Gummi - Coming June 2013

I don't know why it has taken me so long to post this announcement.  I suppose that since we announced it to all the family back at Thanksgiving, extended family and close friends at Christmas, and then the rest of the world via a Facebook post in January, that I had covered my bases and didn't need to make a formal post.  Yet it has still been nagging at the back of my mind, so I figure that that wasn't good enough for me.  So here I go...

I am pregnant!  Eric and I are preparing for our first child this summer, with an expected due date of June 9, 2013.  Hard to believe, but it is in fact true.  For lots of close friends and family, this announcement came as quite a shock considering my personal disposition to kids and lack of desire to become a mom.  Let me tell you, it was not an easy decision to accept/make.  Here's the story:

It all started June 2011 when I was in graduate school.  At the time I was studying at Midwestern University in Glendale, Phoenix in their Doctorate of Physical Therapy program.  After 3 years of study I was going to come out as a practicing Physical Therapist.  I had done all the necessary work during my undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona and Brigham Young University to be qualified and accepted into this doctorate program, and I was excited!  The time had finally come to focus my studies directly into the field that most interested me and that would provide me with a career.  All my years of hard work and dedication were going to pay off upon completion of these last couple of years of schooling.  I felt that I had made the right decision through prayer, fasting, and counseling with the Lord.  I was meant to be in the workforce, to have a career, to be a contributing member of society and I was going to be accomplished.  What I didn't account for was that Heavenly Father had another way that He wanted me to contribute to society, to have a more rewarding and eternal career, to become accomplished in ways of personal growth and betterment that would further His work on the earth.

As I started the program, I was thoroughly enjoying myself.  With diligent studying and hard work, I quickly excelled and was top in the program with one of the highest grades for our DPT class.  It felt great to finally be studying the right way and to have success.  After about 4 or 5 weeks though, something within me did not feel right.  I began to feel a small feeling of discontent and discord with the philosophies of the career and I began to question the teachings of a number of my classes. I did not agree with some of the principles and it caused me to have some unsettling turmoil within my heart and soul.  As I shared these feelings with Eric and talked/sorted out my feelings out-loud, the idea began to dawn on me that although I felt right initially about my career as a Physical Therapist, perhaps that wasn't indeed the right career path for me.  I began to toy around with the idea of withdrawing from school and to pursue a different path.  There were more factors at play than just my unsettled feelings that were affecting my decision making process: the school debt at the end, the hard work still ahead of me, the satisfaction of the career itself, etc... I spent the next couple of days praying, fasting, and pondering upon the validity of these feelings and the decision of withdrawing from school.  I finally made the decision to withdraw, and almost immediately I felt a huge weight lift off of me.  I couldn't understand how something that I felt to be so right could actually be wrong, but I knew in that moment that I was making the right choice.   It was not right for me to be in graduate school and that there was something else I needed to do at this time in my life.  So, I withdrew from graduate school in July and started trying to figure out what it was that I was supposed to do.

I job hunted for about a month before I found employment working for a physical therapy clinic in both Tempe and Chandler as a technician.  I figured that since I still had a passion for this field that I had better stay involved and that this would be a great job for me.  Well, at first the job was great, and I really enjoyed myself.  But after a short period of time I realized that I actually wasn't happy with my working situation.  It wasn't just the job itself or my coworkers, but it was the field of Physical Therapy itself.  What I ultimately determined was that I got bored working in physical therapy.  It did not challenge me, I was just not intellectually stimulated enough by the field itself.  I felt that I could do something better in life and that I was settling with PT.  There were also other philosophical disagreements that I felt towards the career.  It only took me a couple of months, but I realized that my decision to withdraw from graduate school saved me many years of unhappiness.  I would have had to work for a long time in a field that I didn't enjoy just to pay off the enormous school loan.  It was a good thing I listened to my feelings and the promptings from the Spirit.  Soon there after I decided to quit my job and search for something that I felt more passionate about and that would be more rewarding.

Thus, starting in January I began my very long and arduous search for employment.  It lasted about 8 months before I finally found something.  Those months were very difficult for me in trying to figure out my place and purpose in life.  Along with looking for a job, I also looked into furthering my education; whether through masters or other graduate schooling, technical training programs, skill set training, etc...  I would find things that felt right, but there were either 1 or 2 things that just wouldn't line up correctly.  Trying to coordinate between my desires and ambitions and those of Eric's schooling and future were very difficult.  At the time, Eric only had about 2 & 1/2 years of schooling left.  Not only was Eric in school, but he was furthering his career with the Air Force ROTC program.  Upon his graduation he would be stationed somewhere in the U.S. and be a fully active military personnel.  Knowing that we would be leaving in that time frame wasn't helping my search.  I didn't understand what it was that I was supposed to be doing with my time and why it was that I couldn't find decent employment.  That was extremely frustrating, knowing that I was an intelligent educated person with a Bachelor's degree, and yet I couldn't find any source of work.  Never before had I felt so useless and my efforts so futile in life.

During these months I had the chance to spend a lot of time with my in-laws and in-law family (sister-in-laws primarily and their kids).  Many times we joked about the prospect that perhaps I was supposed to get pregnant and that would be my job.  I always blew off the notion knowing that I didn't want to even talk about having kids until Eric and I had been married for at least 5 years.  I wanted the chance for us to grow together as a couple, to establish us and our routine before adding kids to the mix.  I selfishly wanted us time, time to work out our financial situation and get ourselves settled.  To be as ready as possible in every way.  Frankly, I didn't want the responsibility until I absolutely had to accept it.  Needless to say, those comments were more of a joke to me than anything with real substance that I needed to pay attention to.  I laughed it off and continued on my merry way of job hunting.  It was also during these months that Eric and I changed our form of birth control.  I was upset at the extra weight I had gained being on the pill and was anxious to get back to a more sleek and toned physical form.  Thus I began researching other forms of birth control and stumbled upon something that seemed perfect for us.  We began practicing what is called NFP - Natural Family Planning.  It is exactly what it sounds like, naturally planning when to start a family through charting the woman's fertility cycle and from there determining when to have or abstain from marital relations/intercourse.  It is just that simple and it was right for us and our relationship.

Well, around May I we (in-law family and I) were hanging out, talking and having a good time that the subject of having kids came up again.  My sister-in-laws weren't just talking about me having kids, but about they themselves and whether or not they felt their families were complete and their plans for the future.  Later that evening my mother-in-law made a comment that for some reason or another stuck in my brain and I was unable to forget.  We had moved in with Eric's parents the previous August to save on money.  Jan (my mother-in-law) simply stated that "While we were living in such a cushy setting, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing to consider starting our family".  What she meant by that was that we had 2 rooms to ourselves in the house, we were living with my in-laws and they were financially providing for everything, and I had a live-in babysitter if ever I needed a break.  Plus there was the fact that in 2 short years Eric would be stationed somewhere and I would go with him, thus taking our future grand kids away from both sets of grandparents.  Why not start our family and give both of our parents the chance to get to know another grandchild before we left?  Plus take advantage of the help that they could provide while we could...  Now, Jan had said similar stuff to me previously, but for some reason or another, this particular conversation stuck with me.

These thoughts were constantly on my mind and no matter what I did to think of other things or focus on new projects, this conversation and ideas persisted on coming to the forefront of my mind.  For the next couple of weeks I continued to go through these thoughts on my own.  If I know myself as well as I should, when there is something that Heavenly Father is trying to convey to me or trying to tell me, He continues to allow certain ideas or thoughts to reside in my brain until I take action.  Each and every time that this has happened, I have dutifully done what is was that He was prompting me to do, and I was further put on the path that He wanted me to go on, receiving the peace and reassurance to my heart and soul that I was following His will for my life.  Since this conversation and these thoughts weren't going away, I knew that Heavenly Father was trying to guide me and tell me something.  But, for the first time ever, I did not want to listen!  I did not want to start even playing with the idea of even thinking of starting to have kids!  I wanted nothing to do with it and I wasn't going to go there.  The idea of starting our family or even thinking about it scared me and it was the last thing I wanted to do.  No desire, no thank you, good-bye!

Nevertheless, the thoughts persisted and I knew that eventually I would cave in and do what Heavenly Father wanted for me to do.  I mean, you can't exactly say "No" to the big guy... Needless to say, slowly but surely I began to think more actively about thinking of the idea of perhaps maybe considering the prospect of Eric and I in the semi-near future trying to maybe start having kids, perhaps.  After a couple of weeks of me going round and round in my brain with these thoughts I knew that I needed to talk to Eric about what I had been going through emotionally and mentally and get his input.  I mean, you kind of need both a man and woman to make a baby, preferably a husband and wife.

So, one night I sat Eric down and I just laid it all out in front of me everything that I had been thinking of for the past couple of weeks.  I had told Eric on numerous occasions to not even think of bringing up the subject of us having kids until we had been married at least 5 years, perhaps even more.  Yet, here it was, having only been just barely over a year, and I was the one bringing the subject up.  Eric was quite shocked, speechless was more like it.  As soon as he was able to speak though, he said some stuff that left me speechless.  He said that a couple of months previously he had starting having thoughts of us starting our family.  He just felt really good about the prospect and that he thought that it would be nice if by the time he graduated we had a toddler.  A TODDLER!!!  Are you psycho!?!?! What in the world are you thinking?!?!  That means that we would have to get pregnant like right now in order to make that a reality.  HECK NO!!  Thank goodness Eric didn’t say anything to me when he originally had had those thoughts because I would not have reacted  in a good way.  But now that I was the one bringing the subject up he felt that it was ok to share.  After many hours of talking and discussing, no real conclusion was settled, but the mere fact that I was willing to entertain the idea of perhaps discussing the reality of the possibility was enough of improvement for Eric such that he was perfectly content with that amount of progress.  This was our first conversation on the subject, but it was not the last. 

Over the course of the next month or two Eric and I had many many more conversations on the subject.  Not only did we talk about it together, but I also continued to think and ponder on my own about the subject.  Slowly but surely I began to study it out in my mind and heart through prayer and scripture study.  I knew that I needed a serious change of heart if this was to come to pass, and I felt that that was exactly what I needed to do; exactly what Heavenly Father wanted me to do.  Even though I was very resistant at first, because I allowed the Spirit to work on me, it helped me to change and to accept this new path presented before me that I hadn’t wanted to consider before.  Heavenly Father has a way of helping you to change your desires if you humble yourself enough to accept it.  And that was exactly what I was having to do.  Yet I knew I would be blessed in the end by following His will and not my own will for my desires of my life.

It took a long time, and in reality sake it still is taking time today, for me to accept this decision and move forward having confidence to take the necessary steps of action.  At the time, Eric was preparing to leave to go to Field Training for the duration of July.  By the time he left at the end of June, we had felt peace settling upon the decision that we would go forward with faith and when he returned that we would indeed start trying to have a baby in August.   I would have to say the entire summer, especially the months of May-August, was a very faith trying and growing period for me.  It required a lot of diligent studying of the scriptures and personal pondering time with me and the Lord in order for me to accept this new direction for my life. But as I continued to do the right things and put myself closer to God I knew that I was doing the right thing, making the right choice in line with what Heavenly Father had in mind for me.  It was just a matter of me humbling myself and accepting the role I had already agreed to in the premortal life.  And that is what I continued to study, ponder and pray about during those months.  The more I studied it out, the more at peace I felt about the entire situation and the decision we had made.  I felt that we were moving along the right path.  Not necessarily that I had received my answer, but that I was moving closer and closer to it each day as I did my part, and that eventually Heavenly Father would give me that firm reassurance that we had indeed made the right choice.

Well, upon Eric’s return from field training there was a fair amount of family drama that occurred that caused me to question whether or not we were really choosing the right/best choice… It was brought to my attention that perhaps the drama was put in place such as to test my faith and determination in sticking with through with the decision.  There were a lot of questions that I didn’t have the answers too, but I knew that the time had come for us to really walk by faith and show Heavenly Father that we were going to go through with our intentions. To take those steps of faith in the dark, trusting in Him and His power to do all things, now was the time to do the actions and show Him and ourselves. 

And so we did.  We took those steps of faith in the dark.  I had a feeling that getting pregnant wasn’t going to be too hard for me.  Perhaps it was because of my complete disinterest and lack of desire in getting pregnant that made me feel that the moment the time was right it would happen easily without too much effort.  And for this go around, I was right.  Within 2 months of starting to try the little stick drench in my urine showed the positive mark that I was indeed pregnant. 

Even now 6 months later I am still in a small state of shock at the turn of events that lead me to where I am at today.  Even though I saw the positive urine pregnancy test,  I had 24 hour a day morning sickness for about 3 months straight where I could hardly keep any food down, my belly has grown and I am now forced to wear maternity clothes, I feel the baby kicking me on a daily basis making its presence known, we have announced it to all of our friends and family and the whole world, we are buying and receiving baby items slowly turning our office into a nursery, we have pictures as evidence of the new life growing bigger every day, even though all these things have occurred, I still cannot believe that this is real and that it is indeed happening.  But it is real, and I am evidence and proof of that, along with all the ultrasound pictures and videos of our growing child. 

I will admit that some days are easier than others to accept my new upcoming role as a mother.  Other days it is still rough and I long to be an accomplished career woman with letters after my name.  But I know that we made the right decision and that this was the right next step in our lives, in my life.  There will be a time for me to go back to school to further my education and perhaps become that career woman.  Right now though, is the time for me to devote all my time, talents, and energies in raising up our children in the right way.  To teach them eternal truths, values and principles such that they too can enjoy of eternal blessings only attainable in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To lead them in the ways of righteousness and eternal salvation.  When the time is right, it will be time for me and my desires again, but for right now, it is time for them.  Until “my” time comes again, I will do all I can to enjoy this chance to be a mother.  It really is a great and wonderful blessing and I hope to treasure it for all that it is worth, through all the good and bad.  For now, all I can do it is to continue to strengthen my testimony of this divine work that women are able to do.  As I continue to read the words of the scriptures, talks and thoughts by modern-day prophets and apostles, pray for guidance and direction, and ponder with the Spirit, I am able to continue to feel that Eric and I made the best choice, the right choice.  And I am certain that come beginning of June, once we are able to look into the face of our first child that first time, there will be no more doubts, only peace… at least until the baby’s first crying session.