Ever tried relating to someone in a womb?

It’s not so easy for me. He’s supposedly covered in lanugo, a strange and temporary hair. His eerie pictures from the ultrasound resemble a creature from a low-budget sci fi film. And didn’t he have a tail? Last week, his size was compared to a fruit I’ve never even heard of.

But then it was casually reported to me that he had the hiccups.

If you’ve lived in an apartment designed like mine, you may have forgotten (or willfully ignored) that when you sit down in the bathroom, there could be someone in the apartment next door doing the same thing you are. Someone only about three feet away from you, separated by a couple panels of drywall. Someone you may have never spoken to, but who spends a great deal of time within a stone’s throw of you. Someone you could almost pretend is not there, except for the occasional toilet flush or loud coughing attack.

This was my realization: that often, within a few inches of me is a living, hiccuping person who, through the walls of a couple layers of tissue and fluid, can hear the muffled sounds of my life. And if I listen closely, I can hear his.

He and I may not share lanugo, appearance, language, or much else yet, but we share practically the same space.

And we both get the hiccups.

One week after my baby shower in Clearwater I am still feeling the love of friends and family who came from near and far! It began with my friend (and soon-to-be Godmother) Vanesa flying from Alabama to Fort Lauderdale to drive my pregnant booty across Alligator Alley and up to Clearwater, stopping three times in four hours along the way. Her mom, Carmen, is also awesome for enduring the road trip. When we arrived in Clearwater, the biggest surprise of the weekend awaited - my Aunt Jane from Arlington, Virginia flew down just for me! After saying hi to my parents and Keith’s parents, I noticed someone else peeking around the corner and couldn’t tell who it was since I only saw an eyeball and some blonde hair. She came out of hiding and I was nearly speechless, only able to stammer/scream “What?!” I love her and it was amazing that she was able to take time off work to visit.

Since none of my college friends live in Clearwater, we would have had to stay in a hotel for the weekend, but Margo’s cousin, Chuck, recently purchased a vacation home in town and was so generous in inviting seven of us to stay there. The house was spacious and beautiful, and the perfect space for my shower. It had been decorated with the biblical theme of the “Tree of Life,” which will be our nursery’s theme, too. Picture lighted palm trees decorated with baby socks and washcloths and other trees decorated with painted leaves and handwritten notes from family and friends. Baby Boy Walbolt and I were showered with so much love and affection (and gifts), it has taken me a week to process it. It’s incredibly nice to have people from various segments of your life all show up in one place to celebrate an upcoming birth. I felt extremely spoiled with all the love and attention.

And the food was amazing! I feel so lucky that I have been able to eat practically everything throughout my pregnancy (no weird cravings yet), and I definitely took advantage of that last Saturday. From homemade red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting to jumbo shrimp to veggie chips, I’m pretty sure I tried everything the spread had to offer. Including some pineapple, which according to the charts was our baby’s size at 31 weeks (continuing the cannibalism). To put that in perspective, as of last week Baby Boy measured 15.2 to 16.7 inches long and weighed 2.5 to 3.8 pounds, and he’s only getting fatter. All five of his senses are now working, his brain is going through major development, and he’s enjoying himself by dancing and kicking me like crazy. Especially if I’m wearing pants - he seems to not like them at all and wants to dance out of them. Or maybe it’s me projecting this onto him since pants are becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Either way, I’m probably going to stick with skirts and dresses for the remaining couple of months to be sure.

So we haven’t been traveling every day for the past month, but it feels like we’ve been on the go since before Christmas. I guess we’ve been trying to take advantage of the fact that it’s late into my second trimester and apparently I’m not supposed to travel after Week 32 per doctor’s orders. So we’ve been busy visiting friends and family and far-off places. Here’s the summary of what we have done since just before Christmas:

1. my parents came to visit for a few days through Christmas, followed by
2. two of my best friends from college visiting
3. a short trip over to Clearwater to see Keith’s family and another best friend from college get married on New Year’s Eve
4. a lovely tour of New Orleans since we didn’t get to see much of it during the ELCA National Youth Gathering last summer
5. a drive to Memphis by way of terrible interstates and Highway 61 and
6. a relaxing seminary BKC reunion in Orlando

All in all, we have only been home alone eight days in the past month!

How does a pregnant lady handle so much fun? Very, very slowly with lots of bathroom breaks. Seriously. I’m usually a fast walker – Keith keeps up but doesn’t like it. Now, I’m walking at Keith’s preferred pace and he has to remember to slow down because he’s so used to walking with me. Also, I get tired after a few hours of walking; tired to the point where I absolutely have to lay down and take a nap. And Keith has been amazing at letting me rest, especially in New Orleans where we could have been doing things 24/7. New Orleans is a magical place, even in January with cold temperatures, foggy nights, and rainy days. Keith and I want to return every year to further explore its environs, but probably not in January. We’ll see if that actually happens once Baby Boy is born. It’s a nice dream that hopefully can happen (perhaps with the support of grandparents watching our boy).

Oh boy is right – Keith and I are having a baby BOY! At first I was a little concerned that our baby wouldn’t show the goods during the ultrasound (which I’ve heard can happen) but the first thing that popped up on the screen was our little boy showing his stuff. It feels so good to know what we’re having – even though we didn’t care either way. This just makes it easier to talk to our baby, which we’ve started doing. Actually, I’ve been talking to him and Keith has been singing. The same song over and over. It’s too cute and only slightly annoying for me. But I love it, and my two guys.

Everything else looked good on the anatomy scan – organs where they are supposed to be, heartbeat strong at 147 beats, legs and arms looking good. He was moving around so much, probably due to my love of orange juice in the morning. The only thing Baby Boy didn’t show us was his face; he didn’t have time for that. We saw one eye and that was it. He just wants it to be a surprise in May. I don’t mind. He weighs 14 ounces, which is normal for a baby at 20–21 weeks. I can’t believe he weighs almost a pound already!

Also, beginning on Wednesday I started feeling him move around. I probably couldn’t feel him moving before now because (a) it was too early in the process and (b) I’ve been sick with a cold that turned into asthmatic issues (I’m feeling much better now). It is so weird, like bubbles floating up in an area where bubbles don’t normally exist. Or like popcorn. Keith and I think we felt the baby on the outside, too! Last night, we were sitting on the couch and I felt Baby move so I grabbed Keith’s hand and put it on my belly. After a few moments we both felt a tap. Good enough for us – we felt our baby kick.

I actually have a baby bump. It is pretty tiny, but it looks more like a baby bump than just pounds I put on during the past few months.

I can actually tell that there is a baby growing in there rather than just relying on medical technology that our baby exists, which is super exciting! We also have photographic evidence to prove it – we took our Christmas card photos this week and it is evident from the photos that our baby is growing.

According to the Mayo Clinic Handbook (which is our go-to guide for all things pregnancy), Baby’s kidneys are developed enough to make urine, which the baby swallows when it swallows amniotic fluid. But it’s all good – the urine is sterile so it doesn’t harm the baby. Still, I think it is gross, just one of the many gross things that happen to a woman’s body when a baby alien is growing inside of it. Less gross is the fact that our baby may hear us when we talk because his/her hearing is well-developed. Neither Keith nor I have made an effort to directly talk to the baby, but it is an option now so we will probably try it out at some point. I have not felt the baby move yet even though the baby is supposedly moving around, likely because I cannot distinguish our baby’s movements from gas or something. It could happen any day now – I can’t wait!

At 19 weeks, Baby is the size of a mango, which I love because we live in the mango latitudes, as Keith calls it, and we get to eat mangos often. It also means that our baby is measuring about six inches long and weighs about eight and a half ounces. We have tried to get from the grocery store whatever fruit the baby’s size correlates with in a particular week and eat it. You may say cannibalism; I say delicious (at least when it’s mangos).

If you’d like to marvel at the human body today, and if you haven’t recently eaten anything, you should watch this infographic-in-motion which shows how a baby gradually takes over all the space inside his lady host. He starts innocently enough, confined to the space already reserved for lady parts. But by just five weeks in, the baby has outgrown that area and begun to compress the lady’s organs. At 13 weeks, he’s moving around in there, and at 21 weeks, he has purchased all four railroads and built a hotel on Park Place. All the normal organ business, if there is such a thing, is now being carried out in an extremely constricted space. Despite this intrusion, mom just laughs and keeps going (though never at the same time for fear of incontinence.)

Babies take a lot of room and I have a sneaking suspicion that it doesn’t stop when the little thing clears out of my lady’s belly. And more, I’m afraid that I’m going to wake up one day soon and there will be so much baby-related paraphernalia that I won’t be able to find the baby itself and I’ll have to give up and settle for spending my days with a few boxes of diapers in a swing that’s a little too small for me.

It’s all those products that seem so daunting. And all of them branded with ridiculous names like Mommy & Baby-A-Go-Go or Kid Science Labs or Grow Free. Play Free. BPA Free. None of it sounds like things I even want in my periphery vision, let alone jabbing me in the soles of my feet as I investigate the mysterious crying sounds coming from somewhere inside my apartment.

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what I really want to hear, that 99% of child-rearing can be accomplished with a handkerchief and a Swiss Army knife. Because I already have those things and I like the design better.

But there’s no ‘BPA Free’ sticker on the knife, so I guess I just reserve it for prying open new containers of baby products.

One of the realizations that has come with growing a baby is that I have taken on a new role in life. We’re talking top five life-defining roles. Right before this point, I’d pretty much figured out my roles in life:

1. human
2. husband
3. pastor

After that come a whole bunch of things like son, brother, friend, citizen, and other things that are extremely important but that I’m not about to put into any kind of order. Although, I suppose if I had to, I would. The three roles above do compete for my attention, so the order is intentional.

Ok, great. Now, where do I put parent in there?

Complications: Unlike an ethical robot, I do not always succeed at keeping my various roles in the proper perspective. The order I’ve placed them in doesn’t describe every moment of my life, but it does help me realize when I’m doing it wrong. One more role adds multiple new ways of doing it wrong. But: my various roles do not necessarily compete. Sometimes they reinforce each other.

I know this because I believe that I’m a better pastor because I’m a husband. This is an individual thing; it does not mean all pastors would be better married. (There are people who are better pastors because they are recovering addicts, but that doesn’t mean that I should start using.) My hope is that being a parent will also make me better at my other roles. Even though it’s important in its own right. Even though it will compete for my time and attention and sleep. Too optimistic?

If so, I’ll have to start ranking again.

I love to sleep. Anyone who knows anything about me already knows this. Little did I know that the first trimester of pregnancy was going to make me more tired than I’ve ever been before. And at the same time, I’m not able to sleep well at night despite being exhausted. It’s a contradiction that can only be explained by being pregnant. I guess it’s just preparation for when the baby is born, and then I’ll be experiencing a whole new level of exhaustion.

This is my first time posting to our blog, and at 11 weeks, 3 days pregnant I am a walking bundle of symptoms. Keith is probably super sick and tired of hearing me complain about how I’m feeling, and although I’m tired of being nauseated, dizzy, headachy, sore, and tired, I’m thrilled to be pregnant and having symptoms this time around. I didn’t really have any symptoms other than tiredness with the pregnancy that wasn’t meant to be, so I smile (and complain) each time I feel something.

Even better than feeling a little pregnant is that I heard our baby’s heartbeat today for the first time. I didn’t hear it at first, but once I did I wanted to listen forever. It was so fast and strong, it made me instantly and incandescently happy. I practically skipped out of the office. Everything is going well. Despite my anxieties over our loss and fears that it could happen again, I just feel like this one is going to happen. So I’m smiling.

The second chance came about just as soon as would normally be expected. Taking a few extra precautions this time, we were encouraged to have some early blood work and ultrasounds done. Normal and normal. So far, so good.

It’s an exciting beginning just as closure settles in on the baby that did not grow. The disappointment of losing the first pregnancy is balanced a bit by its early ending; I can’t imagine how worse the pain would be after a whole trimester or two. Or three. To further alleviate our fear, statistics betray a much higher rate of miscarriage than is typically spoken about. They’re certainly not uncommon. Yet with each appointment comes the same fear: will it happen again? Statistically, the odds are still in our favor, but it’s hard to look beyond the statistic that 100% of our previous pregnancies failed.

Talking about miscarriage more would be good. The trauma that accompanies it would be better shared among close family and friends. I imagine it’s typically shared among a mom, maybe a dad, and a few folks in white coats. I’d like to share it outside that circle, too, but it falls into this in-between-time in which we haven’t shared with anyone that we’re planning to grow a baby at all.

There should also exist the possibility of public grieving and closure. The Christian church has not been particularly sensitive to the needs of parents experiencing miscarriage and stillbirths. Pastor Janet Peterman’s writing is well worth attention if you’re interested in how the church could improve this.

For some couples the tragedy is their first serious life crisis, their first grief experience, or the first time they have felt isolated from each other.

It may not be the first, but it is certainly distinct from any other type of tragedy I’ve personally experienced.

It’s hard to interpret my own reactions to a failed pregnancy because I have nothing with which to compare the experience. I’m not sure what I’m grieving most. A life? My own hopes? My partner’s pain?

Obviously, the experience has been physically and emotionally painful for her. Feelings of inadequacy and failure and guilt and sorrow are surely normal and expected – even if they are irrational.

Statistically, there is nothing to be worried about.

Not yet. In her words, though, “it still sucks.”

My own shadowy pain is harder to pinpoint, equally irrational, but certainly less acute than hers.

How will the experience affect our fears and attitudes next time? It can’t help, right? It was comforting to hear the doctor say the cause was a typical chromosomal failure. It was nothing we did or didn’t do. The thing just couldn’t happen. Second-guessing is innevitable in the process but it doesn’t have to be sanctioned by your doctor, and ours has ridden enough rodeos to know.

This, on the other hand, is my first, and I’m thankful for all the help I can get.