My Dearest Lemon Baby

We’ve been bonding now for almost 14 weeks, and with every passing second I love you a little bit more. I never thought that I could feel this much love for something I haven’t met yet, but I do. I’ve been at the bedside of many women giving birth to their babies, seen hundreds of ultrasounds, and have taken care of newborns, but nothing in this world has compared to the feeling I get when I see your photo. Nothing makes me feel happier than when I think of seeing you move in my tummy, growing every day.

You might be wondering why we call you Lemon Baby. Well, your daddy has made it his duty to make sure mommy doesn’t get crazy stretch marks on her tummy, so he does our post-shower ritual of rubbing burt’s bees mama bee products all over you. One of the oils smells like lemons. I can’t wait for you to start hearing so you can hear his silly little songs as he does it. I really hope you don’t grow up sour or grumpy!

I can’t wait until we can start to feel you move. This pregnancy has felt like an eternity due to how sick you’ve made mommy, but it also feels like it’s going so fast. I wouldn’t mind having it slow down a little so I can cherish you a little bit longer.

Say hello to the world little baby. We all love you so much already.

The hardest secret we had to keep, but did we even keep it?

I hope my baby inherits my calves…

I’m not going to lie, the first trimester has been the roughest 3 months of my life.

We found out that we were pregnant very early on. We had hit 5 weeks the day we found out; two days before we were taking off for Mexico. I remember joking with Sean before we took the test, I’d look down at my tummy and say, “you gotta let me know if there’s something in there, I gotta know if I can drink tequila or not!” So when we found out that tequila, or any form of alcohol, was off the table, it was time to brainstorm what white lies we were going to tell everyone as to why I was not partaking in festivities. I know this sounds silly, but whenever we get together with these friends, I’m usually one of the people yelling “shots!”

Facing the Crowd

When we arrived to my sister-in-law’s villa, everyone was there. The first thing that people started asking Sean and I were about having a baby. It really blew my mind when my mother-in-law came up to me, touched my tummy, and asked, “is there something in there?” I was so shocked that I didn’t know how to respond, so I ended up trying to laugh it off and say no. Sean was approached by Justin’s mom and she asked him if I was pregnant, same response: laugh and say no. I knew that I had tipped Justin off when he poured a round of shots for everyone, and he tried to give me one and I used Madeline as an excuse to not participate. He gave me the look. The look that said, “I know you’re hiding something now.”

“Ya’ll were pretty obvious in Mexico lol.” Okay - so we didn’t do a great job, haha!

No hiding feeling crummy

I definitely tried my best to maintain a good attitude during the entire trip, but my body was taking some pretty bad hits. I was extremely tired, which I’m sure was a mix of jet lag and pregnancy, and our long layovers. I was also extremely nauseous (which I have been for the duration of the first trimester). I didn’t eat as much as I wanted to because things started to taste different already. At my sister-in-law’s wedding, I left on the early shuttle home because I just couldn’t take the nausea, and ended up throwing up. We tried to play it off like I was “way too drunk” and “way too tired” to function, but those who were really paying attention knew, and were really helpful in helping me home. I took a lot of naps during this trip, like I do every day now.

12-hour shifts are for the birds

My very least favorite thing was returning to work for a few days before I started preparing for my leave to come back to the states. Headaches, nausea, and a lot of vomiting at work. It made it difficult to work with patients, but thankfully, they were all new mothers that had just given birth and knew exactly what I was going through. I had the help of my co-workers to take the load off when it got really bad, and was sent home early because the vomiting had just become so hard. I am so thankful for the staff at Brian Allgood Army Community Hospital’s MSP ward. They were so supportive of my messiness, and I am forever grateful.

So, how did I actually hide it? Or did I even do that?

I don’t think I did a very good job at hiding it. I felt crummy my entire first trimester, and I’m sure everyone noticed. My sister-in-law told me that everyone kept asking her if I was pregnant, and she would just deny it for us. I’m sure it’s easy to hide your pregnancy if you aren’t feeling like crap 24/7, but that was not the case. We told our immediate family that we were expecting, and as of our last post, we told the world. Pretending to have drinks with friends by drinking ginger ale with limes or a fake margarita may hold you over for awhile, but not for long. Also, I constantly am rubbing my tummy because I just love knowing my babe is in there with me.

So here’s to the second trimester, and may it be easier than the first.

Baby Sison coming March 2020!

WE ARE EXPECTING A BABY COMING MARCH 2020!

New adventures awaiting us in March 2020!

This has literally been the hardest secret to keep from the public, although I’m sure many of our friends have already had their suspicions for quite some time now. Here’s to the first blog dedicated to my baby and how I have been crawling my way through my first trimester.

Sean and I had been trying our entire year in Korea, and with every month that passed, and every visit from Aunt Flo, it became harder and harder for me to handle every month. So when July 2019 rolled around, I wasn’t expecting much. We were gearing up to take leave to attend a wedding in Mexico, when I joked to Sean saying, “wouldn’t it be funny if I got pregnant? The one time that I’m going to prepare myself to party, and I can’t even do that?” We laughed and were lighthearted about it, but as the days passed, I started to feel different.

I track my cycles like the Mayans track the days using the Clue app. I know when I’m ovulating, I know when my period is coming. Every leg cramp, every stomach ache, every pain in my boob. Maybe that’s TMI, but hey, I’m going to be a mom and privacy is going out the window with every appointment! The symptom I couldn’t wrap my head around was my boobs feeling “heavier”. Ever since we started trying to conceive, I’ve read almost every article possible on “how to tell if you’re pregnant'“ and breast tenderness was my #1 suspicion for baby. I told Sean I didn’t feel right, and he said that we should wait until the day before we leave for Mexico to take the test. He went back to work down South for one day, and that day I got up and still didn’t feel right. I got up out of bed and took the test by myself.

It took him awhile to look at it, but when he saw it, his reaction was everything to me <3

TWO. FREAKING. LINES. CHANGED. MY. LIFE.

I was stunned for a second. My heart was racing and I just didn’t know how to take it all in by myself. I knew that I wanted to take it without Sean because I never get to surprise him, and this was one helluva surprise! I told him that I wasn’t feeling well, and asked him if he could come home that night. It was a giant mess trying to get him home because of a story I’d rather not go into detail with (in short: he was conned by a Korean, asshole.) But before he got home, I got everything set up for a reaction video which will be posted soon. Our lives changed that day. Everything I thought I knew about wanting to become a mom flew out the window. All my nursing knowledge, all the information I read before on how to conceive no longer mattered, because I was pregnant now! It was a new level, I had to read new things.

It’s been one crazy, emotional roller coaster. I’m not lying, Sean has a running list of the things that make me cry. This includes a bubblegum commercial, pancakes, and a stuffed hedgie. Everything makes me cry. I’m just glad that I’m not going through this alone. Sean and I are finally going to live together here in Texas, and it’s been so nice having him around every day. All day sickness has not been kind. Dizziness is sometimes unbearable. Living in the giant oven that El Paso is has been killer on me. But I’m not alone. I’m never alone now. I have my little babe in my tummy, and every day we grow a little bit closer together.

Photography: Northern Lily Photography