Happy First Birthday!

Today, at 10:41 pm, Adison Nicole will be one!

She's had so many changes and accomplishments this year. She started driving, perfected her swordsmanship, and is reading.
OK, not really. But it has been a great year!

We have our one-year appointment later today, so I'm not sure how tall she is, but she's 22.2 pounds, and wearing 18 month pants!

She has two teeth--just got them in the last month or so!--and loves to brush them! We often put her to bed with her toothbrush because she refuses to give it up after bath time.

She loves music, to sing and dance. She's got great rhythm and Martin hopes that she'll be a drummer.

She loves her Daddy! She likes to talk on the phone and on Skype (on the big screen!) when he's away. She's a tough little cookie--we call her Danger Girl--because she loves to be thrown and dropped and in all sorts of ways be wild! Daddies are great for that.

She's so affectionate, always giving kisses. She's a very content and happy girl. She's a total clown and will do anything for a laugh. She loves watching videos of herself, and laughs at herself. She's amazing.

She eats just about anything, except for fruit. We can't seem to find anything she likes! She'll eat almost anything once (except for oranges), but then she will refuse it later. Her favorite foods are pickles, avocados, and chili. She decided about 5 months ago that she didn't want to eat anything she couldn't feed herself, so mealtime is always a big mess!

Bath time is still her favorite time, and we have lots of fun splashing to scare the dogs.

She has a million nicknames, the most popular being "Goose" (Daddy) and "Bug" (Mommy). She's also called Adi, Adi Bug, Funny Face, Milk Face, Cute Butt, Whiney Butt, and anything else that seems appropriate at the time.

She's a total night owl, and often doesn't go to bed until 10:30 or 11. In the last two weeks, she's changed her whole routine and now goes to bed in her crib with a bottle--before, she had to fall asleep with us or in the swing, and would never go to be awake. All of a sudden, she's changed it up. (For you Babywise parents, don't judge. Yes, she goes to bed with a bottle... we're working on it.)

She's crawling, climbing, walking (while holding fingers) and sometimes standing on her own. She jabbers constantly, and can say "Mama", "Daddy", "hiyoo" (hello), ti-tu (thank you), and "ya".

We have truly been blessed with Adison. Happy Birthday!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

A Whole New World

On Monday, April 6, 2009 at 10:41 pm,
Adison Nicole Leeuwner entered the world.
She was 8 lbs, 21.5" and all perfection.

Martin posted updates and photos to his Facebook profile throughout the entire delivery process, and continues to post photos on an almost hourly basis.

The Leeuwner, Folland, Lembo, Pauls and Beere families are all excited about the new arrival.

Home Stretch

We're approaching 38 weeks... and I had a doctor's appointment today. She gave us the green light - Adison can come any time now, everything is ready. The baby has turned head-down. I'm not dilated at all, but things are moving in that direction. She gave us a list of what to look for, when to call, when to head to the hospital, etc. It's really happening.

It's so hard to believe that the squirmy sensation in my belly is going to be a baby in my arms in just a matter of a week or two. (She said hopefully.) It's so hard to imagine how much our lives are going to change in that instant.

I've gained a total of 21 pounds now. It doesn't look larger to me, but all of my maternity tank tops no longer fully reach the bottom of the belly.

We're still making final prep on the nursery - Martin needs to finish the closet, and the curtains/crib bumper/ruffle need to be installed - and I need to figure out exactly what decorations should go on the walls besides just paint. But we're ready. As ready as we can be!

Here's a question for you moms - as I pack for the hospital, I am wondering what I need that I'm not thinking of. Any advice? Anything that will prove invaluable? What do I have to have for the first few days that we're home?

Baby's Heartbeat at 121⁄2 weeks

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

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.

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.

Gettin' Naked

My first thought when I found out that we were not, in fact, going to be having a baby in July, was how many people I had to tell. That thought was so overwhelming... and I'm so glad that many of you have gently and quietly spread the word for us.

My next thought was how much of my life I had to "put back": the maternity clothes, the baby stuff, the books and this blog. I was going to delete it, but Terri said that I shouldn't. This isn't the end of our baby journey. Just a pit stop we didn't anticipate.

So until we can start (more cautiously, I'm sure) celebrating the NEXT one... I'm going to use this to journal my feelings about this journey we're on. And I don't think it's always going to be pretty. It likely won't be what you expect. And I might say things that shock you. But this is my journey, my loss and my journal, so I'm going to "get naked" with my feelings and say what I think.

Humor is a big part of my life. I love to laugh. And I hate to cry. That balance has been out of whack since Friday, but slowly we are getting back to what feels more normal. Last night, I went to see Juno with a group of friends. I wasn't sure how the movie would make me feel, all things considered, and I was pleasantly surprised that although the entire film was about pregnancy, birth and wanting a child, it was handled with such wit and empathy and humor that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There were moments I could identify with, and it was definitely a chick flick with teary moments, but I really laughed a lot.

I'll write more about this later, but I just want to say that I am overwhelmed by how thankful and blessed I feel right now. The outpouring of love and the friends who stepped up and dropped everything to just be there... it still makes me tear up just thinking about it. We have such wonderful people in our lives. We are so blessed.

There's No Easy Way to Say This

I went in today for an ultrasound, and they couldn't find a heartbeat. After several tests and ultrasounds, we found out that our baby stopped growing 4 weeks ago.

I'm terribly sorry for everyone having to find out like this... it's just not a phone call I want to make 25 times. Crappy news isn't as fun to share.

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers and well-wishes. We're doing fine. We'll post more as the weeks pass, I'm sure.

We're not giving up!

Our Hearts' Longing

Psalm 21:2
For you have given [us our] heart’s desire;
you have withheld nothing [we] requested.

In May 2002, Martin and I were married. We both knew we wanted to have children, and had actually spent several evenings while we were dating at Barnes & Noble, only to end up looking at baby name books. It wasn't a question of if but when.

We moved to Arizona in January 2004, and were so excited about the journey that we were on with our closest friends. In time, we decided that we were ready to start our family. Christmas 2004 was spent with my family in Seattle, and I was humming with the knowledge that we would soon have great news for my family. As my grandmother, mother and I made greeting cards, I made cards to use in the next few months to let my parents know we were pregnant.

We planned so carefully, considering the Arizona summers. We stopped using birth control in March of 2005, fully expectant that we would soon be parents. (That gives us an October or November baby, only a few months pregnant during the hottest months.) And nothing happened.

I had let my mom know that we were trying, and she often told me that she was praying for it to happen at the right time. (When I told her that we were finally pregnant, she shared that both she and Nick had felt like it wasn't going to happen right away.) I knew it would happen at the right time, but I wanted the right time to be NOW.

Our life was full, busy, active, and we didn't let our lack of success discourage us. As the months passed, we continued to hope, but really weren't that preoccupied or disappointed as each month turned out to not be the right one.

There were low times, to be sure. As the months passed and it didn't look like this was going to be as easy as we first thought, my desire for a child grew. So small at first, I didn't even notice that an ache began to reside in my heart. The most unexpected thing - a silly TV show, a child in the mall, an unknowing question from a stranger - would cause it to flare up. I cried in disappointment, in frustration.

We grew closer as a couple, and had some really great events happen. We bought our first home in May 2005. In September 2006, we started Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey's 16-week course in finances that changed our lives. We worked on our relationship, our communication, and ourselves.

In October 2006, I attended my cousin Luke's wedding in Kansas. Of course, my extended family was giving me a hard time about when we were going to have kids, and I said, "We've been trying. I don't think we're doing it right!" Later that afternoon, my cousin Jimi approached me and asked if we really had been trying. As I shared with her how long we had, it struck me that it had been two years since we had decided to try (only 19 months actually trying). I hadn't realized it had been so long, and I was flooded by hopelessness. On the flight home a few days later, the baby in the seat in front of me kept pressing her hand to the window. As I looked at those chubby little fingers, I wept for the baby I desperately wanted. (Those of you who saw me at Trunk-or-Treat and wondered why I was a tearful mess... that's why.)

In June 2007, I finally went to my doctor and asked for a referral. At my first appointment, the nurse practitioner told me that although it was unusual to be not taking any preventative measures for over 2 years and not get pregnant, unless we'd been scientifically trying - tracking ovulation, etc. - for at least 3 months, we weren't really "trying".

We'd been hit-and-miss with that stuff, as Martin travels a lot, so it's hard to always be on schedule. Martin had taken all sorts of advice from his married friends with kids, and we did everything, including standing on our heads (almost). I think part of me was scared that if we were being scientific and not being successful, then it was confirmation that there was something wrong.

So in July, we started "trying"... and we had no luck. After three months, I scheduled another appointment with the doctor. (Martin had already scheduled some very humiliating tests, and his results had been unclear. He was scheduled for another appointment when he got back from Africa.) She set me up for a test (HSG), that I was supposed to schedule on the first day of my next cycle. It never came.

By November 15, I realized I was more than a few days late. But I was scared to hope. Martin was in Africa, and I couldn't bear the let-down if the test was negative. So I waited. In weak moments, I would let my guard down and my heart would soar, and I would give myself a reality check. It's not true. You're just a few days late. It's not going to happen. I just couldn't let myself believe it and then be wrong.

By November 19, I was a week late. I had purchased a test the night before, and I took one in the morning at home. It was positive, but it was one of those where the two pink lines have to make a +, and one line was very light. According to the directions, that was positive, but I couldn't believe it. When I got to work, I took another one. It, too, was a very light positive. At lunch, I went to the drug store and bought a digital test. I tried to take it in the bathroom at Wal-Mart, but I screwed up the directions and it was invalid. The directions said I couldn't retake for another hour, so I went back to work and called Martin in Africa. (The time difference was 10 hours, and if I waited until I took the 3rd test, it would be too late to call.) I told him that I had taken two tests, and I was pretty sure we were pregnant. He was so happy he cried. I told him that I was going to take a third test to confirm.

The third test - the digital - left no confusion: Pregnant! (Of course, by the time I got home from work, I had convinced myself I was mistaken, and took a 4th test. Also positive.)

I left that night to see my family for Thanksgiving. Of course, I told my mom the next morning, and she told everyone, including the border guard on our way into Canada! But secretly, I feared that somehow I was mistaken. It wasn't until we came back and the doctor confirmed our 4 pregnancy tests that I finally allowed myself to really, truly believe it: We're going to be parents!