Jessica Kelso

With my due date a week away, I can’t help but feel so many emotions that I’ve never felt at one time before. Though anytime I’ve started to feeling anxious, it’s gone quickly and I am so thankful for that. God has got my back in this and I’ve never known it more.

I can’t stop listening to this song. . .

Such a great reminder that He’s in complete control of everything, including this birth. He’s conquered it all already.

He loves this little girl inside of me so much more than I can even imagine.

Being pregnant has been a funny experience. It still surprises me how curious people are about my whole pregnant life. The most random questions in passing seem to happen almost anywhere I go. When are you due? What is the gender? What is her name? Where are you delivering? Who is your doctor? A birth center with a midwife, NO DRUGS? You look small for 37 weeks. Is this your first? How do you feel? Are you excited? Nope, not at all. And my top two favorites. . . Are you dilated yet? Are you being induced?

It is never ending. I really don’t mind when friends and family bombard me with all of these questions, but it’s still a little unsettling when a complete stranger who I’ll never see again wants to know how, when, and where I’m planning to push this baby out.

I sometimes find it difficult to keep a smile and just answer the questions especially when I’ve become so passionate about birth throughout this whole process. I never want to offend anyone with the decisions I’m making for myself but it seems like no matter what, it happens. I guess it’s bound to happen with anything you are passionate about and others just don’t see things the same way. I’m very aware you may not feel the same as me, but I at least want to be able to express how and why I feel the way I do. Maybe I’ll help someone in the process think about their own decisions. . . or maybe not.

Even as I write this post, I feel the need to delete and start over but I’m sick of doing that. It’s nice to have an outlet -besides my husband- to say whatever I want and I think I’m going to start doing a little more of that. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I guess if I do you can just stop reading what I have to say

I had a pregnant cashier at Publix yesterday ask me a bunch of questions, one being . . . “are you going to be induced soon?”. I guess I shouldn’t have been taken back by the question since almost everyone I know lately has been induced early for one reason or another, but in no way did I say I was having issues or that anything was wrong and she just assumed I was probably being induced before my estimated due date. It got me thinking and researching more than ever why most doctors feel the need to induce before the baby is ready.

One of my most favorite articles I came across explaining all the risks involved with inducing labor, had this to say at the end . . .

“I’m not trying to portray an anti-Ob message here, because you need to trust your carer to do the best for you. But what I am trying to strongly get across is you cannot hand yourself and your baby over to your doctor on a silver platter. You need to be responsible for yourself, your baby and your rights. You need to do your research so you can decline procedures based on evidence and what you feel is right for you.”

If I could say one thing to all of those people who blindly trust everything their doctor says, that would be it. I’m thankful for doctors all around, but I’ve had and seen one too many instances where things could have been avoided if I -or that person- had just done their own research. I want to say I’ve learned from that and don’t plan to make the same mistake again.

One of the many topics that were brought up as we discussed putting Thrasher in daycare for a couple of months was the issue of biting. I’ve always heard about kids this age being into that and I remember saying I really hope he wasn’t that kid. He has bitten us before but he’s been around other kids enough and it’s never happened that I felt pretty confident he would be fine.

Monday when I picked him up, I was told of his behavior that day. He bit two little girls, one which broke the skin, and he tried twice more but they caught him in time. The first thing I thought was, “nooo, not my sweet boy. . . you must have the wrong kid!”. I felt terrible. I can only imagine how upset those parents were going to be that their kid had a lovely bite mark. I was told he didn’t do it out of any kind of anger or frustration, he simply walked up and bit them. The little guy is getting his molars in and has had a terrible time with it. He normally sleeps through the night without a sound but the past couple of weeks as these teeth are breaking through has caused him to wake up crying in pain quite a bit. We give him wet wash cloths at home to chew on and lots of orajel. He has been drooling more than ever and is getting a little rash on each cheek that he’s gotten before from teething. With all that said, I know it must give him relief when he bites, so how do we teach him otherwise at 15 months old? When he has done it to us, it scares him. It hurts so bad we automatically let out a pretty big scream, tell  him no and that it hurts, and he has recently gone to a one minute time out.  At school they said they had a talk with him and redirected him, so hopefully the reaction he got from the kids he is biting scares him enough to stop. He definitely doesn’t like to see people cry. He’s got a sweet little heart and it gets broken when he sees people upset. It’s good to know he’s not acting out of anger at this age, but really frustrating to not know how to stop it. I guess it’s just a phase though and “this too shall pass”. Although he has attempted to a couple of times, he hasn’t successfully bitten anyone the remainder of this week. . . so I’m really hoping it isn’t anything that sticks.

This week has still managed to be super rough on me despite having all of this time to myself. I started feeling better from that nasty sickness last week and now I’ve started something new with a nasty sore throat. Back pain, heartburn, nausea, and frequent bathroom trips keep me up almost all night and for some reason I haven’t been able to nap during the days despite how exhausted I am. I don’t do caffeine whatsoever. In the beginning of this pregnancy, I had to make the decision to give up caffeine completely or drink it regularly and I figured for Nola’s sake, I’d cut it out. Pre-pregnancy, as long as I had one caffeinated drink a day, it didn’t seem to mess with my sleep…unless it was way to close to bedtime. If I went a couple of days or week without any caffeine, and then had a diet coke or coffee. . . I’d be up all night. I’ve always hated that it does that to me. So needless to say, since I’ve been pregnant I have to be super careful of what I eat and drink if I want to sleep at all. I’ve drank decaf coffee at 8pm and haven’t been able to sleep due to the 1% of caffeine in it. I’ve had sleepless nights because of a little bit of a chocolate dessert at night. . . so I’ve had to cut out pretty much all chocolate. Wednesday night I went out with a friend and as we were leaving dinner, she got a coffee to-go so I decided I wanted something as well. It’s been forever since I’ve had any type of frozen coffee drink, so I found one that was a peanut butter cup frappe. I thought to ask if it had any chocolate it in (which it did but I had her make it without), but for some reason I didn’t think to ask about coffee. I guess I assumed it was peanut butter mixed with ice? Who knows. Well as I laid staring at the ceiling the entire night, I discovered it most definitely had coffee in it. I even took half of a unisom out of desperation for sleep and it didn’t phase me. I “woke up” the next morning hopeful that I would be able to nap that morning and maybe the caffeine would be out of my system, but I learned different as I saw two trucks pull up to install our new solar hot water system. Kevin felt so bad and knew I needed to sleep that he stayed home from work that morning since the men had to be in and out of the house. He also turned on a bunch of fans for me to try to drown out the noise, but despite his wonderful attempts. . . sleep never came. It seems like a never ending battle. I know without sleep I can’t fight off sickness as easy, and I get also tend to let stress take over. . . but it seems pointless to stress over the fact that I’m not sleeping. Maybe tonight will be my lucky night. I know people say it’s just your body preparing for the sleepless nights ahead, but that seems ridiculous. The only preparation I need for that phase is extra sleep right now!

I’m sure you’re as sick of hearing about Thrasher’s daycare experiences as I am thinking about it all day, BUT he saw his teacher and ran to her! Is that not the best? She’s really sweet, so I knew it wouldn’t take very long. We started leaving him there for naps last week as well. The first day he slept 20 minutes in the teacher’s arms and wouldn’t have anything to do with his little cot, but the following day I got smart and brought his blanket he sleeps with and he took an hour nap on it. Since then, it’s only gotten better. They nap so early though that sometimes by bed time he is beyond tired so we’ve been putting him down about 30 minutes earlier at night and that seems to help.

We all seemed to have a little bit of a stomach virus last week but I think it has finally made it’s way out. Literally. Kevin got the worst of it but thankfully it was short lived. I was stuck in bed for two days just feeling horrible. As if I don’t seem to get sick enough, pregnancy has really intensified everything. I’m not even sure I have a working immune system anymore.

As of  this week, Nola will be considered full term and we will be in the clear to deliver at the birthing center! I’m SO excited about that. I’m still trying to remember anything can happen and I need to have an open mind, but just knowing we’ve made it this far seems like quite the accomplishment. I’m not sure why. I think just the fact that it took us so long to get pregnant left me feeling like I’d have a really rough pregnancy. . .  and although most days it feels like it’s been rough, we’ve really had no complications. She has remained healthy and growing, so that’s all that matters. Anytime now I could go into labor, and I thought that would scare me more than it does. We are planning a non-medicated birth at a local birthing center and when I first started out wanting to do that, it terrified me. The unknown is usually a pretty scary thing. My reasons for wanting to do things this way were simple in the beginning. I really just wanted to prove to myself I could follow through with something. . . but now it’s turned into so much more. It’s not about me anymore, at all. It’s about Nola and giving her the best start possible. It’s about trusting that God knew what he was doing when he designed my body to give birth. It’s about being informed. It’s about what is right for my family.

I can’t wait!

I’m still pretty unsure of this whole daycare thing and I’m really trying to trust we made the right decision. I know it’ll just take some time, but it’s not a fun process. We dropped the boy off on his first day and he had no idea what was going on. Lots of little kids and a ton of chaos. We got there while some of the kids were still having breakfast and Thrasher loves food, so he got pretty distracted but still wasn’t a  happy camper when we left. I went to pick up him at 11:30 after lunch and he was the last kid sitting at the table, eating his lunch. Sweetest thing ever. He was covered in food. I think he was loving the fact that he wasn’t strapped in a high chair with a bib on with someone telling him not to throw his food. Once he saw me, the tears came and after a morning of tears of my part…

Well.

It. was. horrible.

The following day he had a visit with “mom” which means he is pretty much stuck in a car all morning being driven to and from, with the results being a no show as usual. That’s all I will say on that. Friday morning Kevin dropped him off and I was told there were some tears. His teacher is super sweet though and she said they were “buddies” on his first day so I have a feeling he got held a lot, which is good. I’d  hate to know he was off crying by himself all morning. This week we are going to try to leave him a little longer to see how he does with taking a nap there.

As for this weekend, I’m trying to soak in all of the moments with just me and my boys. I’ll never get this time back, and I want to make the most of it. In just a few weeks things are going to change and everyone will have to adjust. So before that happens. . . we’re playing, and tickling, and taking Sunday naps as a family, and letting Thrasher play in the tub for a long time, and eating ice cream. Lots of ice cream.