Thanksgiving

I am completely overwhelmed by all that we have to be thankful for this year. One thing in particular stands out (literally), but that one thing has brought on so many others as well.

 It’s hard to feel more loved than when you are pregnant. Mostly, I feel it in the way Kolby looks at me.  Or how he tells me how great of a job I’m doing carrying our son. But I also feel it in the way our family and friends light up at milestones along the way—starting to show, feeling the baby move, finding out the gender, starting to waddle. Lately I’ve felt it in the outpouring of love and generosity at our baby showers.  We are so thankful to have such wonderful friends and family. That is true every year. But this year, it all seems so magnified.

This season in our life is just so sweet. I tell Kolby almost every day how I don’t think I could possibly be any happier than I am right now. 

I absolutely love being pregnant. Carrying Beckett has been the biggest privilege of my life.

As ready as I am to meet our sweet boy, I’m honestly not ready to be done being pregnant. I’m soaking up every minute I have left!

There are a few things I want to document to help me always remember what this experience has been like.

Feeling Beckett move around in my belly has been the most amazing part of this process. He’s my little buddy. I take him everywhere I go. I always know when he’s awake, when he’s asleep, when he has the hiccups, and when he just can’t get comfortable. 

A lot of people ask me if there is anything in particular that he responds to. Yes—two things. He loves Reese’s Pieces and Kolby. He sure takes after his mama! Every now and then he’ll respond to other random stuff, but the only things that make him move around like crazy every.single.time are when I eat a handful of Reese’s or when he hears the sound of his daddy’s voice. Pretty soon after I really started feeling him move, we were at church and he was sound asleep and then Kolby read a passage of scripture over the microphone and Beckett immediately went berserk. It was the first time he recognized and responded to Kolby’s voice. I thought it might have been a fluke, but it has happened literally every single time since then when Kolby speaks loud enough or near enough to my belly to be heard. Kolby has a very distinctive voice, and it makes me so happy to know that Beckett recognizes it and will be comforted by it when he enters this crazy world. 

This guy is a mover and a shaker. He is INCREDIBLY active, and it brings me so much comfort to feel him all the time and never worry that something may not be OK. It’s rare for five minutes to pass without him letting me know that he’s just fine. What a considerate baby! Almost all of his movements can be seen and felt from the outside. Although this has freaked out more than a few people, it has allowed Kolby to be really connected to him. 

Beckett’s absolute favorite thing to do is to try to shove his foot out my side. This kid has some long, strong legs! From about 30 weeks on, the most common movement by far has been for a hard knob to poke out on my right side. And I don’t mean the side of my belly… I mean the side of my body, along my shirt seam. I have no idea how he gets his foot that far over, especially since our doctor always feels his other foot at the top of my belly. Who knows what he’s up to in there! I feel a lot of different movements but I can’t really ever tell what is what (hands, elbows, bum, etc.), except for those hard little feet pressing on my ribs and side. I can’t wait for him to be here and to watch his movements to see what I’ve been feeling this whole time. 

It’s been amazing what smooth sailing this pregnancy has been. We are so thankful. Who would have thought it would be this easy after hearing all of the gloom and doom regarding the implications of my endometriosis/PCOS?!? God has sustained this pregnancy in a mighty way. He has given us such peace, and we will carry it into not only labor & delivery but also into raising this little guy. We know nothing is in our hands and we rejoice in knowing everything is in His.

***

To keep the streak alive, here is our 38 weeks picture:

 Our due date is a week and a half away! There is no way to know when he’ll come, but our doctor guesses that he’ll come around his due date, if not a few days before. We’re ready for him whenever he decides he’s ready for us!

***

A couple other random things I'll add to this scatter-brained post....

I now have an iPhone and as you can imagine, I am loving Instagram. My username is EMILYK20 if you want to follow me; I imagine I’ll be a lot faster at posting pictures of Beckett there than here when he arrives! I’m not on Facebook, so I’m hoping Instagram can serve as an easy way to stay connected with those of you who use it as well.

Congratulations to those of you who bet that I'd weigh more than Kolby by the time the baby comes! It happened. Not sure exactly when, but it happened. I would pretend to be surprised that I somehow have gained nearly 50 pounds during pregnancy, but at Thanksgiving dinner I had firsts, seconds, six rolls and two slices of chocolate pie. And that's despite a seven pound baby sharing space in my belly. But I'm feeling great, still very active, still swimming twice a week, and my doctor still has not said a single word about how much I've gained... so I will continue to enjoy eating for two!

I don't think I've mentioned this on here before, but Kolby and I wrote a children's book for Beckett. It's his story. The title is We've Been Waiting for You. One of Kolby's previous students is illustrating it for us, and she has been passing along sketches these past few weeks. It'll probably be awhile before it's finished and we are able to have it printed and bound, but I am so excited about it!