t actually much mind – it’ll be quicker this way than the first time, anyway. But I’m in a space of frustration, because it’s probably going to be for a baby boy, which I get to feel guilty for having not wanted first, and also will have to deal with everyone being righteous about that they knew it was a boy and I just have known and didn’t tell anyone, including Patrick’s mom who claimed that I’m lying to him about it; and the baby is going to be born right at our anniversary, which is also another thing that is exactly what I had hoped and prayed not to have happen
So, I’m getting to feel like a horrible human being about this absolute miracle
I picked the green because it’s a beautiful color and will look good on our skin tone and is seasonally appropriate
And green is calming and feels good
Also, the gym closed early today and Patrick hadn’t told me that. So, I was preparing to go with him once he got home a while ago from dropping off something up north. But then he told me that we can’t go. So, also crushed about that, because it’s too cold for me to walk outside now, since I don’t have enough clothes that fit me and are layerable
I just had seen this and loved it But they don’t sell the hat – just the onesie
Also, the bomb my husband landed of that we can’t use the pediatrician I had wanted to use, because we can’t afford it. That one kind of started off the first round of tears and intense frustration. I have been working these past months to have all of these things handled. It has felt like my husband has avoided most things to do with being prepared for the baby. He has focused solely on his lessons. Those are important, yes. But they also aren’t the only thing that matters. And, at this point, they aren’t as helpful as much of the practical, daily life necessities that have yet to be sorted around having the baby. So, I’ve been really struggling that I did all the stuff by 36 weeks gestation, as we were told to have done by the midwife. We are now at 38 weeks, and so much of his stuff still isn’t handled. Very different approaches to the same things, and it has become extremely frustrating for me. The high emotions of the pregnancy and being so tired of being so sick have only added to the strain of it all.
One positive is that my mom said she would handle the first month’s costs for the pediatrician. So, we can have some breathing room on figuring out what we will do longer term. By then, we might have financial means to stay with the pediatrician. If not, hopefully, we will have found somewhere else we like that we actually can afford. But we don’t have to worry about any of that right now, and that helps me breathe much easier on that front, to be sure. Thank you, Mom. Thank you, God.
Anyway, really tough day today. But we ended with a sort of at-home date night. My husband made us fun drinks, we watched (yet again) a movie that we both really love, and we even had some physically close time (it really is dumb that we have nowhere to cuddle easily in our living room, and making it work in bizarre ways really is exhausting, especially with my being so huge and heavy right now… but we made it work at least once more). It helped me a lot, emotionally and psychologically.
A friend asked me today what I find myself needing more of right now. I wasn’t sure at first. She asked about what I had found that has been able to ground and calm me. I shared that being held by my husband, especially having skin-to-skin contact in any way, has been the most helpful thing lately. I just want to be held and pet like a dog, basically. So, the little bit tonight went a long way. Hopefully, we get to cuddle overnight, too, as that helps the most right now and would be a very positive end to such a day. The day did improve, yes. My husband was even really great when I was just suddenly outright balling while knitting, and I shared with him my experience of guilt around not wanting things the way they were turning out, that is that I wanted what was not God’s will, and I was feeling horrible for it. Lots of shoulds there. I eventually told the devil to leave, and said the name of Jesus three times to calm myself, and it actually helped me feel a weight release off of me. Quite bizarre, to be sure. But, also, my husband reassured me that it’s okay to want something different from God’s will for us. After all, there have been many times I have wanted things to go one way or another, and they didn’t. It was ultimately for the better, but I was sad at the time for not having the desire results. I never, however, felt guilty about having wanted what I had wanted. This situation need not be any different. It’s okay for me to want what I want. I can still learn to love and embrace what does happen, when it happens, whatever it happens to be.
Anyway… so, yeah. Haha. Tough day that settled somewhat. But tough, nonetheless.
Thank you, God, for your love and your guidance. Help me to see the beauty of your plan and your will, please. Help to heal J, and to live a long life with us, if that be your will. Grant all involved ease and pure love and honesty and connection with one another. Help us all to love well. Thank you for this baby and this marriage. Please, make me and the baby and my husband well, and keep us safe. Thank you for our home. Please, keep it safe, too. Guide us through, please. Help us always to dispel the devil and his workers. In your name, I pray. Amen.
hannah ananas 