I really, seriously, honestly do.

I feel like he’s been permanently rubbing my back and grocery shopping for 3 months straight.  He has served me willingly, without so much as one complaint.  I’ve really seen God supply him with “extra” grace for this new season.

I have heard it said that lemonade is a pregnant woman’s best friend.  It IS people.  It IS.
Potatoes use to be just so-so in my book.  But they have been so wonderful during pregnancy!  Why?  Because they are a highly alkalizing food, which means they absord acid as you digest them.  SUPER helpful with all the heart-burn and acid reflux.

 I finally watched Tangled a few weeks ago!  I can honestly say this is one of my favorite movies now.  I have watched it 3 times in one month.  This movie made me laugh so hard, this prego mama NEEDED some comic relief.

I have watched anything and everything that is “free” on netflix.  It got me through some “longer” days.Laura Story, I love you.  I love you, I love you, I love you.  I played her songs “What a Savior” and “Faithful God” literally during some of my hardest moments, which for me were:

a)puking

b) Brushing my teeth

c) showering (people, my hygiene has taken a TOLL)

d) Just laying in bed for hours aching (fun, huh? )

Whenever I faced one of these daunting tasks, I flipped on my i-pod or asked Nick to.  The lyrics that kept me hanging on were:

“Faithful God!  Every promise kept!  Every need you’ve met!  Faithful God!  All I am, and all I’ll ever be is all because you’ve loved faithfully…faithful God…”

and:

“Jesus you are stronger!  More than any other! Hallelujah what a savior!  Jesus you are higher!  My soul’s deepest desire!  Hallelujah what a savior!”

Let me introduce you to Papaya enzymes.  I would pop 2-3 of these in my mouth immediately after a meal and it really relieved my acid reflux.  A glorious all-natural remedy.
Alas, my mom.  I am going to be a mom, and yet I desperately still NEED my own mom!  She has texted, called, sent cards, come to the dr. with me, weeded my garden, made a meal and encouraged me… all in the midst of starting her new job and moving  She’s truly lifted my heart on some harder days.

So… how did I start each morning of my first trimester?  Listening to the Revive Our Hearts Internet Radio daily broadcast.  THANK YOU REVIVE OUR HEARTS!!  Friends, I was too tired to even open my bible or lift my hands to write in my journal.  In such a season of sickness, I truly depended on audio ways of speaking truth to my heart.  All I had energy to do was click “download.” and then lay back and listen.  And talk about finding gold!  I got to listen to a series about suffering and dying, a series with guest Elizabeth Elliot, series on marriage, being a true woman, etc.  My heart was so strengthened.

Joni Eareckson Tada. You.  Are. A. Gift. From. Heaven.  I listened to a message from her called “The Stakes are Higher Than You Think.”  She is a quadriplegic and also has breast cancer.  This message changed my life, and I listened to it over and over during days I didn’t think I could make it through.  You will not regret taking 25 minutes to give it a listen HERE.

I have been reading “Knowing God” By J.I. Packer.  I think this is going to be one of the best books I have ever read.

So.. these were the more tangible, practical things that have helped me get through the past 3 months of my pregnancy.  I am so grateful!  Oh- and I am happy to report, I haven’t thrown up in 24 hours!  I am feeling great today!  Thanks for everyone who has reached out to me… its been so sweet to hear from so many of you.

I’m doing better each day!  My heart is full and sustained, encouraged and upheld.

Photo Credit: http://www.mysuccessfulpregnancy.com/

Hi friends!  It’s been A. WHILE.  I admit: I’m a bad blogger.  I don’t have a system down.  I sincerely only blog when I feel like it, which means you’ll have to bear with the inconsistencies of my postings.  But a few things are blog-worthy I think… I’ve reached a milestone in my life:  I survived my first trimester of my first pregnancy!  (loud cheering).

Friends.  My first trimester.  Where do I begin?  For starters, I’ll have to shed some modesty and get really human on you to let you in on this “pretty” new chapter of my life.  No pressure to keep reading.  So… the nausea has been severe and border-line cause for hospitalization.  I can’t tell you how many times a day I literally thought “I am dying!”  At one point, I even typed into google “Help, I am dying in my first trimester!”  Then came the flood of assurance.  There is a world of other sick and dying prego mama’s that apparently have all typed the same cry of desperation into google.  Thank God!  I was strangely so comforted to be able to read chats and posts about women in my shoes.  OH, my heart goes out to them!

The only thing I can conclude about how I survived is that the human body is incredibly, divinely durable and God can keep you breathing and peeing under brutal, excruciating circumstances.  I don’t know how I survived after barely eating or drinking for 3 months straight and non-stop vomitting.  Oh, and morning sickness?  No, no.  I didn’t have that.  I had ALL DAY LONG/ALL NIGHT LONG sickness.   At a few points, I remember seeing white stars everywhere.  I remember Nick being right next to me and seeing his mouth moving, but faintly being able to see or hear him in my dizzy estate.

We’re talking blood-vessels popping in my eyes, puke bags filled all over the house, car, crawling up the stairs… spitting CUPS of saliva into my spit cup every hour… I became a literal vegetable.  You name it… I puked in or on it.  And There. Is. Nothing. I. haven’t. thrown. Up.  Now that is something I couldn’t have said 3 months ago.

Bet you wish you were pregnant, too.  Haha.  It has been absolutely hellacious.  And yet still.  THIS is how every single human being on the planet comes into existence.  This miracle in every mother’s womb is also the “little sucker that is torturing you to death…” in the words of my dr. when we listened to our baby’s heartbeat!  We had a good laugh.  Though this baby has literally been sucking the sheer life out of me, its heartbeat has the ability to melt me.  To know its there, just existing contentedly… is comforting to a mama whose too sick to take any vitamins much less hardly any real food.

God nudges some hope into my heart daily.  In an instant, I overflow with joy and wonder, tears fill my eyes and I get all weepy.  This is my baby!  This is all happening because this is going to be a precious blessing!  I am going to be A. MOM!

I confess, those glimmers of hope were hard to remember during the long days and nights of continual nausea.  And now that I’m just 2 days into my second trimester, I feel like I am crawling slowly back into existence again.  But I’m still not quite out of the woods yet.

So… how am I doing?  I have to admit, this has been one of the hardest summers of my life. And I know I’m not the only mama out there feeling like this My life has never been at a stand-still like this.  I’ve never been bed-ridden for so long.  Just a few weeks ago, I reached a point of desperation.  I used every ounce of strength to move from the couch to the kitchen and peered into the fridge, desperate for something to eat to relieve the nausea.  I stared at hundreds of things I have puked thousands of times.  I need to eat!  But I can’t eat!  Friends.  I lost it.  It reached the point of total human brokenness.  My strength, my endurance was completely gone.  I threw a near-by bowl of peppermints on the floor and fell to the ground.  “I can’t do this anymore!  I can’t take one more day of this!”  I cried to my husband who gently watched me crumble.  I’m not sure how long I cried and repeated like a broken-record “I can’t do this anymore!”

See.  A pregnant nauseous woman needs to eat like ever 1.5 hours.  So every 1.5 hours I feel like I am going to war with food.  The normal me would gladly accept this mission, but the pregnant me could not be more grossed out by EVERYthing that is food.    And for the first time in my life of physically not feeling like I could bear to live any longer, I learned something incredible about my God.  He has strength that I don’t.  He GIVES me strength when I have none left.  I use to say that, but I truly never KNEW that.  “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”  (Psalm 46:1)

The days following my melt-down were not much different.  I got teary every time I had to eat.  Teary when my husband left for work because I didn’t know if I could handle the day “on my own.”  I cried after puking for the 20^th time in 24 hours.  I cried on the floor at the toilet and poured out my soul to Jesus.  God kept bringing to remembrance the image of Jesus praying and sweating drops of blood before his death… “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) That prayer breaks me and softens me.  He wanted the father’s will more than he wanted to live. And here’s what breaks me: He wanted to give us his own righteousness so we could be in heaven for eternity on the basis of GRACE in the glory of God forever MORE than he wanted to live a comfortable easy life.  I confess this exposes the humanness of my heart.  As much as I want the father’s will, I don’t want my life to be taken from me.  I don’t want to suffer or be in pain at a cost.  But I had to pray as Jesus taught me to pray.

He gave me his strength to pray as I begged Jesus to take away my pain… to let this pass… then came unimaginable words… but by your will Lord, not mine. I knew that Jesus was saying those words for me.  That he was putting them into my mouth.    As I prayed that my flesh didn’t want the father’s will if that meant I could be sick my whole pregnancy, but my spirit wanted the grace to endure no matter how bad it gets.

And it did get worse before it got (and hopefully is getting!) better.  I began vomiting blood and was hardly urinating anymore.  This was a bit scary for me.  After it happened two days in a row, my husband took me to the E.R.  After doing a few tests, they concluded I had reached a point of dehydration and needed I.V. fluids.

So.  Here we were at midnight.  My husband sitting in a chair next to my ER bed, holding my hand and rubbing my forehead while we waited 2 hours for 2 Liters of water to drip into my right arm.  (A scenario you never dream of when your walking down the aisle!  But remember those vows: In SICKNESS and in health!) So, my body kind of went crazy.  I was ferociously spitting in my spit cup, acid refluxing like crazy, and shivering beyond belief.  Then, I had to pee (a good thing!).  So my husband held my bag of fluids while we went to the bathroom, where I nearly collapsed to the floor because I was so cold.  I said “Can we go home?  I just want to go home.”  Well, I did make it home at 2am.  Finally hydrated!  But not done puking yet.  Tried to sleep.  More puking.  More blood.  That happened every night for a week.

Emotionally, I was having a hard time hanging on.  For nearly 3 months, I haven’t been able to leave my house.  Talking made me throw up.  I had only been able to go to church twice this summer.  I couldn’t make it to ANYthing or see ANYone, except maybe for a total of 5 times.  Extreme loneliness was beginning to set into my heart.  And fear.  What if my whole pregnancy is like this?  I began to feel desperate to see people.  I didn’t care that I was still sick.  Honestly, I didn’t even care who, I was just in need of a major boost in my spirits.  I NEEDED people.  How un-American of me, huh?  Yes.  I sincerely needed a friend more than I’ve ever needed one.   My husband has been an amazing comfort beyond words.  (There will be an entire post about his amazing servant-heartedness coming!) But I had reached a point where I truly needed friends.  For most of the summer, my good friends were all out of town, so not many people had been around!

Did you know I have the sweetest neighbors IN THE WORLD?  I was so desperate and in need of comfort, I told my husband to go knock on the neighbor’s door and say “Katie necesita una amiga.”  In English: Katie needs a friend.

Meet my neighbor, Anelia.  She is a mother of four from Mexico, whose entire family has become good friends of ours over the summer.  Her boys play soccer over here every day, and we’ve shared many meals together because Anelia is the kind of woman that gives and shares everything.  She came over right away (a meal in hand!) and sat with me on my couch.  I had been crying because I wasn’t able to hold any food down that day and was feeling so discouraged.  She put her arms around me and just hugged me while her boys played games with my husband, and she had me smiling in no time while we spoke phrases of broken Spanish and English.  In the mean-time, Nick texted some good friends “Katie has had a rough day, can any of you come over?”  20 minutes later, three sweet friends were at my door step.  After Anelia left, I literally laid in their lap while they rubbed my back and hair and prayed for me.  I had come to my darkest hour that day and was desperate for people’s prayers and encouragement.  After 3 months, I just couldn’t go on in my own strength.  I have never seen this verse so clearly come alive in my own life:  2 Cor. 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

I had to get vulnerable with people.  I had to let them see that I was weak and needy.  How humbling!  When you feel like you can’t go on, to have 3 women place their hands on your sick body praying the promises of God in your ears, there is just no way to walk away the same.  My spirits were sincerely lifted beyond belief, and I was able to say,  “I can do this!  By God’s grace, I can get through another night!”  That night, I slept like a baby.  I went to sleep more content than I’d been in months.  I even told Nick on my pillow, “My soul feels like it has wings!”

AND THEN… (drumroll please)… CAME… A DAY OF RELIEF!!!!!

I was approaching week 13, and I woke up with…energy?  Yes, energy!  God gave me 1.5 days of relief from my nausea, and it was amazing.  I did all the laundry in the house AND put it all away!  I did the dishes!  I went for a walk!  I thanked Jesus every hour for every thing I ate and kept down, for every moment I walked outside, for every piece of clothing I put away.  I retained fluids!  How marvelous!  I shed tears on the walk.  To be outside after 3 months!  To smell the fresh air and see the lake!  What refreshment to my soul! (If you haven’t figured it out by now, pregnant women cry every day. Multiple times.)

Well, since then, I’ve learned to reach out.  The neighbors came back over to watch “Tangled” with us, we had our couples group over, my brother came over and played guitar for me, and my sweet parents came by to sit with me and mom made a delicious meal.  Each time, I was in my P.J.’s on the couch feeling crummy.  But I was warmed by the presence of friends and family.  The company and prayers of these people has helped me endure.

And… I’m back to my old nauseous self.  I’m still throwing up randomly throughout the day and night.  I’m not retaining many fluids again.  But my spirits are truly lifted and my heart has been changed.  I have hope and deliverance from fear in a new way.

On my day of relief, I spent the morning with Jesus.  I concluded that his promises to me were the only thing that was going to get me through this pregnancy.  I knew that I had a choice to make.  To let fear, despair and discouragement control the next 6 months of my life, or let God’s promises from his word carry me all the way through to the delivery room.  I searched God’s word for any and every verse about fear that I could find and spent an hour writing down countless precious and beautiful promises that God has wanted me to be comforted by all along.   After I jotted them all down, I prayed for a long time.  Phil 4:17 says “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  I prayed through tears, Jesus, I am trusting that after I tell you my anxieties and fears, that you are able to guard my heart and with your peace.  I know you can put my heart at peace.

 Out loud, one by one, I told Jesus every little, big, stupid or very real fear.  EVERY fear.  From being afraid of the rest of this pregnancy, to being afraid of what the night holds for me, to being alone when I’m in pain, of having to get more IV fluids, of not being able to eat again, etc. After I prayed… PEACE!  I was filled with a divine and un-human peace.  I felt restored, delivered from fear and protected by my God.

I made little signs of some key promises and put them all over the house because I NEED them.  I need to see them daily, I need them everywhere I go.   I will be posting those promises in a future post!

For now, you will find me talking to myself as I slowly move and function around my house.  Yes, that’s right- talking to myself.  What am I saying?  I’m talking truth to myself.  Out loud. I’m fighting my discouragement.  I’m saying things like, “God has new mercies for me today.  I CAN get through another night of vomiting in the strength that God supplies.   God is sovereign over every time I throw up.  God knows what my body needs.  God intends good for me.  God will never leave me or forsake me.  My body can do this.”  As we speak, I am currently missing out on a really fun annual student cook-out I’ve gone to for the past 8 years.  Instead, I’m sitting here blogging and spitting into my spit cup.  But my heart is full!

Sigh.  Well friends… that was the verbal unleash of my first trimester.  If you have read this far, kudos to you.  My next few posts will be about specific practical things and people that have really helped me endure through such a tough time.

Thank you all for being on this journey with me!  Thank you to everyone who has called me, prayed for me, sent cards, stopped by and brought meals over- it has shown the heart of Jesus to me in such a tender way.  Thank you so much!

I would love to hear how you have endured through a difficult pregnancy or period of trial and what has been helpful for you!

You first trimester survivor,

Katie