Bump!

What is that? It's Adison!
23 weeks, 2 days

The shirt was a birthday gift from my mom.

We've also had a couple of milestones since my last post:

Monday, December 7
We received notice that I had been approved for AHCCCS! We're still trying to figure out all the details, but it's great news!!!

Tuesday, December 2, 2 AM
Martin felt Adison move for the first time.

Monday, December 1
Martin and I went to my check-up. I have gained 3 pounds in 5 months. My doctor said that after Thanksgiving, she's usually telling patients to slow down, but I could "stand to eat a little bit more".

I've posted more photos of the bump on our Flickr.com page. (I have awful posture!!!)

What's In A Name?

Several of you have asked where we came up with the name. Well, of course it has deep, very spiritual roots.

Adison [English]
of Adam

Nicole [Greek, French]
victorious

1 Corinthians 15 (NLT)
45 The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, Adam, became a living person.” But the last Adam—that is, Christ—is a life-giving Spirit. ... 55 "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. 57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
















Does anyone buy that? Because it's so not true. I just looked up what the names mean and found a scripture to support it. But it's a nice thought, isn't it? :)

Truth be told, I don't recall where I first heard the name Adison.

I've been naming my children for years, and had whittled down the list of names to a favorite few. Of course, once I got married, several were out the window for obvious reasons. There will be no Lucas Leeuwner! Too many loos in one name. And then, of course, there's the give-and-take process of negotiation with your spouse. There's always the kids we knew growing up or in high school that had that name, or some random connection that you've made over the years with a name.

Some of my favorites were:

BOYS

• Jack, or Jackson
• Lucas
• Aidan
• Jamison
  which is my brother's name, and since we already have a James, Jamison (who we call Jami), Jimi and Jamie among the cousins and spouses on my mom's side of the family, I'm pretty sure we would have never gone with this
• Spencer
• Ethan
• Elliot
  
• Joshua
  but this is our nephew's name, so it's out

GIRLS

• Adison
• Zoe
• Kerith Corinne
  OK, this one is weird, but it DOES have a Biblical root: in 1 Kings 17, the prophet Elijah's life is in danger, and God sends him to the Kerith Ravine, where ravens bring him food and he drinks from the brook. I always loved this story of God's ultimate provision and protection, and the name could be shortened to Keri.
• Cara or Kara
• Jolie Nicole
  I love names with Jo in them - Jolie, Josie (but there are Pussycats, so that's out), Josette - and my mom and stepdad's names are Jo & Nick, which would be cool.
  
• Juliana or Julian
  of course, now we know a Juliana, so that's out
• Genesis
  what's funny is I've seen kids with this name, so it's not just my weirdness
• Olivia (Liv for short)
  

What's funny is I never really dreamed about having a daughter... we always talked about having boys. And yet, I have about 15 more girl names that I can't think of right now. I think it's because there are so many things you can name a girl, but about 80% of boy names make you afraid he's going to get beat up.

Well, when we were picking out names, Adison was one of the best options that we both liked, and it didn't hurt that Kate Walsh's character on Grey's Anatomy was named Addison Montgomery, and she was a strong, beautiful woman. As for the spelling, I prefer names without repeated consonants. Martin suggested Adisson, but it was too close to Radisson for me.

As for Nicole, it works very well as a middle name (you know how names have to "flow"), and it's a plus that she's named after one of her grandpas.

Anyway, that's how we came up with our Adison Nicole. We'll probably tell her the spiritual version, until Noelle ruins it for her. Of course, she'll be googling herself by age 3 and will probably find this page herself. You know kids these days. :)

There's nothing worse than playing the "what does your name mean?" game and have to go with "little red Chinese flower", right, Wes?

Shopping Time!

So, I'm finally showing (I know... where are the pictures? We lost our camera!), and have been shopping little by little for maternity clothes. I'm generally a very CHEAP shopper, and I can't see paying $40-50 for pants, when I don't pay more than $25 for "real" jeans. I've kind of exhausted the local Ross stores meager maternity sections for pants, which are all denim or super-relaxed lounge pants.

On the positive side, there are some really cute styles of shirts right now that work for maternity, even if they're not. I'm loving the freedom to wear baggier shirts and not worry that I look pregnant. :)

So, ladies, where have you found great deals on maternity clothes, particularly pants? I haven't tried the maternity stores, just because I assume the prices will be higher there.

Any good tips?

It's A...

I had a little coffee before our appointment, and she was wide awake! The ultrasound tech called her "a maniac" because she was wiggling and arching her back and not holding still at all. We got to see her hands and feet, and she clasped her hands together, sucked on her fingers, and kicked her feet while we were watching. It was magical.

Boy or Girl?

Well... we have the appointment this Wednesday to (hopefully) find out.

In the meantime, here are the predictions:

• Chinese Birth Chart says it will be: GIRL
• Noelle Larson says it will be: GIRL
• My mother says it will be: GIRL

As this does not seem to be the year for surprise results, I'm guessing we should start preparing for a GIRL.

We'll keep you posted.

Baby's Heartbeat at 121⁄2 weeks

Yes, it does sound a lot like when someone accidentally calls you from their purse. :)

15 weeks!

Tomorrow will be 15 weeks, and we are well into the 2nd trimester. The nausea has abated quite a bit, although my relationship with food is still somewhat shaky. I used to eat one or two meals a day, never really needing to eat as much as I needed to sleep. Now, if I don't eat every 3-4 hours, I get shaky, my head hurts, I feel weak, and sometimes I think I'm going to faint. It's unsettling, especially when you're out shopping!

The baby should be about 4" right now, and weigh about 1.5 oz. I'm not really showing yet. I'll have to start taking pictures soon. Our next doctor appointment is November 12, and we'll find out then if it's a boy or a girl!

We've heard in the past few weeks of several expectant couples who miscarried - old high school friends, family of friends, friends of family - and it makes us thankful that this one has been healthy so far! But our heart breaks for those who are now going through the re-adjustment to not expecting, and we know how it feels. Please pray for those you know are going through this.

On the other side, so many people are looking forward to bundles of joy coming soon! In our church alone, 4 are expecting, 3 of which will deliver before the end of the year. We're looking forward to meeting the newest member of our church by this weekend!

I'm Afraid...

...that our baby is going to look like this.

(OK, it's a lousy picture, but I figured searching for a picture of a baby Mr. Potato Head for more than 30 minutes was a sign of something that I didn't want to be.)

Seriously, all I eat is potatoes. French fries are good. Mashed potatoes are fantastic. I found out the other day fried potatoes don't work so great...

This "morning sickness" lasts all day long, and I can't recall the last time I ate something because it sounded good. I can't recall the last time I ate something that tasted good. I can't recall the last time I ate something without the tiniest thought to what it might taste like coming back up.

I have some Jello squares setting in the fridge. I have high hopes for these... but we'll have to see.

April 9

If our baby is indeed born on 4/9/09, he or she will share a birthday with:

• Hugh Hefner
• Dennis Quaid
• Marc Jacobs
• Paulina Porizkova
• Cynthia Nixon
• Jenna Jameson
• Eric Harris

Quite a diverse and interesting crowd of people.

He or she will also share a birthday month with:

• Cey Decker
  
• Rachel Maciaszek
  
• Wes Edwards

Waiting to Exhale

I'm not one to worry, but there has been a pit in my stomach for the past few weeks. Although I knew that everything was going to be fine with the baby, I couldn't shake that lingering thought that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't.

This morning, I had my first ultrasound. There was a tiny body, with a flashing, flickering little heartbeat! My friend Lisa was there with me, and she started crying. Tonya says that's appropriate, since Lisa was standing in for Martin, and he would have cried, too.

I'm so thankful to know that this baby is healthy and growing. The heart rate was 167, which both Lisa and Noelle say means it's a girl. We'll see about that!

Due Date

I had my first doctor's appointment today, and our official due date is April 9, 2009! (I don't know what makes the doctor's math more official than mine, but...)

I was disappointed that they hadn't scheduled the ultrasound with today's appointment. Don't even get me started with how horribly doctors, insurance companies, etc. handle a pregnancy that doesn't make it to term. I'll have to rant about that later.

So, I have our first ultrasound on Friday morning to confirm that there is a heartbeat. Then, in another four weeks, we'll have another where we should be able to hear it!

Thanks for all your prayers and support...

Blessed

"You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said."

Luke 1:45

Why I Wrestle

On our way to Mexico, Martin and I received the disappointing confirmation that once again, we were not pregnant. (In hindsight, as hot and brutal as those days in Tijuana were, I'm glad, I guess, that I wasn't.) I was broken. It's so difficult to walk in faith and not let your hopes rise. How can I have faith that God is working with us to have another baby and not hope that this is the month?

This month had special significance, because our baby was due the end of July. Somehow, if we had managed to get pregnant again before our first baby was to be born, it would make this month so much easier. But that's not the case, and it's all the more difficult.

I read this today, and it really encouraged me... in the way that makes you cry in your keyboard.

Why I Wrestle

About a year ago, I confessed some frustration I was having with God. I just felt like I was struggling with Him, like we were pushing each other around and battling over a few issues. My counselor listened and then said,

"God loves that."

This is not the answer I was expecting. I thought he would say, "You need to trust the Lord more." Or "You need to let go and let God." But he didn't say that. He said that God loves when I wrestle with Him. I of course asked why.

"Jon, do you know what is true about wrestling? Have you ever stopped to think about the nature of wrestling? God loves to wrestle with us, because you can't wrestle with someone that is far away. They have to be close to you. It's a very intimate, personal activity."

And I think he was right. I think that God wants me close. I think He wants me near to His side, close enough to feel His breath and know His strength. And when I approach to wrestle over an issue with Him, like Jacob wrestling, I don't think He is angry. I think He is happy, because I am close.

What inspires you?

Last night, Brad spoke to our staff about speaking to mountains and using our faith and our words to change the circumstances that we face. I have to say, what he said inspired me.

“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth,
if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed,
you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”
Matthew 17:20 (NLT)

I have moments when I'm really aware of what I am feeling and thinking, and those usually turn into blog posts. For the rest of the time, I go along happily in contented distraction, not really tuned into my every thought and emotion. I am often blindsided by the depth of my emotional reaction to something, which gets me thinking, which makes me realize that I've been feeling one way or another... is any of this making sense?

I wouldn't say I'm in denial, although sometimes it might be. It's more like I get wrapped up with the external and lose touch with the internal. Then something happens, sometimes almost unrelated or unremarkable, and I find myself crying. It often takes me a while to discover what it is I'm reacting to.

Anyhow, I realized last night that I've been unconsciously avoiding the whole "trying again" thing, returning to our previous "if it happens, it will happen" stance. There's something about "not really trying" that softens the disappointment. I thought it was the circumstances of our lives and schedules creating the "not trying" situation, but it was really me.

After Brad's comments last night, and several conversations Martin and I have had recently, I decided to speak to the mountain, to take positive action, to really do something in faith.



The day we found out we had lost the baby, I stopped taking my prenatal pills. I hated taking them, they made me feel sicker and if I wasn't doing it to take care of the baby, there was no point.

Ideally, you should take prenatal vitamins before conception so that your folic acid levels are high during the crucial first few weeks of development. This morning, as a very small, mustard-seed-sized step, I took my first vitamin. And I will continue to do so until God's promise to us comes to pass, again.

Thanks for continuing to pray for us.

Ephesians 3:16,17,19

“You are mistaken to think the absence of trials will bring happiness.
You gain insight into My ways and purposes by careful study of My Word.
I show you the way of skillful and Godly wisdom.
It is not wisdom to wish for a magical cure for the sufferings in life.
Rather, pray for strength and reinforcement in your inner person
by the mighty power of my Holy Spirit.

Become rooted in love, founded securely on love, and suffering will not threaten you so.
Come to know and experience for yourself the rich goodness of My love,
which surpasses every false peace that the world offers.
Then you will be filled with My fullness-wholly filled and flooded with Me
and the sting of suffering will be removed.”

Why?

On our way to and from our short missions trip to Mexico, a few weeks ago, we passed through Why, AZ. I don't know why it's named that, but it got me thinking about something.

I shared this with a friend several weeks ago, and then a conversation I had with another friend this weekend prompted me to dig it out and post it here:

When I was in college, I struggled a lot with my faith and questions regarding what I actually believed. I was and am still an analytical thinker, majored in mathematics and really needed "proof" for everything. Every question that was raised against what I had been raised to believe (and in a secular college, believe me, it was almost a daily thing) needed to be answered, explained, disproved. I was miserable. I hadn't quite grasped that I serve a deeply mysterious God whose depth and greatness I will never be able to fathom. I was 21, knew a lot more than I know now, and thought that if I couldn't understand something, it must not be right or true. I struggled, I researched, and I found a lot of answers. But those answers never brought me the "sureness" I was looking for.

There came a point in my struggle that I had to stop looking for a rebuttal or answer to every question. What finally came to me, and I see the wisdom in it now that I'm older, was that I had to figure out what I really, really knew. The world is so relative to each person's experience, and you don't always know what you know or don't know.

And I realized that what I knew for sure was the feeling deep in my heart, the sense of God's spirit, even though I never "heard his voice", the true sureness of know him and his love for me. It was "realer" and truer than any argument, for or against his existence. It was truer than how I felt, or what I didn't know, or what I thought I knew. I knew that I knew God. One of my favorite scriptures is in 2 Timothy 1:12 when Paul says, "That is why I am suffering here in prison. But I am not ashamed of it, for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return." I know in whom I have believed. And that answers any "why" that might come up.

One of the things I wanted to post on the Baby Blog, but haven't had time to really do it right yet, is just about that word "why". I used to ask it a lot, about the things I see in the world, the things that I've seen happen in churches, and the things that happen to me. I once heard a woman who had lost her 6-year-old daughter to a long battle with cancer - and they were leaders in the name-it-and-claim-it Word/Faith movement in Tulsa - speak about the question "why?". Obviously, she had many reasons to ask why in the aftermath of losing her daughter to illness, when they knew and believed that God had provided for our health through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. And she said, and this is obviously a paraphrase from my remembering of what she said, that God said to her that the root of the word why is in chaos. That no matter how many times or ways that God could explain to us the "why" of what happens, it truly is beyond our scope at this time to understand. And that she was to trust in him and his love and know that he knew why.

I was surprised when we lost the baby that I never felt the need to ask why. Because I know in whom I have believed, and I know that he has a plan for me, and for us, and for our family. I don't need to know why because I know that he was there, and we were supported and comforted and blessed in our loss.

I read a book several weeks ago that astounded me both with its intellectual and emotional depth. A friend of ours had given it to Martin and he hadn't made it past the second chapter. I picked it up because there was nothing else in the house to read (and we'd shut off the TV for 3 weeks during the church's fast).

I think I read it in a day. I was so excited about what this book had to say that I recommended it to several friends. Terri's reading it now, and I'm eager to hear her thoughts on it.

It's a simple book. A relatively short book. A novel, of sorts (anyone who knows me knows what a struggle it is for me to read anything else!). And the portrait it paints of God - of the Trinity, actually, which I enjoyed and accepted although I don't believe in that particular theological construct, but that's an entirely different discussion - is astounding. The answers, and I use that term loosely, that it offers for one of the biggest questions of humanity ring so true. This book speaks to God's love in the midst of tragedy and sin and the unspeakable things humans do to each other. It speaks of relationship and forgiveness and the true depth of God's love.

For those of those struggling with a "why", I think that this book will help you to come to the place where you can let it go as well.

Read it and let me know what you think.

My Feet Show It

Those of you who know Martin and my dating story know that it was not a simple, easy or straight path. We had a few roadblocks, dead ends and one big pothole.

In times of sadness, stress and frustration, you learn some things about yourself. I once heard someone say that people are like ketchup packets: until you squeeze them, you don't know what's really inside. Well, among other things, I found that a really lousy poet is inside me. When I feel rotten, I write rotten poetry. Our dating saga produced some doozies. I sure hope that I threw them away...

After a particularly hard night last week, this is what came to me. Enjoy, or not, as it is truly terrible.

My Womb

Is an empty tomb; the tiny body spirited away.
Is an unoccupied room; the little one couldn't stay.
Is a garden without bloom;... something that ends in "day"?

That's as far as I got. It's been in my Drafts folder for over a week, and I finally
decided that there was no more inspiration in that particular well. I hope the laugh you get from my morose and overly simplistic rhyming scheme makes your day better.

No Tears in Heaven

Revelation 21:4
He will wipe every tear from their eyes,
and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.
All these things are gone forever.

Matthew 6:10
May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Galatians 6:2
Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.

There are many scriptures about the Church being one body. We often hear the local church assembly being referred to as family. But until you experience what we have experienced these past few weeks, these are just words that we use.

From the first phone call to last night's prayer meeting, we have been supported, surrounded and comforted by our closest friends, those we attend church with, and those we have just met during our church merge. From the first convergence of support, both to me here in Phoenix and to Martin in Las Vegas, we have been stunned by the generosity of those around us. Everything was dropped so that I wouldn't have to be alone. Travel plans were made so that Martin could be home with me that night. So many offers to bring meals, to be with us at the surgery center, to just hang out. So many prayers. So many notes of encouragement. So many hugs and smiles. So many who shared their own stories of loss so that we would know there is hope.

I have seen more tears in others' eyes as they ask how we are doing that I know that many have been shed in private for our loss. And I am surprised by how few tears I have shed for myself. And now I see it: when we get to heaven, Jesus himself will wipe the tears from our eyes and there will be no more crying. My church family, my own body, have cried tears on our behalf, have carried our burden, have prayed peace and strength beyond what we could have even imagined, and have brought a little bit of heaven to earth.

Thank you all.