Sunday, February 14, 2010

Mama Bean has changed a lot since last Valentine's Day

A year ago, I took a pregnancy test, and it was positive. Shortly before that, Papa Bean and I took a walk through a winter-y river park, and talked about when might be a good time to have kidlets. We determined that the perfect time was probably never going to arrive. I was just finishing up my last few weeks working at Starbucks, and preparing to re-enter my actual profession, Chiropractic. I had a three week locum lined up, but no long term position at a clinic secured. Papa Bean was a few months in to his new job at the school position, but was pining for a return to pastor school. We thought we might swing a pregnancy and a baby in the next year or two, providing I found chiropractic work, providing Papa Bean could go to school when he took paternity leave, providing for many contingencies, we could swing it. This would mean getting pregnant in the latter part of 2009.

We got pregnant maybe two weeks later. I fell down the stairs. I was only loosely following NFP methods to track my ovulation, and the fall delayed it, but I didn't know that, so Bean happened. I was only pretty sure by the time Valentine's Day rolled around, so we went for breakfast, and took a test. I remember feeling kind of suspended in time for the rest of the day. The day has taken on hazy edges in my recollection. What a lovely Valentine's present.

I worked the locum at the clinic I would eventually buy into. It was brilliant to return to my career, and love it again. It was scary to imagine having a baby in nine months. It was hard not telling people at our new church. I spent most of March not eating, or vomiting what I ate, or vomiting nothing when I thought about eating. I decided to buy into the practice, re-taking on the debt we paid off when we moved. I stopped vomiting the weekend before I started work.

Pregnancy is a long forty weeks. I think this pregnancy felt longer because so many other huge life changes occurred at the same time. It coincided with my entire lifetime at the clinic thus far; many patients have only known me pregnant. It coincided with our entire time at our church thus far; that congregation has only known us pregnant. I enjoy the fact that I can track progress in Bean's development parallel to progress at my clinic, and growth at our church.

We moved from one prairie city to another for a chance at a better life, where we weren't saddled with unmanageable debt that required 120 work hours per week to pay down, at the true expense of our marriage, family, and friendships. We spent more than six months settling in, finding a home, finding jobs. I feel like our real life in the new Prairie City didn't start until that Valentine's Day, because it heralded in all the other blessings God has brought us here. Bean is the very real fruit of our decision to be here, because we would not, could not have had a child in the old prairie city for several more years. And I am so thankful for the glow his arrival cast on every day of last year. And on every Valentine's Day from now on. He is just the cutest manifestation of Love.

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