Once again at the start of a new year I've renewed my goal of consistently journaling. I'm hoping it'll take this year because we are having a baby and I want to make sure to document as much as I can about my experience with pregnancy and having a new baby. Also, I think people probably get tired of me talking about pregnancy and I'm certain will also get bored with hearing about a new baby so this will be a perfect place for me to get it all out.
2023 was a great and also not so great year. Lots of snowboarding, hiking, and being with family and friends!
It started out with Kelly and I buying a new home in American Fork which we love! Looking back, I'm not sure why did it? We definitely didn't need a new home and we loved where we were living in West Valley, but we just kept thinking about it and thinking about it. Maybe it was because it was a crazy winter and we were desperate for a garage? Maybe it was that Kelly had gotten a new job in Lehi and we were tired of him commuting 45 minutes (even though I still worked in Salt Lake at the time). Maybe it was because we felt like it was a good financial move since we were able to negotiate the price of the home down as well as get a lower interest rate? Or maybe we are just a little bit trigger happy and once we get something in our heads it's hard to shake (I hope it's not actually that). No matter the reason we ended up here, we love our home! It's beautiful and close to our works and family, and the neighborhood is going to be a perfect place to raise little kids. So we are super grateful it all worked out. Our West Valley home is being what is technically considered "rented" though she has missed paying rent so many times that at this point I think we've got to think of her as more of a guest in our home. Too frustrating of a situation to get into, but we are constantly reminding (and convincing) ourselves that keeping the West Valley house is an investment and any money we make is actually an added bonus. But being landlord has been very eye opening and if we ever need to rent again I am going to be the perfect tenant because I feel for those slumlords.
Our next big exciting event happened in May when I found out I was pregnant. The excitement was unfortunately short lived because from the beginning of the pregnancy I was having all sorts of issues. After a month of having complications it was finally determined that I had an ectopic pregnancy which they tried to resolve with a medication that didn't take and in the end I had to get surgery and part with my beloved fallopian tube. I can look back on the experience with a lot more humor and lightheartedness now but it was the most traumatic thing I had ever gone through. Not only was it extremely painful physically but also losing a pregnancy in addition to (what I considered) a very vital part of body. As it turns out, your body can function 100% normally with only one tube, but it still felt like a huge loss. I almost think it was a blessing that I was having complications from the very beginning because if I had actually gotten excited about the pregnancy and then lost it, I think the devastation would have been all the harder. Looking back, since I never really trusted the pregnancy I think the sadness I felt had a lot to do with losing my tube (which sounds ridiculous and maybe kind of selfish?). Maybe hindsight is making me feel that way, I guess it's hard to say.
From there, the summer was rather uneventful. We went to Idaho with the Cowans and St. George with the Brimleys. Anna got married and I officiated the wedding, which was exciting. Nicole and I also made her wedding cake which was amazing for the 20 minutes it was displayed before it tragically came crashing down. It was still very delicious though.
Kell and I spent a week in Lake Tahoe for to care for a home that his company was working on selling. Lake Tahoe was unbelievable but the house was spooky enough that we ended up in a hotel for like half the time. If it was ever in question, turns out I'm a huge coward. But we had some amazing food!
In the fall Nate convinced us to join an indoor soccer league in the beginner's division. It was super fun, even though we lost every game. For the record, I think they need to make an even more beginner's league because some of the teams we played were clearly failed college athletes that were there to prove that they were good. Which they were. It was still so much fun though, I forget that team sports make exercise fun - who would have thought!
Kell and I bought a new piano! It's the most beautiful baby grand that fits perfectly in our home. We feel really lucky because after searching for months and months we came across this one and the owners didn't know what it was worth, so we got it for a steal. It's gorgeous and the sound is amazing so it's been really fun.
The day we went to go look for the piano I remember fondly because I surprised Kelly by telling him I was pregnant. He was so shocked that he said he almost passed out in the middle of the street. It was the first month we were allowed to start trying after the surgery so we didn't have a ton of faith that it would happen that quickly. The only reason I even took the test was because we had a soccer game later that evening and I figured in the off chance that it was positive I wanted to know so I could protect my womb. So I took a test in the Harmon's bathroom and told Kelly as we were walking into a lovely couple's home to look at a piano. Amazing. For my own documentation here are the ways we told everyone else -
- My parents - told them over FaceTime the night before they left to Germany because I was nervous they were going to die on the plane (5 weeks)
- Our friends - invited them over to watch a BYU game and then told them they should check out the cool thing we had done in our bathroom, where we had left a pregnancy test (5 weeks)
- My family - Kelly blessed that my pregnancy and the baby would be safe in a dinner prayer (8 weeks)
- Cowan family - Sent a picture of the ultrasound (8 weeks)
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