Minding My Peas and Q's

{image via slashfood.com}

Tomorrow, I will be 34 weeks pregnant. That means I'm 3 weeks away from the baby being "full term" – meaning Marleigh has the green light to come out anytime after the next 21 days!

It seems that I've officially reached the uncomfortable part of the third trimester – and although the female body was made for this, it is not an easy task.

I spent the majority of my weekend this past weekend on the couch... in-between tears and mental breakdowns, with a heating pad on my lower back and a bag of frozen peas down my pants. Yep, you read that right. Down my pants.

Here's the scoop. I woke up Saturday morning to the worst pelvic pain I have ever experienced. Imagine what it would feel like to run crotch-first into a hard object (a doorknob or bedpost, for example) multiple times, and that's what my pelvis felt like. Bruised. Broken. I suffered through our 8 hour birth class with the pain, only to have it get increasingly worse as the day went on. Despite the discomfort, I tried my best to put mind over matter and ignore the pain as much as possible, so Luke and I went out to dinner Saturday night and had a nice little date night together.

As soon as we got home, I assumed my position on the couch in my pajamas, and we watched a movie together. All the while, it felt like my pelvis was splitting in half. We went to bed, and I made my usual fortress of pillows – with an added pillow between my legs to try to ease the pain. No dice.

Sunday was more of the same. We went to church, spent the afternoon at my sister- & brother-in-law's house, and came home at around dinner time. I wrote out thank you notes from our baby shower (finally), and spent some more time with my bag of frozen peas.

Needless to say, I have been quite the emotional roller coaster for the past few days. I'm so thankful for Luke for being the wonderful husband he is. He has been my rock throughout this whole pregnancy – making sure I have everything I need, giving me hugs when I need them (which is often), and reassuring me that everything will be OK and that this is all going to be more than worth it. I know that it is. But when your bones feel like they're splitting apart, you can't get a decent night of sleep to save your life, and your hormones are running wild, it's sometimes hard not to let your emotions get the best of you.

...Until you snuggle into bed for the night. And your husband reads your daughter bedtime prayers in your belly. And she kicks so hard you're almost sure that her little foot is going to go right through your skin. And she wiggles and squirms and moves your whole stomach like waves in the ocean. And you think about her tiny little self, and about what she is going to look like, and be like; and you imagine holding her in your arms for the first time, and sniffing her little head, and knowing that this person – this teeny little person – is your creation...the best thing you could ever dream of making.

It's then, in those moments, that you realize it's really not all so bad. And the pain seems to disappear for a little while. And every little thing you've suffered through – the 17 weeks of morning sickness, the sleepless nights, the achey muscles and sore bones, the changing body – suddenly become the best things you've ever experienced. Because they were all a part of bringing this little life to you. 

And this little life has already made your life better in ways you couldn't have imagined.

Sometime within the next 42 days, our world will change forever. We will have a daughter. We will become parents. And we will spend every single day thanking God for trusting us with our very own miracle.