Just be here. Just be a mom. 8 weeks!

Just in case we aren't friends on social media, we have a beautiful blessing hanging out in my body for another 8 months. 🙌🏻 We are currently looking at a May 9th due date, which is extra special since that is my birthday. 👊🏻 It took us 11 months to get pregnant with Calista and not knowing what our next journey would look like, we prayerfully embarked on trying to get pregnant again. You see, we waited to get married. We waited to get pregnant. We did things SLOW and backwards, but now we are really trying to be obedient.

Motherhood is a challenge for all of us, I'm pretty sure, well at least it is for me. I am a super Type A, driven, ambitious girl. I have held jobs in anything from high end sales to waiting tables to owning my own personal training business to now being, well pretty much a stay at home mom. Here's the thing, I still teach some group fitness and train a client or two and I still have my online fitness ministry that I use to encourage others, BUT my first priority is being a mom. What that means is my other "jobs" all take a backseat to being a mom. I've had to start an end of the day checklist for myself that my sweet friend, Michelle Myers, gave me.
1. Did I serve God first?
2. Did I serve my husband?
3. Did I serve my children?
If that is all I did that day, success. So, why am I telling you all of this in my pregnancy announcement blog? It's because I want you to understand where my heart is. I am trying to follow God first, even against my ambitions. Night after night as I put Calista to bed, He kept saying to just "be here", just be a mom. It's been a hard pill for me to swallow and no that doesn't mean I can't maintain all of the above mentioned jobs, it simply means that God is calling me to be a mom. So when He blessed us with a precious baby the 2nd month we tried, I knew this was His doing.

So, as worries creep in of how in the world I'm going to have babies 22 months apart, concerns of whether or not I'll be in pain the majority of my pregnancy again, or just how we are going to pay for everything, well, I'm doing my best to remember that God is blessing us and that means He provides as well.

So, some basics:
-A little nausea and indigestion
-Lots of fatigue, like instead of working during naptime, I have to nap too and why oh why did Calista pick this time to drop her 2nd nap!?! 😭😭😭😭
-Food is weird, like I either hate it all of want all of the bad things like Mac and cheese and pizza.
-It's a hectic week where I teach at church so I'm currently doing 11 workouts this week. No modifications needed other than extra rest, food, and water.

Oh and I keep getting asked why we announced at 7 weeks. Well, the way we see it is that once we hear that heartbeat, not only does miscarriage risk drop to 3%, but that baby is so alive to us and neither my husband or I can imagine keeping that blessing a secret. We realize this is a very personal choice, but for both of us we feel that the more prayers we have for a healthy, whole baby the better and no matter what happens this baby was wanted, loved, prayed over and cherished.

Love y'all and am excited to share this journey with you. If you have any questions or want to know certain things I'm pretty open so send me an email or comment on this post.

And Calista is going to be the best big sister ever!