The Babymoon

"Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom--there I will give you my love." 

-Song of Songs 7:11-12

What is a "babymoon" you ask? A "babymoon" is a honeymoon-like vacation that you take before the baby comes. It gives couples a last minute chance to reconnect and spend quality time together before their lives become all about recovering from labor, poopy diapers, and sleepless nights. I love how The Bible does not ignore the fact that couples need time to connect with each other and occasionally have a vacation!

Well Jamie and I had the privilege of taking a babymoon together these past few days and man was it relaxing. When we looked into where we should get away to, originally I wanted to go to Charleston or Savannah, BUT those are cities where you almost have to walk everywhere (more like pregnant waddle) AND if it rains there is not a whole lot to do. Being that we were going to go in April (one of the rainiest months of the year) we needed a place where we could do a lot of things indoors if the weather wasn't great and where we could drive everywhere. Hmmmm.....

So we came up with the idea to go to Pigeon Forge/Gaitlinburg area in the Tennessee mountains. Everyone who has ever been knows that it is very...hmmmm...cheesy, BUT it is lots of fun! We went to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Aquarium, the Hatfield and the McCoy's dinner feud show, saw a romantic movie, did some light shopping at the Tanger Outlets, went on the huge 200' high Smokey Mountain Ferris Wheel to see beautiful mountain views, ate a bunch of good barbeque (including some of the most amazing bbq nachos with queso...heck yes!), and swam in the heated indoor pool at the hotel to our hearts content. It did rain a lot, so I was glad that we choose the location we did.

Our energy levels were pretty well matched because Jamie was recuperating from tax season, which ended the day before we left, and I ...well I am 8 months pregnant where the saying "feeling tired" is an understatement. The first morning on our vacation, we woke up late, got breakfast downstairs, went swimming, and THEN decided we wanted to nap for a while. Normally, Jamie loves to nap and I am anxious to go see everything, but this trip we really balanced laying around and not pushing ourselves too hard with a couple of really fun outings.

Below Are Some of My Favorite Pics from the Trip

Hatfield's & McCoy's Dinner Show

Just trying this thing out for when Baby Girl Reynolds starts dating!!

The Aquarium

 We teased that this large very slow moving fish was Jamie's "spirit animal". 

 How cute is this photo? Apparently, both the penguins and The Reynolds are expecting!!

The Smokey Mountain Ferris Wheel

Views from 200' above the city looking at the mountains!

Maternity Photos

 Anyone remember this onsie from when I first told Jamie we were expecting?

 What can I say....I married a piece of work!!

 I keep trying to tell him my bump is better than his, but he doesn't believe me! Lol!

A fun appearance by Mr. Bryson, the Reynold's first real baby of the house!! 

A very special thank you to my friend Kate Joy, who swears up and down that she is not a professional photographer, but who has taken some of the best photos of Jamie and I EVER!!
She extravagantly gifted this photo session to me as a baby shower gift!
Kate you're the best! Love you!!

Showers for Baby Girl Reynolds

In March, I was blessed to have not just one, but TWO amazing baby showers! One was in the DC area and was thrown by my Aunt Beth and my Mom. It was attended with mostly family and had a special appearance by Ellen Marini who I was privileged to finally be touching baby bumps with (she is pregnant with her 4th). I enjoyed spending time with my sister-in-law Katy and getting to see cousins and aunts who I haven't seen for a long time! My Aunt Peggy (my Mom's BFF since college) blessed me with a fun tricycle diaper cake (how creative!!) and Aunt Beth's newly remodeled kitchen provided the perfect backdrop for a beautiful celebration.

In Greensboro, my small group girls, consisting of Emily Trader, Emily Tinsley, Jamie Springer, Liz Hinshaw, and Jenny Tinder, threw me a wonderful and very emotional shower to celebrate our upcoming addition to the Reynolds clan. My shower in Greensboro had lots of time to reflect on the tough journey that Jamie and I took to get to this place and had lots of happy tears. I woke up extra early the morning of to spend some quiet time in prayer in the nursery. Tears were flowing as I sat in thankful awe of all that God had done and imagined just how far he carried me over the last few years. My mom drove down from DC and she started falling apart only minutes within walking in the door and meeting my sweet friends. She was told "well now I know where Emily gets it from"....sooooo true!! My mother-in-law (Momma Terry), sister-in-law, and niece (Gianna) were able to make it in from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Momma Terry gave the sweetest speech. Let me just say that I seriously lucked out in the mother-in-law department!! Katie Nash came down from Virginia, past students turned good friends came, my boss and girlfriend from RCC was there, and friends of all ages from church attended! The women who prayed with me through infertility said such heartfelt things. Through many conversations everyone agreed that Jamie was going to be a great daddy!!

Between both showers I was extremely blessed with so many things that we really needed and lots of fun gifts too! When I say blessed....I mean almost embarrassingly so! Every shower I came home from, I would have Jamie unload the gifts and you should have seen the look on his face at the sheer amount of baby stuff we were gifted with. But what I am truly most overwhelmed by is how blessed I am to have such wonderful friends and family who have supported us through such a hard time and who now are celebrating with us as we prepare to welcome this very wanted and loved baby girl into the world.

Dream A Little Dream With Me...

So just this past Tuesday I hit the start of my 3rd trimester! Wow! It seems like it is going by so fast and so slow all at the same time! I can't believe how much the baby is moving! Jamie has started being able to see her move from the outside.

A few weeks ago a friend recommended that I share all of my crazy pregnancy dreams. So here are a few! Warning these make absolutely no sense, but prepare to be amused!

I had a dream where I...

...was dating Matthew McConaughey. Jamie didn't exist in this dream. But anyways....Matthew lived on an old trolley car (which was kind of cool), but I wasn't really that into him so of course I was forced to break it off. In the end, we decided it was better to be friends who occasionally made out. What? Like you have control over all your dreams! Lol.

...lived in a war zone and was on a mission to save this girl who was being kept hostage in a dog kennel. I arrived at the house where she was being kept, but had to pretend to ignore her and be a confidant of the people keeping her hostage. In the end, I escaped with her somehow, though the details are fuzzy on exactly how that happened. Later, I was preparing to go into battle and I remember being really nervous. There was a large rolling cart of mattresses that I was standing on as this rolling cart was whizzing through cobblestone streets, I was holding a flame thrower along with two other leader-type guys and we were about to be entering into a battle zone.

...hmm...how do I describe this one? I had a period of time when I was progesterone support and I noticed that I had really dark scary dreams when I was on the progesterone pills, anywho....Basically, I was on this farm where a Bam Margera type character was torturing all of these cattle with his friends...breaking their legs and laughing about it...really sick stuff like that. The dream felt very demonic. Somehow I managed to get a hold of a gun and I shot all of the bad guys, but then I had to shoot the animals that were suffering because that was the humane thing to do.

...was administering an exam to my class, which had about 100 students in it. We only had a 50 minute class period for this very long exam, so I was already stressing out. After I opened up class, I asked the students if they had any questions before I gave out the exam. Over 15 students raised their hand. Sensing that a lot of them were trying to toy with the time constraints of the exam, I re-phrased my question to say "Does anyone have concepts from the book that you have questions about?" Everyone's hands went down. "Great! Let's gets started." A magical helper appeared and assisted me in handing out the exams. During the end of the exam, the students were suppose to go out in the hallway and refer to a set of informative posters  to answer the last few questions on the test (I don't know...lol). Well students started filtering out into the hallway, BUT there was this school gang that had chains and they were forcing my students into this warehouse for gang initiations. When I tried to see where my students were being led off to, I myself got led away by the gang too. Scared to death of what I was about to see, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this gang was teaching students about an online business adventure where they sold baby clothes through a website (can you tell I was doing too much online baby shopping during this period?). The demonstration included robots selecting items off of racks for orders and placing them in shipping boxes.

...was in a room with all mirrors and I was waiting to meet the Emperor. There was lots of interior details that I was oooing and awwing over.

...was at a 25 week ob appointment getting a check-up on the baby and I sneezed! I sneezed so hard that the baby shot out of me! I laid her down on some table was trying to get a nurse to help me so we could get her over to a NICU as soon as possible.

...that there was a plus-size model who was making fun of how big my hips were getting. In my dream, I was really offended and crying profusely. When I woke up, I was really shaken up about it. Feeling very self conscious, I told Jamie who was half out of it. He reached over as I was laying on my side, touched what he thought was my belly and said "Is that your baby belly?" I started crying (in real life) and said "THAT'S MY HIP!!" Oh pregnancy hormones!!!

...was at my mother-in-laws house giving birth. There were lots of people around me and I didn't really care. When she was born, she was covered in dirt and coffee grinds. My sister-in-law (Amy) and one of Jamie's cousins went with Jamie to wash the dirt off of her in the shower. Jamie came out of the shower and we embraced each other and started crying because we couldn't believe we finally had a baby and were parents. They brought the baby over to us and she had super chiseled model cheeks that were very pink, like she had on lots of blush, but they were all natural. Then my mother-in-law was trying to get everyone to clean up the house so she could host a viewing party for people to come see our new little edition.

Those are just a few! I am pretty glad that the period of me being on progesterone pills is over. Though I slept really really deeply, I had a lot of nightmares on those pills.

I have a feeling the closer I get to her due date that I will have more and more dreams about delivery, which I am kind of excited about.  Stay tuned! A lot of really fun updates are coming to the blog including pictures from baby showers, details about our babymoon, and, the post I am most looking forward to, giving you guys a tour of the babies room when it is finished!!!

Why Me?

Why me? This is the question I have been asking myself a lot lately. Why am I getting to experience some of the greatest joys in this life? I remember very vividly the sorrow of being single. Now I bask in days with a loving husband...Why me? Going to a fantastic job where I get to teach students about interior design...a career that was long ago just a dream...Why me? Being surrounded by a community of friends and a church that has loved on Jamie and I during some really dark days...why me? And now...being pregnant!!!

To think that God is using me to grow a tiny human....WOW! What an extravagant blessing! I don't deserve this goodness! Sure I love to talk about all of the funny things that this pregnancy is doing to my body, but in my heart I am truly left undone that this is even happening.

At our anatomy ultrasound, I was amazed at all that is going on inside with our baby girl. There is a brain with 2 hemispheres and all the individual parts, a spine, 10 fingers and 10 toes, femur bones for each leg, and I could go on and on. I am reminded of Psalm 139:13.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."

 

Some cute photos of Baby Girl Reynolds from our 16 week ultrasound. 

It is really cool to think that you and I were both formed in our mother's wombs. The human body is fascinating, detailed, delicate, and, yet, so resilient. You and I both started out as an embryo...smaller than a fleck of dust...naked to the human eye. It is astonishing to imagine that my daughter now has ovaries with 7 million eggs! Half of the DNA of ALL of the grandchildren she will EVER have are nestled inside of my womb. Life is so precious and God in His goodness created every single step of this amazing process! Knowing that this is taking place within...all I can ask is why me?

There were many days when I wept because I did not know if this gift would ever be bestowed to me. A few weeks ago, I went to the store to buy prenatal vitamins and as funny as this sounds, it was quite emotional for me. You see I had bought prenatal vitamins for years, hoping that one day I would receive a miracle. Though my obgyn was insistent that I stay on them, buying prenatal vitamins became painful for me because the more bottles I bought over the years, the more sad I became that I was not yet pregnant. It seemed like a waste of money and, more importantly, it was an unwanted reminder that I was infertile. Last year, I bought a huge bottle and prayed "God...please, please, please make the next bottle of prenatal vitamins I purchase be while I am pregnant." So you can see that when I purchased them recently, I was reminded of my answer to prayer. With a smile on my face, brushing tears away in the middle of the family planning aisle at Walgreens I was in thankful awe.

"The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy." - Psalm 65:8

Songs of joy He is surely due. Yet, I am also flooded with reminders that though my prayer for a pregnancy has been answered, there are many women still praying similar prayers. I am broken hearted over those I know who are still struggling with infertility or the ability to bring children into this world. Often I think, "Weren't they next God? They have more years of trying under their belt than we did or have had more heart wrenching pain with child loss. I am thankful, but I also don't get it." For those of you still in the struggle, my prayer is that you will have mentors through this who really see you and that God answers these deep desires for children.

The truth is I don't know or understand why. But I am assured of one thing...His goodness is just as good on the day we get our answer to prayer and just as good on our most beautifully triumphant days as it is on the days we are in painful prayer. As I am caught between an astounding answer to prayer for pregnancy and anxious prayers for the healthy arrival of this child in our arms, I need to be reminded of this myself .

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." - James 1:17

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." - Hebrews 13:8

Drumroll Please...Pink or Blue?

Boy oh boy....

Jamie and I couldn't be more excited. We had always dreamed of having a little girl, though I really would have been happy with a boy too. By the time we go into ultrasounds all I want to hear is a healthy heartbeat! We found out just before Christmas and it was fun to tell my parents in person! Can't wait to share an upcoming blog about the design plans for the baby's room!

Waiting for the Ball to Drop...A look back at 2014 and preparing for 2015

Year 2014...man do I feel blessed to have experienced you!! I can't help but think back over the past year and just be in awe of all that has happened. Some of you may remember my blog from February of this year, where I talked about all of the struggles that Jamie and I experienced in 2013. Here is a look back from that blog...

"I am not going to sugar coat it, 2013 was an extremely difficult year for Jamie and I. There were times where we both wished that we could have laid our head down and slept through it. Infertility, struggles with our weight, job loss, unemployment, and months with great financial uncertainty, could basically summarize the year we went through. Every month made us feel more and more raw and exposed. Sometimes the only thing I could muster to pray was "Lord have mercy on us." ...When the ball dropped on New Year's Eve, Jamie and I kissed, wished 2013 good riddance, and agreed that 2014 was going to be our year of hope...So goodbye 2013...I did my best to learn from the path God had us walk through on this really sucky year and I am holding onto hope that 2014 will be our year or at the very least one year closer to Jamie and I growing our family and having the children we so desperately want. Greetings 2014! Howdy! Good to see ya! Let's do this!"

The sadness of 2013 really made 2014 so much sweeter!! Here I sit writing this at 18 weeks pregnant (in my 5th month) and with every little baby kick, I cannot help but feel this immense joy. In total, our baby is 5" long, the size of a sweet potato, and now has a complete set of unique fingerprints. How miraculous!!! As Jamie and I were driving to Christmas Eve service, I began crying because I just could not believe that (A) we were blessed to be able to pursue IVF this year, (B) that we got pregnant and still were pregnant, (C) we both had good jobs in our field (sometimes a few too many jobs), and (D) that many of our prayers were being answered.

2014 was also the year that we sent our first child (Riley) to heaven and though that was one of the hardest parts of this year, I do feel blessed to know that Riley will never have to deal with the pain of this world and that we have a Savior who is taking better care of him or her than Jamie and I ever could.

My hopes and prayers for 2015 are ones for a healthy child to join our family in May or June. To be quite honest, I am literally petrified of all that could go wrong and counting down the days till I am 24 weeks pregnant, which is the point in a pregnancy where a child could survive if born early. Before every ultrasound, I get extremely nervous. The night before we went in for a 16 week ultrasound to find out the gender, I was crying hysterically because I hadn't felt the baby move in a week and at that point all I wanted to hear was a heartbeat. Thankfully, everything looked good, but I am still very nervous about my anatomy ultrasound coming up in early January. Sometimes I feel like I am waiting for the ball to drop and not the one in Times Square. I guess this means that I am becoming like any normal mother...overprotective and worried about everything! Truthfully, I know that I need to cast all my fears and anxieties on Him, but I am really struggling to do that.

My other prayer for 2015 is that Jamie could get into a place where he has a better work-life balance. Him having a full-time job in accounting and a part-time job in land survey drafting at night has been an amazing blessing financially, but it leaves us with very little time to spend together. Thankfully, he will be greatly cutting back his hours at his part-time job, but he is also gearing up for another tax season ....hence me becoming what they call in the accounting industry as a "tax widow". So all that to say I am looking forward to the end of April when we plan to take a babymoon (a 2nd honeymoon-type trip before the baby comes).

Sooo many people have been so kind in asking how I am feeling...well... I am usually feeling great! Exhausted....but great! The nausea has mostly gone away! THOUGH I will say the food aversions are as bad as they have ever been and smells of meat and garlic still make me lose my cookies. The other day I bought Jamie a can of chicken noodle soup because he was sick, but when he opened it in the kitchen it sent me into a vomiting spell. Also a few weeks ago, I told Jamie to bring home Boston Market, because I knew that I needed some protein, but the smell of that even coming into the house make me violently sick for several hours. So there was poor Jamie eating the Boston Market chicken out under the freezing cold carport...poor guy!!! When we went to go see my family for Christmas, they were gracious enough to have a meat-free house. BUT as long as I stay far away from meat and cooking meat, I feel good. Pregnancy is so crazy! I am still getting frequent migraines, but that is just normal for me and I deal with them the best that I can.

My body is really starting to change and even though I still haven't gained any weight according to the scale, my bump is definitely growing. In the middle of the night if I switch from sleeping on one side to another I can feel the baby tumbling around to settle on the other side. So cool! The miracle of children just amazes me more and more everyday!

Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement on the baby's gender! We can't wait to share!!!