Stressins on Lessons on Blessins: Part ONE!

I’m currently laying across my bed, listening to “Feels like Home, Vol. 1” by Israel & New Breed while my husband plays “Call of Duty” and MY 11 DAY OLD DAUGHTER sleeps next to me!🤯 It’s been a wild few months off and although I’ve enjoyed being a mommy to be and now an actual mommy – I’m so excited to jump back in to writing and talk about everything I’ve dealt with during my pregnancy and even in this short time after giving birth.

So, first off – pregnancy brain is no joke! I wrote a piece to let you guys know that I was taking a break during my pregnancy until God instructed me to come back and y’all – I forgot to post it!🤦🏽‍♀️ I did a video on Facebook but the post for the blog is still in my drafts and I’m just like, Thank You Lord for getting me through with all of my limbs and my house still in tact because I lost my brain several times during pregnancy!🤣

Secondly, guys – I am a MOMMY!!! Every time I think about it or look at my daughter, I am blown away by God and how what He promises will always happen, no matter how long it may take. For those who don’t know – I wrote a piece a couple of years ago called “A Childless Mother!” and the struggles I faced desiring to have a baby but feeling as though it wouldn’t happen for me! The key was doing it Gods way instead of my own way, which I know is all of our struggles at times. I’m just glad that I finally allowed God to move in my life because I could not have imagined He would bless me this much!

Now that we are all caught up on where I currently am – lets talk about the journey of pregnancy – well my pregnancy because no matter how much advice you get from other mommy’s, no matter how much research you do, there may be similarities but your pregnancy is very specific to you and that goes mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. So I found out I was pregnant, December 4th 2020. My husband and I hadn’t been trying but we did make the decision in October that I’d stop taking birth control (I needed to be on it for the hormones per my doctor) and in our mind – we expected to get pregnant around February ’21 or so – if at all, in my mind! (God probably is still laughing – I know my daughter just literally chuckled in her sleep😐 …) Any who, I had been feeling sick for a few weeks – really tired and nauseous. Despite having just those two symptoms, I was convinced I had COVID and my brain didn’t even really think that I might’ve been pregnant. After a few days of complaining, my husband came home with a pregnancy test – “Take this test! If you’re not pregnant, we’re going to the ER tonight!” I was so hesitant! I had been here before. Symptoms of pregnancy but the tests always came back “negative” and then, after pretending to be relieved or looking at everything still possible due to not being pregnant, internally, I’d be sad for days, questioning if the preacher told me right when he said that God was sending me my baby or if the dreams I had of me walking in the church with my daughter with a head full of black curly hair – hearing her, smelling her – if that was just all a dream that would never turn into a reality. Ugh! I don’t want to go through this again! I sat on the edge of the bed and looked in the bathroom. I watched my husband and then started to mindlessly scroll on my phone. I went to YouTube – can’t remember what for – but the featured video on my page was of a girl who found out she was pregnant, and weeks later lost the baby. My husband walked in at that moment and I looked up at him and told him what I saw and how I didn’t want to take the test. I began crying. He grabbed me up and hugged me. “No baby. We can’t do that. We are going to take this test and it’s going to be okay. What do I always tell you? What we can control, we do – what we can’t – we pray about.” So I made my way to the bathroom.

Opening the pregnancy test box felt like an outer body experience. Everything was in slow motion. My heart was in my kneecaps and I was trying my best to not cry. After laying the test on the counter to wait for the results – I heard my husband in the room moving stuff around and mindlessly, I looked down at the test and saw “PREGNANT.” “This is definitely not right,” I thought to myself, so I picked up the test to look at it CLOSELY! The word didn’t go away. PREGNANT. PREGNANT. “BABY! BABY! IT SAYS I AM PREGNANT.” as I walked to the room! Chris turned and looked at me and said “What?!” I said, “IT SAYS I AM PREGNANT! WE’RE PREGNANT BABY!” and I just busted into tears as Chris hugged me! That hug felt like it was a lifetime and man, just thinking about that moment, it’s still surreal! Fast forward to telling all of our family and friends – I was finally feeling like I was normal! Isn’t that crazy?! Not having a baby was out of my control but not having one always made me feel like I wasn’t a real woman. Like I wasn’t fully woman until I carried and delivered my own baby. So yeah, I was feeling normal. I was excited. My husband was excited. Our families and friends were excited. We were on the journey to parenthood!

How many know that when God sends your blessing that does not mean the fight is over but it’s just beginning?! It doesn’t matter if that fight is between you and the devil or you and yourself – there is a fight! I wish I would’ve been better prepared but honestly – I was soooooo googoogaagaa over the news, I don’t know how much good that would have done for me. So I went to the doctor – I was freshly pregnant! 5 weeks. Long time before the end of the first trimester! What did Kiesha start doing instead of praying? I started worrying! All I kept thinking was – “I gotta make it through the first trimester.” “The chance of miscarrying is higher during the 1st trimester.” “This is my first pregnancy.” “How good was I at holding my pee when I was younger? I remember the older mothers in the church saying that we wouldn’t be able to hold a baby if we couldn’t hold our pee!” Ridiculousness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thinking about it now and I am just like, I wasted too much time overthinking instead of just enjoying every single step of my pregnancy but whatevs! Hopefully, this will be of help to someone else so they don’t do what I did!

Off rip, the doctors called my pregnancy “high risk!” because I suffered from high blood pressure prior to pregnancy! They told me at 20 weeks, it was likely that I’d get preeclampsia. For those who don’t know – its when your BP becomes dangerously high to the point where it can be fatal for mommy and baby and the only way to stop it is to give birth! I was at risk for that at 20 weeks and we know that’s way too soon for a baby to be delivered! Another something to add to my “worry list!” I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, its so crazy how a person can have such strong faith for everyone but themselves! Someone calls me and tells me about something they are in need of God doing and I trust and believe it’s gonna happen but when it comes to my own life – faith be hard to come by some days! LOL! It’s something I have to work on every day but yeah, faith was definitely difficult during my pregnancy because of all the odds stacked up against me – at least that I felt were stacked up against me. So I got high blood pressure! Then they come telling me that because of my age, I need to have a test done to rule out that my baby will have any disabilities such as down syndrome. The plan was the first test would tell me if I was in the range of it happening and if so, then I’d have to have another test done to confirm it either way! My mind was racing constantly!! Okay God! This is too much already!! SMH! So I got the first test done. My husband and I had been praying. Our families were praying. Our pastor was praying. So I kept telling myself that the results would tell me our baby was OK! There was nothing for me to worry about at all! I rehearsed it constantly in my mind. So we were at the laundry mat and I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I answered it and it was Miami Valley Maternal Fetal Medicine. The nurse proceeds to tell me that my results came back and I was in the percentile where my baby was at a higher risk to have a disability and that I will need the second test to confirm. The increase was only 1% and it was like he told me it was 100% because as I told my husband, I fought back the tears and was already defeated. All I kept thinking was – we are praying, so why are we here? Now before yall talk about me too bad – I know God is real! I know He has all power in His hands. I know there is nothing too hard for Him. The thing is, when something you’ve desired for so long, that you didn’t think you’d ever get is now at stake, that’s when extreme doubt usually appears. I spent my whole life knowing that I was destined to be a mother but spent so much time feeling like it wasn’t going to happen for me. I was the girl that would walk pass the mirror and hold my stomach pretending a baby was in there. Before my husband, I was that girl that would pray every single month that my period would not come. I WAS SCARED OUT OF MY MIND!!!! I was finally pregnant and I just kept hearing about all of the things that could go wrong! It was a LOT!

It came time for me to take the second test and it had to be sent to an out of state company so after I got my blood drawn – they told us it would be about 2 weeks before we got the results! The only good thing about taking this test was that they could tell us the sex of our baby early so I tried to focus on knowing the sex of the baby and the gender reveal!! Now fast forward to the two weeks being up. I got no call. I checked their website – results weren’t ready. I call my OB and they hadn’t heard anything either. 2 weeks of waiting was a lot so to not have the results yet was unacceptable! I called the company to get answers and after being transferred all around – I was told the results indeed were not back and they couldn’t tell me when they would be back! “It could be today – it could be a few more days! It’s just hard to tell for sure!” WHAT?!?! Do you realize I am a pregnant, worrier!! Like there is no way this is OK! I got off the phone and I was just done! I tried to get back to work and not completely lose it although it felt like an impossible task. After a few hours went by, I got a call from my OB and the nurse told me that the company faxed them paperwork back saying that the test was unable to be done because my blood sample was not sufficient and they needed me to go get my blood drawn again!! I was infuriated!!!!!!!!!!! My husband and I waited two weeks just to be told that the sample did not suffice!!!!!!! 2 weeks of worrying!! 2 weeks of wondering!! And you want me to go through that again!!! I told my husband what I had just found out and after a long discussion, we decided to not go through with it again! If it turned out our child did have a disability, we couldn’t stop it and we were going to love our child regardless so we weren’t going to put ourselves through that again! I felt better about not having to go through that again but that still left that unsettling feeling of the unknown. Was my baby going to be OK? At this point…. we wouldn’t know unless something happened to show up on an ultrasound or maybe not even til birth…….

PART TWO COMING SOON!

With Broken Beautifulness,

Kiesh💕