When we told some of our friends that we were pregnant, two months after we found out, she looked at me and said, in almost a whisper, "But shouldn't you wait until you hear the heartbeat to tell anyone?" I had never even thought about keeping it a secret for that long. We just wanted to make sure we went in the correct order of telling people (parents, siblings, close family, close friends, farther family, farther friends, and finally, the internet), which we didn't even do very well.
But it made me stop and think about why you might wait to tell something so special and important, and the pain connected to so much this amazing thing called pregnancy. In her way, that friend was telling me, "I don't want you to have to suffer the pain of having to tell everyone if something goes wrong with the pregnancy." Around 80% of miscarriages happen in the first three months.
Let me be perfectly honest with you: I like to be an open person who shares everything. I normally err on the side of sharing too much rather than too little, but it has been a bit daunting to me to share our reproductive plans with almost everyone we meet the past couple of months. I have tried to find nice, conservative ways to say it, but it is what it is: because we live in the epicenter of the Zika/Microcephaly issue in Brazil. and because so much about it is unknown, our leadership advised that if we were going to have children, we should wait to get pregnant in the USA.
I am not used to the idea of outside forces determining our intimate choices. I have people I respect who disagree on using/what kind of contraception to use. This has always been a "SHHHHHHH!" issue. And yet, I am 34, and we do wish to have another child. So we came back on home assignment saying, if we get pregnant, we will stay--if not--we will return to Brazil. We have three months to see.
We are a month and a half into this, and I realize I know practically nothing about trying to conceive. This is a whole world of struggle and theories and frustration that was unknown to me. I made sure to be as healthy as possible, that Ana was weaned, and I got an app called "Dot" that kept track of my cycles and know when I had a low, medium, or high chance of getting pregnant (it is free).
After the first month, when I got my period, I felt sad. Almost like a failure. I wanted to give my body a pep talk, like "Hey! Get on the ball with this!" I took random pregnancy tests anytime I had a stomach ache. I think I need to become more self-educated about this, and be okay with talking about this "shhhhhhhhhh" issue. Because a lot of women are struggling in silence.
If you go on Youtube, there is a whole world of women vlogging about trying to conceive. Don't believe me? type in "TTC": Trying To Conceive (this is also true for blogs--type it into google). The main thing is: this is a big issue for a lot of people. Here are some resources that I found interesting and important:
Our period is just one part of a month-long system of hormones and interesting womanly things. Who knew?
Nifty little animated video! So you have to wait two weeks (basically) for these things to work, and by then, you basically have your period and wait for the next month...
A husband trying to keep up with the lingo of TTC ppl:).
Caid and I will find ways to share, as we see or don't see what happens the next month and a half, and will prayerfully be vulnerable in new ways. Life with God certainly is an adventure!
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