First Trimester Woes....

It's been a while. Though my blogging this year has been sporadic at best, this time around it's due to the first trimester mind numbing nausea that's taken over my life. I'm barely human these days. I'm lucky to have a few functioning hours a day before the nausea consumes me. Thankfully those few hours are while my husband is at work, the moment he gets home, I am done, sinking into a shell of my formal house-keeping, meal cooking self. I'm praying this passes quickly and I can regain my former energy (or at least a bit of it) and ability to hold down food.

I have to say. The first trimester is lonely. There's nothing anyone can do to help my nausea. All I can do is pray for it to pass. And recite scripture while laying in bed, that seems to help the most. I miss friends. I miss phone calls. Sometimes I feel like pregnancy is so isolating. I'm unable to do things I could do before, out of exhaustion, but the fact is, it's not just the exhaustion: I'll be unavailable for a long time from here on out. Because once this baby comes I'll have a newborn and three other kids under the age of seven at home. And that makes things hard when the rest of your friends can just pick up and go do things.

I'm thankful for this blessing of a fourth baby, for the Lord to see fit to entrust us with another little life to lead. It brings me back to our goal as a family: to raise up a generation of children who follow Jesus. It pushes aside my selfishness and fear of losing "me". This is me. I am consumed by raising children who love the Lord. That and that alone is my purpose. Not taking good pictures. Or getting crafty during naptime. Or being involved in MOPS. Or anything else.

A friend sent me this link a few days ago and it was exactly what I needed to read to feel encouraged in this season.

I have to say, years ago when Chloe was born and I first brought up the idea of homeschooling my husband and I were wary of the stereotype of large families, cloth diapering, growing their own crops, teaching their kids at home etc. It looks nice on tv, but that's when it's someone else's life. Guess what we've become? Four or more kids is now considered a "large" family, I've been doing extensive cloth diapering research and it looks like that's where we're headed, we have a nice little garden this year including corn (which is going to look very funny growing tall over our tract home block wall) and we're a homeschool family. Gimme some ankle length skirts for me and the girls and we're complete! Ha!

Off to attempt some productivity with my littles before I become a morning-sickness zombie.