God Said He Would...

There are SO many times in the last 13 weeks (baby bump picture coming soon!) that we’ve sat in awe of the promises God gave us. So many times Chris and I have just sat and been like “huh. Wow. He seriously did this!!”  Y’all, I’m

NOT exaggerating when I say this was ZERO percent on our radar...or even in our prayers anymore.  I know I’ve said that before but since I think it ALL the time, I feel like it bears repeating lol. 

Let me give you a little run down of why we’re still so “WOW” about all this...besides the obvious that there’s a human inside of me 🤣. 

1. My parent’s move. They were going to move up here in the summer...we found the perfect rental house and their house sold quickly in a slow market. They got up here, 5 minutes from us (the closest we’ve been since the day I graduated high school), in February. 
2. Chris had been laid off a couple weeks before Christmas. A great job opportunity found HIM in March. 
3. A job I wasn’t even looking for found me in April. 
4. The big one: I was going on a cruise in May. I earned it for free with my Keep business (first time EVER) and we had appropriately dubbed it my “booze cruise” after we found out a deluxe drink package was included lol. We had been joking about testing for being pregnant before I left to be safe...something in me (the Holy Spirit I’m guessing) said “no for real, buy that test.”
5. Because of that test and that prompting, we found out at 4 weeks. 

God has provided every step of the way and today I was assured of that AGAIN. Blatantly. I’ve made no secret about my struggle with bipolar and, most lately, severe anxiety. It’s a vicious cycle where one leads into or plays into the other and it just goes round and round. The moment we found out we were pregnant we called my psych (who I’d never met. I had been transferred to her when mine moved). I was adamant that I not take ANYTHING if it could POSSIBLY harm the baby (funny how your mindset changes. I’ve never really been into “health” stuff but MAN did open my eyes in less than 24 hours!!). Being a psychiatrist, not a perinatalist, she did some research and advised that i not only SEE a perinatal specialist, but in the meantime, if I could manage, come off the meds. The one I was on had reports of birth defects like cleft lip, cleft pallet, etc. Done!  I’m off!! (Remember, 4 weeks. That’s important)

At 6.5 weeks we got in to see the OBGYN. Our midwife right away referred us to the perinatal specialist and, based off of her research, also recommended staying off meds. Y’all. This has been ROUGH. I’ve struggled with this my WHOLE life. I’d FINALLY gotten a handle on it. I finally felt normal. I finally felt like I wasn’t a shaken bottle of soda and my son and my husband could finally walk around and talk without fear of (mostly) unprovoked rage. My mouth was not my own. My brain knew it. My heart BROKENLY knew it, but I couldn’t stop it. There was no kill switch. No eject. It was hurting the people I loved the most and for the last 7 months I had finally been MYSELF. But now I had to come off. For my baby. 

Ok. I can do this. I did it for years. Surely I can do this. And I did. For a little while. But slowly it crept back in. The quick thinking/quick tongue came back. The horrid self talk and worthlessness came back...only amplified by eradic hormones and spiral of depression. Looked good on the outside...but MAN that’s a lonely place to be. More nights and days than I can count in the last 4 weeks have been spent crying and apologizing...only to repeat the next day. It’s like watching a dream you can’t stop. How do I protect this baby and hurt the one I have?  (Not that there are TIMES he doesn’t deserve a little yelling. This 12 going on 19 is no joke either friends lol.)  

So today I got into the perinatal specialist. Omg 🥰. Started with an ultrasound I didn’t know i was getting (any chance to see and hear this sweet babe can fix any day). Baby’s measuring perfectly, so signs of Down Syndrome or Spina Bifida. Heart is strong, stomach is good, kidneys are good, cord looks great....it was waving its arms all OVER the place (totally my kid, always touching its face 🥰). Then it got even better. And this is why numbers 4 & 5 on that list above are SO big!!  Birth defects from the medicine I was on occur from 5-10 weeks. I’m immediately crying again, humbled by the INSANE obvious work of the Holy Spirit to take that test when I did. I thought it was for the alcohol. It was for the meds. My meds. They were out of my system by the time this babe would have been affected. Because we tested as a joke and found out so early. 😭. 

And now that we’re safely past week 10, it’s safe to go back on them. I get to be me again. We’ll be closely monitored every 4 weeks and I’ll take the lowest dose possible, but I get to be ME. It’s not a quick fix, I know. But even the thought of everything coming in the next 6-12 months was enough to send me to bed with anxiety. 

At lunch with a dear friend after this appointment today, I was reminded of something when she handed me a Keep bracelet she’d graciously engraved for me (it’s a crap shoot to get a Keep Designer Keep...she probably already has it lol)....GOD SAID HE WOULD. He didn’t say He’d give me a baby when I asked....but He DID say He’d give us one when HE knew we were ready. He didn’t say He’d make it perfect, but He DID say He’d perfectly take care of us. And He knew what He was doing the second the Holy Spirit showed up at that Dollar Tree to tell me to buy that test. 1 week before this sweet gift could be hurt. And He put a little extra time and effort into my new psych, who I’d never met, to do a little extra research and tell me what needed to happen. And He gave me a saint of a husband to love me through the dark days, giving him the patience of Job and the heart of Abraham to have faith enough for both of us that we’d make it through the dark days. 

The tears are flowing for this one. I know everyone has their own thoughts and opinions on mental disease, medicine vs natural, what to do or not do during pregnancy. I applaud your conviction to do it your way, and hope you’ve seen mine in this blog entry 💕

And PS: no, you can’t see the gender yet and if you think you do, keep it to yo self! Lol. We’re waiting until the baby is born 🥰

XO ~ Jess

12 Weeks - It's Getting REALLY Real

WOW!!!  Y'all never cease to amaze us with the outpouring of love!!  We knew from our journey to find Raiden that we had a tribe and we knew we'd added SO many more friends over the last 5 years, but we NEVER expected the response of love and support we got for this announcement.  Y'all sure know how to make people feel loved!!  I think even MORE amazing than that was all the praise that God got for this surprise little miracle.  We have coveted your prayers over the years for many different things as our family has grown, and we're so thankful to give God the glory for this one too...trust me, this was ALL His idea at this point hahaha.

Ok, so sometime in the last two weeks, I FEEL pregnant.  I blessedly never got morning sickness (I think God gave me one on that one...He made me wait so long He's like "let's give her a pass on all this nonsense" lol.  Probably not what actually happened but I'm going with it).  I DID have a week of migraines, which WHO KNEW that was a thing??  Apparently that's a common first trimester thing, I had no idea.  So that was fun, but thankfully has passed.  But besides all that my belly has absolutely moved from the squishy tacos & ice cream loving belly to the salad & fruit craving hardening pregnant belly.  And that's WEIRD lol.  The first time I realized I legit could NOT suck it in to make my pants fit....well that was fun. 

But at the same time, it's been SO fun and awe-inspiring to "see" all the things changing as this baby grows.  The Baby Center app tells us as we pass a new week milestone a little bit about how the baby's growing and how my body is changing...and it just really brings a new perspective on how MUCH can truly happen in a week.  Like, LIFE CHANGING things are growing every week!!  And to try to fathom that it's taking place in my body and I can't even feel it is WILD.  And frankly, kinda weird LOL. 

 I've hesitated to take "bump photos" as much as I love them from other people.  36 years (ok probably 25) of never liking your stomach and hiding it at all costs, only to now showcase it is a BIZARRE change in mindset.  Especially at first, I was like "OMG, why take photos when it's still just all fat in there, there's no baby showing yet".  I thought "I'll start it when I'm 20-something weeks, because THEN you'll be able to tell it's baby not just me."  But then, I got these in the mail.  Thank you, Amazon, I have NO idea who sent them....feel free to claim if it was you, because you changed my heart. 

I have prayed for this (and not, at times) my ENTIRE life.  I have prayed to have these changes happening....the beautiful thing about a woman's body is no matter how thin she feels or how fat she tells her self she is, she can house this LIFE forming inside of that imperfect body...and it's PERFECT.  One thing I do NOT want to regret is missing out on the miracle that is every day of this pregnancy because I'm STILL body shaming mySELF.  

SO!  Weekly bump pictures, starting week 12 it is!!  I still have to get used to not sucking it in haha.  But it really was SO fun to take, and it's a fun thing for me & Chris to do together.  

Week 12 

Baby Brooks is the size of a lime.  

Eye muscles are starting to clench

Mouth can make sucking movements

Touch pads are developing on the fingers

Baby can start making a fist & wiggle toes & fingers

My favorite: if I poke or rub my belly, the baby can feel it and squirm in response...you better believe there is a whole lot of belly loving going on right now.

XOXO ~ Jess

It's Comical, Really

By the time I open access to this blog, the word will be out.  The words I waited my whole life to say....then was told I never COULD say....the words I prayed would leave my heart so I wasn't heartbroken every time another dear friend said them.  The words that took serious work to emotionally truly be okay NEVER saying...2 simple words that broke my heart for years...and now have made us hit our knees....

We're PREGNANT!!!

Yup.  My thoughts exactly LOL.  If you've followed our journey at ALL (I know SO many of you have, but I know even more are new), I'm sure you had the same "WTF, wipe my tears, hysterical laughter, God what did you DO?" response we did.  I'll start from the so called, beginning to catch everyone up.....after I wipe my eyes (literally) from actually being able to WRITE those 2 words.  

So to those of you that are new to our story...WELCOME!!  We're SO glad you're here!!  To those that have been here and prayed us through so far, we're SO very thankful for all of the continued prayers over the years (but seriously, who DIDN'T stop praying, cause we need to have a chat...LOL).  Chris and I are coming up on 10 years of marriage in August.  (WHAT?!?!)  We knew from the start we wanted kids.  In fact, when we met online on a local dating site here in Phoenix, one of the first things we talked about before we even talked on the phone was what we wanted our future families to look like.  We BOTH wanted a big family.  We both grew up in small immediate families, but he grew up with a close, giant, extended family, and I was always envious of that, so I knew I wanted ALLLLLL the kids.  We also were immediately on the same page: have 1-2 of our own, then adopt.  Older kids.  Kids that were aging out of foster care with no family to call their own.  I don't know about your dating experiences, but most of mine weren't this spot on, especially without a few dates and usually some drinks lol.

We decided very early on in our relationship that once we were married we'd start trying.  We weren't old, but we wanted several kids so we didn't want to wait.  We put our faith in God that He'd give us kids when He was ready.  About a year into our marriage we became more concerned that my periods were never regular; this wasn't new, it'd been this way my entire adult life.  But now, facing the hope of pregnancy, it became an issue.  Tracking ovulation when you can't even track a period wasn't going to help.  We weren't CONCERNED, but we knew we needed help.  We found a great dr, he said "oh ya, I can help" and we started on Clomid & Metformin.  I became regular but a pregnancy never came.  We were referred about 6-8 months in to a specialist, where we discovered I had PCOS.  The dr indicated that the amount of cysts I had on my ovaries were blocking my healthy eggs from dropping in a time frame necessary to arrange a meet up lol.  My eggs were healthy but couldn't get where they needed to go.  It's all a blur now, to be totally honest with you, but I believe we removed the cysts 2 different times.  Nothing worked.

We started looking at artificial insemination, which the doctor thought would do the trick.  We'd also, of course, looked at IVF, but that was something in our head we weren't quite sure about.  NOTHING wrong with it, we just knew that if we wanted to adopt, we probably could put the money needed for IVF into more than 1 foster adoption.  We knew that decision was down the road, so we didn't stress TOO much about that, and started the paperwork necessary to go with AI.  Now, if you followed our original story, this is where THAT starts.  If you're interested, you can go back and read that here in A Moment of Sad...A Moment of Hope.

For those of you that are new to my style of blogging, you'll quickly learn I probably bounce back and forth way too much.  I started blogging our adoption story because I needed a place to get out all the feelings that were in my heart and thoughts in my head.  As a person with bi-polar you can only IMAGINE the amount of thoughts at one time LOL, so it became necessary to type not write, as much as I love old fashioned pen & paper.  As we journeyed on, we quickly learned that people wanted to hear our story.  Not just friends and family, but people were excited by it, touched by it, intrigued by it....I've never lived my life in the shadows, much to my private husband's dismay lol.  But I think we both found that it helped US knowing we had SO many on our side, praying for us, cheering for us, and waiting just as anxiously for the day we got to bring a child into our home.  It was an amazing feeling and as the many years have passed since that day (read it here, if you dare, but get tissues....I still need them!!  Not Flesh of my Flesh) that we became parents for the first time, and we were picked as the family for OUR Raiden, we've been blessed with the opportunity to open a lot of people's eyes & hearts to the kids in our foster system.  I was adopted as a newborn baby....believe me, there is NOTHING wrong with that...each family is called for their OWN path.  We were never called to adopt an infant...we were called to adopt the older kids.  And while my arms yearned for an infant, God gave me my Raiden...who, at the age of 7, still needed to be held by a mama...HIS mama....one that would NEVER let him go.  So I still had full arms, and a full heart...and that boy was loved by HUNDREDS the second he became ours and we proclaimed to the world that we were parents.

So when we started telling our family and friends about our hilariously miraculous pregnancy (that post will come, you'll laugh too LOL), questions immediately came if I was going to blog.  Now I'm not gonna lie, at first I was like "why do I need to blog this, people do this all the time??"  But a friend of mine told me something that touched my heart...and maybe it's true and maybe it's not, but it was true to her....she said "you let us in on Chapter 1, 2, & 3.  When you told me you weren't going to have a baby EVER and you were done having kids, I felt like that ended the book.  But now you're growing the sequel.  How do you NOT share the story that STARTED the book people were dying to read?"  It seemed a little extreme but I was pretty excited when I really thought about it.  

So, thanks to her, and thanks to my ever-racing emotional mind (do I still have to blame it on bi-polar or NOW do I get to use the pregnancy excuse???? LOL), we're back!!  I'm assuming this will be like every other pregnancy BUT, with the always emotional Jessica twist LOL.

Thanks for coming along, friends.  It's been 10 long years but WOW are we excited for this one!!  (Unlike our adoption blog which had to be private and invite only because of privacy laws within the foster system, this blog will be public.)

xo ~ Jess