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Whole30 # 5

This time I’m doing it for this.

I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.

John 14:29

Postpartum

It is brutal :(

My pregnancy itself was a nice one where I didn’t experience too much of anything but postpartum ---------XXXX

Lack of sleep and time to do things, pain in the vagina, swelling of feet, breast engorgement, tendinitis, and I just hope it stops here.

#postpartum

Early labor, labor and delivery

Giving birth has three stages and early labor is the part where you have contractions. I never really knew what contractions were and I think people experience them differently. When I asked people what a contraction was people described it as your cervix opening but I didn’t really understand what it meant...

For me, Wednesday, October 17 was when everything started. I had lunch at home and then felt this sensation of needing to go to the restroom - really bad. It was a diarrhea sensation that found no relief. It would start and then stop. This kept on going into the afternoon when I took a nap and then at night, the sensation kept on going. At night, the pain got worse and that is when John pointed out that those must be contractions - and that is when I had to do the breathing to relieve the pain. The point of these breaths is so that you focus on the breaths and not the pain. Anyways, early labor is when your cervix dilates so that baby’s head can be pushed through. The hospital wants you to spend most of the early labor at home and come be admitted when you see a pattern of 511 - meaning the contractions are 5 minutes apart lasting one minute each for one hour.

The pain lasted through Thursday morning when I reached a 711 pattern and then they slowed down....The pain came back Thursday night and I had to go through it all over again. Friday morning, I reached the 511 pattern at around 4:30am and we called but the nurses said that since it was my first to reach a 1 minutes apart 1 minute and a half pattern. I was dying. I was supposed to go in for a non-stress test at 7:30am that Friday morning. We ended up being admitted to the hospital at 7am and I was 6cm dilated! You need to be dilated 10 cm to be able to start pushing. When the doctor determined that, they admitted me officially and I was moved to the labor room. The contractions kept going and my blood pressure was really high. They asked me if I wanted epidural and I said yes! and it made a whole world of difference. Epidural takes away the pain leaving the pressure there so that you can still push. At 12:30 in the afternoon, the nurse told me it was time to push!

I pushed for an hour. When you push, you push through a contraction. The nurse monitors you and when they see a contraction coming, she tells you to get ready to take in a cleansing breath and to breath out. Next you take another big breath, hold it, and push for 10 seconds on her count. Once that is out, you take another breath and do it again. Weird thing is that on each third breath, my nose would get super stuffy and it would get hard. When pushing, I don’t even know if I was doing it even right but I must have since Luca came out at 1:35pm at 4lbs 11oz :)

On being pregnant ~

On being pregnant - as I am typing right now, baby is 37 weeks and 3 days old. Doctors used to consider 37 weeks full term but they now say that week 39 is full term. I went in for an ultrasound on Monday and the doctor said that baby is still 2 weeks behind on the growth curve though he did grow since last time. He is currently 5lbs 4oz - so he is still small and is considered a IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction) case. I asked mom if I was born small and she said yes and that I was even monitored in the NICU.

This week is my second week of maternity leave. It’s weird to know that I had actually on going to work until the end of the month but the doctor told me to go on maternity leave so that I could focus on exerting less energy and relax for baby. On my last appointment, I was told that if I don’t start my contractions on my own by October 29th that I will be induced. It’s kind of scary to know and to think about the whole birthing process but it is also amazing how God has designed us to be able to do that!!

Discomforts and pain - I would say that my pregnancy journey went pretty well. I didn’t get any morning sickness my first trimester and the vomiting that happened was because of a food poisoning episode from a smoothie I made with spinach. The whole thing was also probably triggered from holding a housewarming party for which I made a lot of food preparations. Fortunately all that happened before work started over the summer. On another note, the other discomfort I experienced was upper back pain that I think happened because I did those arm workouts. The last discomfort I experienced was pelvic pain.

On working out and weight gain - I think part of me was worried of gaining too much weight since I had finally attained a weight I was content with pre-pregnancy (you know freshmen 15, or maybe more like 20). During my pregnancy until week 34 I did continue to run 3-4 times a week and swim three times a week. I found some cool workout and started prenatal yoga :). Click here for the workouts. But that is only because it felt good and working out gives me energy. In retrospect, I think if I were to do it all over again, I would make sure I replenished better after a workout. I stopped running at week 34. When talking to the doctors, they had said that baby was behind the growth curve by two weeks. And because they wanted to rule out anything that could have caused the IUGR condition, they told me to replace running with walking. There isn’t any concrete explanation for IUGR, sometimes it is genetics, sometimes it is because the mother’s placenta is not big enough.

On maternity clothes - The only special things I bought were a pregnancy tank, a baobei band for working out, leggings (which did get too constrictive) and some long skirts from goodwill. I tried to stay as minimal as possible.

On the nursery - J and I bought things on Facebook Market place and we found good things for at good prices! We bought a rocking chair and glider for $50 and a changing table for $50. I am still preparing the room and I hope we can be as minimalist as possible.

Bump Journey - before being pregnant I always associated being pregnant with having a bump and was waiting for a bump to show. Mine showed around week 20 and it got slowly bigger but not too big. Now that baby Luca is born, I look forward to being able to sleep on my back again once I am all healed down there.

#babyjpco

God is the Master Orchestrator

Have you ever experienced God being the master orchestrator of things in your life? I mean we can see it in the Old Testament and the New Testament. God promises and fulfills. He promises and fulfills. Things from the past are a shadow of the things to come, from the rooms of the Ark of the Covenant to the First coming, to the Second coming, God plans everything for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).

I experienced God’s hand at work in coordinating everything. Brace yourself as it is a BAM BAM BAM effect.

February 25, 2018: Hubby and I have been looking at homes and finally decided we liked this one. I was not drawn to it at first because it was not all remodeled and there kitchen did not have an island. Everything else though was good: location, future family location, square footage, windows in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Agent found some information for us saying that house was underlisted and that they are already getting many offers. We strategized with our agent a strong offer and drafted a letter to be turned in with out offer. (Our agents are awesome!)

Feb 26, 2018: Offer is turned in by our agent. Seller reviews all offers at 5pm. We don’t hear anything.

Feb 27, 2018: The seller loves our letter and offer (the top offer) - but she wants a counter offer of a best and final price by 5pm the next day. With our agents advice and logic, we pray and decide to stay firm with our original offer.

Feb 28, 2018: Offer is turned in. Seller reviews offers at 5pm.

March 1, 2018: Our agent calls hubby and lets him know that the seller received three offers higher than ours.

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Despite that, she still went with us. We were the only ones she was actually considering from the beginning.

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Can you see how God orchestrated all this. This was not us. THIS WAS GOD!!

Now to top that off, rewind a little bit:

February 25, 2018: Hubby and I went for a short run before church and decided to stop at CVS to pick up a pregnancy test and I get a

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positive!!

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June 1, 2018: We are all moved into our new house and unpacking boxes to make this place our home <3

Barilla is just genius for making ready to bake lasagna sheets !!!

Soufflé in the making. Props to restaurants because your timing is everything once it is baked.

Purple fried rice 🍚- I know fried rice is traditionally just tossing leftovers but I actually purposefully make rice for fried rice 🤗

I don’t like cheesecake because of the cream cheese in it but I finally got to make my first vegan cheesecake after buying a new springform pan at a goodwill store. @jcsplinter says it’s not a cheesecake and calls it a larabar cake 😅. Recipe from @unconventionalbaker #vegancheesecake

Getting ready for year 8!

I don’t like cheesecake because of the cream cheese in it but I finally got to make my first vegan cheesecake after buying a new springform pan at a goodwill store. @jcsplinter says it’s not a cheesecake and calls it a larabar cake 😅. Recipe from @unconventionalbaker #vegancheesecake

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