- We started our year almost immediately finding out we were expecting a baby Teeter!! John and I had decided in the fall of 2010 we would officially like to expand our family with a human baby rather than with only fur babies. Well.... when you decide that's the plan don't think it's going to take 6 months or a year. Plan on it happening rather quickly for those of you considering it. "It only takes one time".... we've all heard that right? Well it wasn't that fast but I can remember the feeling exactly when I saw the digital pregnant and thinking that time wasn't going to slow down any for us to get ready! Definitely the most exciting way to begin a new year anticipating meeting your baby.
- Can I just say that keeping that secret for the entire first trimester was a VERY difficult thing for me to do?! Just keeping that secret from my family until we went to the doctor and confirmed that there was indeed a little stinker with a heartbeat was torture for me. Especially when my sister randomly calls me one night asking if I'm pregnant and John mouthing to me from across the couch to say "no, I'm not pregnant!! hahahahhaha what makes you ask that? Most random question in the world, but seriously whaaaaat? Pregnant?? Never! Like, not for a lonnnnnng time Sarah hahahahahah". Gawd I'm bad at lying to her... I mean who calls and asks someone if they are pregnant randomly? Or if they are trying to get pregnant? Yeah.
- The spring months were dominated by wedding showers for my nosy sister and her fiance Rex Paul Brady DeClerk. Haha... no seriously that's Brady's full name. His feelings do not get hurt when you laugh that he has four names. Promise. So many wonderful parties that also helped move the months along while I was pregnant. Having other events to look forward to rather than just the next doctor appointment or the looming due date is a HUGE help. Plan on getting pregnant in a busy busy year... do it. I promise it's better. Just make sure the events are casual so you can wear work out pants and extra large tshirts from Target in every color and flip flops. Oh! I have another tip. Get pregnant in the spring so that you are "cute" pregnant in the summer and not 9 months pregnant. Also, that means the end of your pregnancy when you are the largest is fall and you can wear cute leggings, tunic sweaters and boots to hide your hideously large swollen feet. I am giving you valuable advice ladies and suggest you take it.
- April rolls along and our bridesmaid dresses are FINALLY in. Well I'll share that we chose the dresses in November of 2010 I believe and I remember trying them on and knowing that John and I were anticipating that digital pregnant any month now so telling Sarah that I definitely think empire waist dresses are the best choice and that they will be the most flattering on everyone. Like I even had to worry about any one of the bridesmaids not looking FABULOUS in the dress. Sarah had the hottest line up of bridesmaids besides preggo sister... aka MATRON of honor. I went by Maid of Honor even though I was clearly knocked up and no maid but a matron with a husband. Ok, back to the dress. We get them in very late because Melissa Sweet didn't want to get us the dresses in too much time to get a larger size for the big girl. Dress comes in and it's the fabulous size I was in November which happened to be probably the best shape I've ever been in besides that summer in college when I got scary skinny by only eating Reese's peanut butter cups for meals. Who knew a candy only diet would cause me to get alarmingly skinny? I'll focus now. Long story will become shorter by saying that several fittings with my Australian seamstress produced a gorgeous dress with a huge panel sewn into the dress. No one would know though and I felt pretty good in it!!
- 5 months pregnant at my sister's wedding means: not being able to get through my obligatory speech at the rehearsal dinner without the ugly cry; having to squeeze into a dress that flattered all of the other girls so much and I just looked wide, swollen and pale because my spray tan just didn't cut it; having to curb my emotions and sing at the wedding.... you can imagine how that looked; then forgetting my bouquet and standing in front of everyone crying and holding Sarah's bouquet staring at mine laying on the table just out of reach and wondering if anyone would notice if I fainted because standing for that long was starting to become a cause for panic since I was at least 20 lbs heavier at that point and I naturally lock my knees when I stand but then I was scared to unlock my knees on the stairs and thank God the service didn't last much longer; not being able to drink at your SISTER'S WEDDING. I had to dance sober... haha if you know me you know what that looked like. I think Nana even had some drinks so I was officially the only person there that did not have a sippy sip of something. All in all the wedding and reception were so wonderful and Ann and I enjoyed ourselves despite the lack of alcohol and being skinny! Here are some pictures I stole from Facebook of Sarah's wedding: Disclaimer: Seriously the prettiest sister and bride in the WORLD. Serious face.
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| Isn't Sarah's dress amaaaaazing??! I'm so lucky to have the most beautiful sister in the world :) |
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| Ken and brunette Barbie about to kiss!! This is when the tears started flowing again for me... see? I'm in the left corner smiling through the emotions. |
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| Prettiest wedding EVA. |
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| Details from dinner area; then dessert and dancing was in the barn with a little different look |
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| Sarah and Brady's amazing bridal party... we were all pretty good lookin' |
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| My shoes! Ha, right. Actually I did wear stripper heels b/c I accidentally ordered them a couple days before wedding and didn't realize they WERE stripper heels...back to Sarah's shoes though. Fab right? |
- Now that Sarah's wedding is over we are moving into summer and gearing up for another wedding!! My cousin Mary Beth is marrying one of my husband's best friends Doug!! John lived with Doug for years and their story is a whole 'nother post that I'll do sometime because it is so cute but how lucky is John to marry my sister off to one of his frat bros and friends and marry my cousin off to another so that he is for sure surrounded by friends at all family functions?! Sneaky boy that husband is. Anyways can I share that I am also matron of honor in MB's wedding even though I gave her every opportunity to choose someone else that wasn't going to be over 9 months pregnant and HUGE in her August wedding? She's a good person though and let me do it anyway :). July flew by with her bachelorette that I participated in even though it was probably really awkward looking to be in a bar with a huge preggo belly at a bachelorette. Oh did I mention above that I also went to Dallas for Sarah's bachelorette with a bunch of 23 year olds with a preggo belly? All class all the time. That's my mantra!! Back to MB....she was seriously the nicest about everything and even my scatterbrained unorganized matron of honor skills. I was the worst MOH.... I had lost my ability to think, plan or walk in heels by July.
- August rolls along and we are officially having the hottest summer in Arkansas' history!! You heard me! I was nine months pregnant and experiencing temperatures that no one in Arkansas history has ever experienced before. Good timing wouldn't ya say? I was still going to work, showing commercial space, wearing heels and squeezing into the one pair of black work pants I could still close with a paper clip attached to a pony tail holder. Fun tip I'll show anyone who needs to expand their pants by 6 inches. I also could not fit into MB's chosen bridesmaid dress so my Mom rigged it up. I wore it for the ceremony and then expanded myself into a more comfortable black dress that was not wedding appropriate but I could breathe in and Ann wasn't trying to escape early from. My second wedding to not enjoy a beverage but it was still a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure I slow danced with John once and then felt too awkward to participate in anymore dancing. I sat with Nana at the non-dancing non-drinking table. We were the only two there. Let me see if I can steal some pictures of MB from facebook because she is seriously the prettiest cousin in the world and was blonde barbie with blonde Ken!!
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| I think we all know what their kiddos will look like! |
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| Ugh, I look hideous!! MB was sweet to let me stand up there with her :) |
- I get fat face fast when gaining weight. Evidence above.
- Now we are at September and I am doing everything I can to get Ann to come along!! Finally John agrees to let me get induced because I am mis er a ble and being mean to him then crying that he "has no idea what it is like to have a 35 lb belly with a baby leg sticking into my ribs and not being able to sleep or eat or shave my legs or put on my pants by myself or have a damn glass of chilled white wine to beat the heat!!!!!" and walking the house at night like a zombie because I can no longer sleep. It got scary for him towards the end.
- We finally meet our daughter on September 16th and that is officially the happiest day of our lives. Happiest. Day. Ever. As in I love that hospital room with my whole heart and sometimes wish I was back there in all of that post delivery pain looking at Ann next to me while I scarf down dinner and drink my first glass of tea since December 2012. Love that place and my nurse and my doctor and the food and crazy feeling that we had just had our daughter and she was no longer torturing me from the inside.
- The next couple months are kind of a blur of being a new Mom and enjoying every single second except for maybe a couple seconds at first when nursing was so painful I didn't know why Ann was torturing me and then that one moment where I cried and cried while Ann cried and John paced the floor with her and we both looked at each other like "holy crap this baby hates us and she will never stop crying and she is going to die from crying so much". But that 4 hours ended and we've been good ever since!!
- November comes along and our little world is brought a new dose of reality. We were finally comfortable with this whole parenting gig and enjoying our growing daughter, football, fall in Fayetteville, getting ready for the holidays.... John on his own decides to go to the dermatologist and get checked out like he had done in the past. I don't even know he is going until he comes home with a couple areas taken off. A week later he gets a call from his doctor that one of the spots is melanoma. When your husband asks you to come home with your daughter from shopping with your Mom and then asks you to sit down for a second you know it's not good. That word, melanoma, screamed cancer into my head and I remember looking down at Ann and thinking "is this our trial?". I thought oh no, I've led such a blessed blessed life. I haven't had anything bad happen that we have not gotten through in better shape than we started out in and is this what God's plan is for us? I am not prepared for this and I can't believe that God's plan is to give us this amazing daughter and then for John to be sick. That was my initial thought and it was so scary because all we knew at that point was that John had melanoma, the worst form of skin cancer and the most scary because it will spread to organs and there are not as many successful treatments as there are for other forms of cancer. I mean, we are 28 years old and we are looking at skin cancer?? No, we were not prepared for this to be our trial and so we pulled ourselves together and made a decision to take it step by step the first step being for John to call his sister Amy and talk to her. Amy is a doctor and to me was the best person to talk to first. She wouldn't scare us and would know what John should do whether it is continue with the plan of his doctor in Fayetteville to have surgery up here or to go somewhere else. She got John in to an amazing specialist at UAMS in Little Rock that knows melanoma backwards and forwards. He agreed to see John quickly and got John in for surgery the day before Thanksgiving even though he was supposed to be on vacation. Now that's a good person. In the meantime John had a PET scan, they checked his heart out and we crashed at Sarah and Brady's house for over a week with Ann while we went to doctor appointments and waited around for surgery. Surgery went great and they removed all of the cancer cells from John's leg and more of the area on his chest that was questionable. They removed one lymph node from his groin and sent all of it off for pathology. I don't think John was prepared for how he would be after surgery... lots of pain, couldn't get around on his leg, couldn't drive, had to let me do everything (which is a small form of torture for him) and just let me take care of him. Let's just say he was drugged up and I needed drugs to take care of him, take care of Ann, take care of our two puppies and try not to disrupt Sarah and Brady's life at home too much. We went to Thanksgiving with John's family in Augusta and they took over helping John and taking care of Ann. John and I were running on adrenaline until probably Thanksgiving night and we both crashed. Emotionally and physically we had been on a roller coaster for 3 weeks and it was all coming down on us at that point. We went back to Little Rock on Friday and then to Fayetteville on Saturday to be in our own home and rest. We then had to turn around and go back to the doctor on Monday of that following week but we were geared with rest and anticipation of hearing the results from pathology. Later that week we found out that the cancer had not spread any further than the areas they removed and that was the only treatment we would do for now!! Best news of our life following Ann of course. John has been back a few times for check up on his leg and will continue to be checked every few months. We are now so much more aware of the dangers and I am now going to become crazy Mom in regards to Ann's skin. We think it is hereditary in some way on John's side of the family and that means Ann may be more prone than normal to it. She will have to embrace pale skin and I'll teach her the art of self tanner when the time comes :).
I have confidence that this is NOT our trial and that it was simply life and not what is going to define us in any way in the future. In the middle of all of this John and I both felt peace and comfort and confidence that this would be ok and not turn out badly. We have faith that God knows what he is doing and that we will be just fine. We will be diligent in staying healthy and making sure that if it does come back we catch it early and that we don't let it spread to organs. We are healthy now and John is barely limping and on his way to being back to normal.
- It's Christmas time now and we are looking back at our year with disbelief that all of this happened since one year ago. We find out we are having a baby, we find out baby will be a daughter, we watch Sarah and Brady get married and begin their life as a family, we celebrate and honor Mary Beth and Doug as they become their own family, we meet our daughter, we get a wake up call that we are vulnerable and life is fragile and health should not be taken for granted but we are given the gift of health for the time being and we get to start this next new year with our daughter, healthy and anticipating the blessings to come. We are so thankful for everything and look forward to giving ourselves over to God and his plan and doing everything we can to provide blessings for other people as thanks for our own.
Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!! Live everyday in thanks and use the gifts God has blessed you with to help others experience their own blessings.
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