baby

Pregnancy just really isn’t my jam. It’s hard to say that publicly! But I think I need to put it out there for all of the other mommas-to-be who are pretty much suffering in silence for 40+ weeks, putting on a happy face for all the well-wishers. Let me clarify to say I am grateful that I was able to get pregnant, and I know I will be overjoyed once this child is born. I realize many, many women struggle and often fail to ever conceive, and I commiserate with them. But man, pregnancy is HARD! Some women seem to have magical rainbow unicorn pregnancies where everything is beautiful and lovely, but I am not one of those women!

I can’t even complain about the usual pregnancy issues. My morning sickness at the start was fairly benign. Yeah, I was exhausted a lot in the first trimester, and have re-entered the exhaustion phase as I round the corner to the finish line. But mostly there are a million tiny uncomfortable inconveniences that pregnancy brings on. In my normally active life, these little things really add up!

My abs have completely stretched out and have stopped functioning in any capacity, other than keeping my uterus from exploding out of my body. I can no longer lift a 50lb sack of feed, a previously daily occurrence. Shoot, I can no longer easily pull myself to a seated position without either help or a lot of patience! Forget about tying my shoes. I’m used to being small and agile. Both of those convenient traits have flown out the window. I waddle and amble around, and get winded from carrying this extra 35 pound bowling ball on my belly. For someone who’s never waffled in weight more than ten pounds, this is quite an extreme adjustment for my aching bones.

Like many pregnant women, I don’t sleep much. I wake up constantly to either pee or adjust my body into some sort of barely comfortable position, until I wake again to chew some papaya enzymes to combat the acid reflux that attempts to strangle me. And when I finally wake in the morning and stretch my legs out, more often than not I am greeted with excruciating leg cramps! Ahhh…the joys of creating life are plentiful! Oh, and that pregnancy glow? Yeah. That’s called acne.

Of course I am looking forward to meeting this little “sprout” who has taken over my body. But I can already tell he or she is going to have a lot to say about life. My ribs are sore from the kicks and jabs I receive constantly. At our last birth class the instructor stopped talking to exclaim “wow! Your baby is so active, I can see it from here!” We’ve got a mover and shaker on our hands, that’s to be sure.

Yet all of the physical ailments aside, the strangest part of being pregnant is that somehow my body and life have become public domain. I don’t normally receive a lot of attention from strangers, (unless I’m walking around with my twin), but pregnancy changes that. Suddenly people not only notice me, they feel compelled to say something! Usually it’s women, and I know they are just often remembering their own pregnancies fondly. I don’t mind when someone says “congrats!” or asks my due date; my belly is really obvious and it’s normal for people to notice it. The other day Andrew and I were walking around downtown Snohomish and a guy outside a bar basically started jigging and told us he was so excited. That was a new one on us, but it was sweet and made us chuckle.

This weekend I was waddling down the street at the farmers market, minding my own business and eating a pickle, (like the walking cliché that I am), and I found it very odd when a woman literally jumped into my path. She forced me to stop so she could oooh and ahhh. She lightly touched my belly and told me I was “sooooo beautiful” and isn’t it amazing what my body can do?! I wanted to tell her, sure. It’s amazing. I have low blood pressure, anemia, am exhausted, sore, and need to get back to my booth because I have a job to do! But instead of course I smiled and faked some pregnant-lady joy. Because that’s what you do when you’re pregnant.

At that same market another lady gave me all kinds of unsolicited advice, and was rather aggressive about it. She had strong opinions about pain medication, and was trying to get me to essentially promise not to use them. Now, I certainly have opinions and desires about how my birth will go, but it seems to me that pushing a child out of my body is an extremely personal decision. While I might discuss the details with a close friend or family member, strangers definitely don’t get a say! Pregnancy really brings out the crazy, and not just in me (hormone joke, bah da cha)!

All that said, of course we are getting excited. I’m not the ooh and ahh type of lady, but there are a few items of clothing and gifts we have received that trigger a little bit of the cuddly feels in me. I know that once the sprout comes out, the hormones and nurturing instincts will kick in and all will be well. But for now…I’m mostly just looking forward to getting my body, and my personal space, back to myself.

He’s gonna be a great dad!

Growing things

What a ham

Baby shower!

Baby turkeys! We’re on track to sell out in the next few weeks

Seasonal eating at its best

Celebrating our 5th anniversary in style

Our second annual chicken slaughter class!

It’s been a long while since I’ve updated this here blog! Every time I let so much time slip I become anxious about getting back into it. It’s hard to decide how much to include in each blog, what is worth writing about, or what you all will find interesting. This year is turning out to be especially hard to blog about, because lots of really big things are happening! So I sit here looking at a (mostly) blank “page” on the screen and don’t know where to begin.

I guess the biggest news (so far) for those of you who haven’t heard yet, is that we are expecting our first child this summer. Late July to be exact. Which is absolutely the WORST time for farmers to be having a baby, but sometimes these things can’t be helped. I have spent the last few months marveling at how different my body is becoming, and how much it affects my day to day. And the baby isn’t even here yet (although it’s currently kicking me, trying to tell me otherwise). Other than increased fatigue, little things like my abs stretching out and becoming weak are affecting my ability to lift buckets of chicken feed or haul water. Andrew is pulling far more than his share of the weight around here these days, and I’m more than a little nervous about what the looks like as the season progresses, our responsibilities on the farm grow, and then this baby appears!

Fortunately we are friends with a wonderful couple (who are also new parents), who have quit their corporate jobs and want to try their hand at farming. Sounds familiar! We are currently scheming up ways for them to help us out this season so we can have some relief and they can gain some skills. I’m sure having babies together at the farm will be a nice bonus as well! Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, we are not finding out the sex of the baby before it is born. I recently told that to a farmer acquaintance and she said, “Oh, not finding out is the new thing!” Of course my smartass response was, “Uh, actually, it’s the OLD thing” hah. We’ve only had the technology to learn the baby’s sex before birth for about 40 years. It seems to us there are so few surprises in life (although we’ve certainly had our fair share!), and we’re willing to wait to learn all about our little one after he or she enters this world. So stay tuned for that big reveal!

In other news, Andrew and I were lucky enough to escape to Costa Rica back in January. It seems like ages ago. The ten lovely days we spent in the tropics were rejuvenating, but this long, wet Pacific Northwest winter continues to drag on. We have lots of new projects coming up at the farm, including building new portable chicken pens that will improve quality of life for our meat chickens (as well as ourselves!). We were awarded a grant to build these new pens and are excited about the change. We have also had many new goat and lamb babes born this season, our first piglets of the year made an appearance, we will soon have meat chicks in the brooder, and they will be followed quickly by the turkey poults.

Finally I need to mention that my wonderful grandmother passed away last month. I have written about her many times in the blog; she and I were close and I miss her. Fortunately she lived to be 93, and passed away peacefully in her bed after a few months of slipping away. I mentioned in my last post that I got to visit her before her mind was completely taken from her. I was able to tell her I was pregnant, and suddenly she knew exactly who I was and what I was telling her. She was so happy for me, and it was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears on the spot. I’m sad that our child won’t get to meet my grandmother, or his/her own grandmother Nancy. Yet bringing new life into this world as other life departs is a powerful reminder of my own humanity and mortality, and brings to light the important role we each play in the continuity of this wonderful world.