Oh the Joy in my heart!

Two days ago I started having bad cramps and pain, I ignored it for a while but by 7pm I was really uncomfortable and beginning to worry. So we did what any paranoid parent 🙂 would do, we headed off to the Emergency Room. I was terrified, at first I couldn’t stop crying, thinking that something was wrong with the baby, and then I just felt numb and I was trying to prepare myself for whatever was about to come.
At the ER the dr. seemed like he was really new or something. He seemed terrified about having to deal with a pregnant woman, he told me that what I was experiencing was not normal at all. And then he gave me tylenol and told me to see an OBGYN in the morning. We went home, but neither of us slept on Monday night. On Tuesday we went in to see our new Dr.

He checked me out, and then he said he wanted to check the baby too. He did a full, long scan. When he put the probe to my belly I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. I was terrified that there would be bad news waiting for us. But when the picture popped onto the screen so did our bouncy baby. The baby was facing away from us, but it turned it’s little head, and then seemed to look right at us. (Probably annoyed at being bothered!)
I started crying like a fool, the doctor kept checking and measuring while tears spilled down my cheeks soaking the pillow (sorry dr!). The doctor announced that everything with the baby looks absolutely normal.
We even got to see tiny little toes, that I cannot wait to kiss, and at one point I could see lips. The cutest little perfect mouth. With Asthma meds I was terrified of a cleft palate as this is a side effect of the medication. But the baby is fine.

Then nonchalantly the dr says: It’s a boy. A boy. Did you catch that? We are having a boy! A son! I am going to be the mother of a little boy! Cue the tears and giggling for me and the chest puffery for David.  I have never seen him look that proud or that in love. I kept soaking the pillow, David kept sticking his chest out further and further, and the dr. looked sleepy. It was a perfect moment that I will never forget!

And.

We have decided to name our baby boy Reese Livingstone Echols. Reese (means “enthusiastic”) after a one of the most influential and godly men we know, Mr. Gareth Reese one of our professors at CCCB. And Livingstone based on 1 Peter 2:5:

Week 17 and 18

Guess what?! I am 18 and a half weeks along, that means that I am less than two weeks away from being half way!

Sex and size of  baby Echols?
I am told that Baby E is the size of a sweet potato right now. That makes me want yams and marshmallows, like David’s mom makes at thanksgiving! We have an idea about the sex of the baby, but we are keeping mum on the subject until the dr. can confirm with 100% confidence.

Maternity clothes?:
I bought my first pair of maternity pant this past week. I was in a weird place. I lost 26 pounds before getting pregnant, so ALL my pants were falling off. But I have been unwilling to buy new pants as I know I should be gaining weight, and that I will be growing in the next few months. So I have been walking around with baggy pants cinched at the waist by my belt, and a baby belly hanging over. Very sexy look 😉 So buying a pair of pants that actually fits was amazing. And I am not usually amazed by clothes.

Sleep?:
Meh. Some nights more than others.

Best moment this week?
I think every time I realize that this is real I am caught off guard again, and filled with joy all over again.

Food cravings?:
McDonalds. But there is not one here.

Weight?
7 pounds up. Exactly where I should be! I think I need to celebrate with a sleeve of oreos, and a Big Mac.

Movement?:
I felt the baby move on our anniversary. We were on our way to the restaurant and I felt a poke. I cried and cried, so I walked into the Chinese restaurant with puffy eyes and a wet face but with the biggest cheesiest grin ever. 

Symptoms?:
I am still really weepy and hungry all the time!

What I miss?: 
What a stupid question.

What I’m looking forward to?: 
The next dr’s appointment!! 

Thought of the week?:
Through reading through the Old Testament I am surprised by how many women dealt with infertility, it really should be addressed in churches more than it is…

Spring break!

School is out! It is spring break for us, finally. We have two weeks off, then a week of teacher training, so it is not a super long break but it is welcomed. David has been working really hard, as has all the staff and teachers at CHS. We are going to the coast for a few days with Marye and her parents who are visiting from Holland, and we plan on working on the nursery too. I will be half way through my pregnancy in about two weeks! HALF WAY! Also I would like some book suggestions, as we are kind of out of the loop on books here.
I have not written much about the school as I have been on bed rest, but next term I will be back to school twice a week! I am very excited about this. David said he would like to write a post about his discipleship class, so keep an eye open for that.

Prayer for a friend.

When dealing with something as heart wrenching as infertility one finds a lot of comfort from other families who are dealing with the same thing. Throughout our journey I “:met” some ladies on an on line support group type place. One of those ladies tried to conceive since 2008, she finally succeeded (with twins!) and we are, or were, both due in January. She went in to labor today and gave birth to two beautiful boys. They were too young and did not survive. This is absolutely heart breaking. I cannot even phantom the pain her and her family are in tonight. Please take a moment and pray for her tonight.

August 16…

Ummm, WHAT???

We live close to a store, about two blocks close. We walked there today. We saw this:

 

Happy day!

A thousand gift.

It has been a while since I participated in a thousand gifts, but I am still a ways off from reaching a thousand, so I should probably get on it!

#66 X games outreach.

Last weekend out church hosted an outreach with an X-games theme. The church we are attending has quite outreach focused. They had short term trip to Angola earlier this year, and they are planning a trip to Europe! The church feels called to reaching out the youth here in the city. Namibia has a lot of young people, but not much for them to do outside of school. So this leaves a great need and opportunity for the church to fill. The church has a skate park on the premises and I believe they do skating lessons throughout the week. They also run a school.
So David has two kids in his discipleship class who have shown interest in wanting to become Christians. He has been taking time with them to further disciple them, we thought the outreach at church would be a fun opportunity and the boys loved it! They got to try and skate, and the speaker for the weekend was a old-Sprinkbok rugby player. It was a great weekend for us to get to know the people at our church better and for the David to get some more discipleship time with the boys.

Pray for the kids in his discipleship class, one of the boys who is ready is being held back by a hesitant parent. This is giving us the chance to reach out to his parent too!!

#67 People.
As I mentioned above we got to know some amazing people at church. Now that we are having a baby we seem to fit in more with some of the older couples, although I guess David is thirty and I am 28 so maybe we are one of the older couples! Ha! They are a wonderful group of people. They were so excited for us when hearing about our pregnancy and then praying for us on the spot. One lady said we could have her baby seat as she is done with it, and then prayed for us too! It was great to get out of the CHS circle and meet some other people. I also look forward to having the support and input from ladies who have already had babies.

#70 Second trimester
I made it to the second trimester and thought that everything was int he clear! Ha! After the weekend at church I woke up in the middle of the night with severe cramps. The next day I could not straighten up, it felt horrible. I called my dr. and his receptionist just told me to lay down until I felt better. (quality care!)
 Well the cramps continued for a few days and I was terrified that something was wrong. On Thursday they began to subside, probably thanks to the bed rest, and because of David who has been taking the best care of me! On Friday I had an appointment with my dr. he barely even looked up when I mentioned the cramps to him, and he said “maybe it was constipated.”
When he put the wand on my tummy for the ultrasound I was terrified that something would be horribly wrong, but nothing was! In fact baby Echols was jumping around like a springbokkie. The dr. was struggling to get a clear shot of the baby. He did print us a 3d picture but it is just a blurry mess as our baby was doing Zumba. We received our genetic screening results back too. Initially we were told we have a 1:300 chance of Down Syndrome, but after adding the blood results our chance is now 1:13000. He may have said 30 000 but I was smiling too hard to hear properly. The rest of the results were good too!
The best part of the appointment was that my due date was moved up to the 21st of Jan, which was my original due date. This means that I am now 16 weeks along! Since finding out about the pregnancy I have been waiting for week 16. I am not sure what made it the magic number, but now I feel more relaxed and confident. I am ready to shout from the rooftops that I am having a baby! I keep crying thinking about what it will be like to hold our baby for the first time. David is also been getting excited about the nursery. We are quite excited about the nursery theme we have picked!!

After this last appointment we have also decided to switch doctors, we will now be going to one who is in network (this should save us about $7000), and who has time to see patients and talk to them. Dr. V who helped us to get pregnant is a very busy man and will only talk to patients during scheduled appointments. Please pray that we find the right dr. who will know how to deal with the fertility issues that we had, and who is just awesome.

#71 Friends.
We had a birthday party for Marye at our house a few weeks ago. A bunch of people came over, I got to make this peanut butter cake. There was almost a stampede when people all tried to get a piece! A fun day!
And no, there are no peanut butter cups here. I made them from scratch. So if you are thinking about sending a care package make sure to add some peanut butter cups. And a Big mac.

#72 Linda Spilman
Linda Spilman has been sending us letters for months now. It has gotten to the point where I can count of finding a letter from her whenever I go to the mailbox. She tells us of things going on back home and even includes the church bulletin and sometimes newspaper articles. She encourages us with words and with love. I cannot tell you how much it means to us, and missionaries all over the world, to receive things from home. Linda has made us feel loved and remembered, prayed for and cared for! Thank you Linda, we are truly grateful for you, for the time you take to write to us, and for the blessing that you are to us!!

Still here!

I am still here, working on a long post about all we have been up to the last few weeks. Baby Echols is doing great, everything is on track and we are more excited and blessed than ever!!

And, because I have neglected my blog I will leave you with this vintage picture of us, it was taken in 2002 right after we met. We were on our way to a Karaoke night. When we got there the karaoke bar had closed and moved. So we were dressed up with nothing to do!

12 Weeks! Or maybe 13 :)

HI!
Things are going swimmingly here in Namibia.
Things at school are super busy, if you listen closely you can hear the humming of the teachers teaching, the administrators administrating, the cooks cooking and the learners learning! In the last few weeks several teams have come and gone, we expect another team in a few days. This second term is going by quickly! On Friday we had a half night of prayer with the rest of the CHS staff. It was a great night, we prayed some but spent most of the night sharing our frustrations, encouragements and hopes for the future of the school. I think everyone left feeling closer and encouraged. A good night indeed!

I am still at home, inching closer to the second trimester, when hopefully I will be able to go back to school for at least some of the days that I used to teach. The cramps I was feeling are now fewer and farther between. I still have orders to lay down on my left side and drink water whenever a cramp strikes. I do hope they go away all together soon!
Baby Echols, or Flick as we call him/her, is growing and progressing beautifully. We had our genetic screening ultrasound this past week. Everything with the baby measured in the normal range and the dr. said that at this stage our chances for any genetic defects are so low they are not even worth mentioning. I am still waiting on the blood test results though. The ultrasound was amazing, it is the first profile shot we have seen of the baby. It seemed that Flick was sleeping though, the ultrasound usually takes 20-30 minutes if the baby is active, but she was able to get everything she needed in about ten. Flick did wake up near the end, and then started to fuss. It was funny, we recognized Flick’s movements as the same I make when I am disturbed while sleeping. Too cute! The tech said that we are at 13 weeks, while my dr thinks we should stay at our original measurements of 12 weeks. It doesn’t really matter to me, as long as I am pregnant 😉 Later that day our dr. did a repeat ultrasound and the baby was waving, it made me giggle which made the ultrasound wand jiggle so I had to stop giggling. It was great! We got out first 3d ultrasound too, and found out that our dr does a free ultrasound at each appointment from here on out. Another perk to being high risk I guess.

Even as I am writing this is still so surreal. The dr asked me if I was used to being pregnant yet, and I just giggled and then cried. Most days David and I just stare at each other and say: “We are going to have a baby.” But, it really seems like the reality has not yet hit us. On Saturday we attended a wedding and when I saw a picture of myself I was horrified and thought that it was time to get back on my diet, as I looked pregnant! Then I remembered that I am pregnant! Ha!
On Saturday I bought a dress for the wedding. My first maternity clothes purchase. As I was paying I started to cry. I spent over 2 years waiting for this, and here I was buying a maternity dress. Of course the cashier mush think I am just a little bit unstable. But it was glorious!! God has lavished a gift of unmeasurable value on us. It still takes my breath away.

So here is my dorky 12 week survey and a bump picture! And some baby pictures!!

Sex and size of  baby Echols?
Right now Flick is the size of a big plum. The u/s tech did make a guess at the gender of the baby, but we are not putting much stock in it. The dr did roll his eyes, 12 weeks is waaayyy to early! We should find out at our next appointment though.

Maternity clothes?:
Yes! A little black dress, that looks more like a mu mu than a dress. Thank you Jesus!!

Sleep?:
Yes please. I sleep well at night. Of course I am up and down the the bathroom all night, but the sleep has been glorious.

Best moment this week?

Seeing Flick wave, and finding out that everything looks normal and on track. We are having a baby!!!!!

Food cravings?:
Yes. If it is food I will crave it. Still avoiding pasta. But I will take anything else. Especially if it is cold and fresh.

Movement?:
Nothing quite yet. But soon!

Symptoms?:
Crying. Barfing, crying, sleeping, crying, barfing, crying, hunger!!!

What I miss?:  Nothing.

What I’m looking forward to?: Getting to the next week.

Thought of the week?:
God is always in control, even when we cannot figure out what He is doing or why He is doing it.