Time was getting closer and closer for us to welcome our baby girl! I was tired all of the time because I had reached the point of not being comfortable unless I was on the couch; it was extremely difficult to sleep at night – not to mention, I was using the bathroom every hour it seemed!🤦🏽‍♀️ Some relief came though because I had finally accepted the circumstances of everything (potential preeclampsia, gestational diabetes) and I made sure I was following the instructions of my doctors. I realized it wasn’t just up to God to do His job but for me to do mine as well! What was the point of me praying if I wasn’t going to change anything on my end! I had work to do too! Side note: How many of us have prayed about something and then sat back and did NO👏🏽THING👏🏽 but go back to, continue in, etc. in the same mess we just asked God to help us get out of!?🤦🏽‍♀️ Makes no sense! 🗣I’M TRYNA HELP SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE‼️

Anywho, in the midst of keeping my physical health in check – I was also working on keeping my spiritual health in check! I was sick of my faith being so up and down. I needed to get to the root of why sometimes my fear was bigger than my faith! Why was it so easy when the circumstances had an option to be unfavorable, my faith-o-meter went to “zero?” My husband and I did a Bible plan on YouVersion called “Winning The War Of Your Mind!” One of the best points was this: we cannot focus on behavior modification because it’ll only be temporary but we have to get to the root of the behavior! I realized I was focusing on showing what having faith in my situations looked like but I had never truly had faith in God working my situations out for me! I’d pray but there was a nagging voice in my head saying “He isn’t going to do it for you…. Because it’s you.” Am I the only one that heard that voice? That joint loud ain’t it?!😩 Oooooo it got real uncomfortable for me because I love God and I’m out here telling anyone who will listen and even some people who don’t, about what a wonder God is but then I’m not even believing Him to be a wonder in MY life!🤦🏽‍♀️ Somebody make it make sense!!! Okay, okay. (let me focus.) Now, God didn’t stop there. Once He let me truly see about my lack of faith, then we went to the next step and this put my entire life into perspective because it explained why it was so difficult to have faith when it comes to my own life….. y’all ready for this? It boiled down to one word: Rejection. When He revealed that to me, it literally blew my mind and brought tears to my eyes. That explained why it was so difficult to trust God with everything in my life: fear that I would always be rejected by God – no matter what I did – because of all of the rejection I had received from people – no matter what I did. Actually writing that statement, breaks my heart. The crazy part is this: I know in my heart that God won’t do me like people but my mind always said otherwise! At the time, I didn’t realize why my mind was the loudest voice – I know now but I’ll get into that in another post because it’s too good and it needs its own section!🤣

Anywho, the last trimester of my pregnancy was honestly amazing besides the extreme tiredness & being so limited in doing things. For the most part, I was feeling good and just ready to see my baby girl!! My blood pressure was perfect my entire pregnancy but all of a sudden, it started being really high! It wasn’t yet “dangerous/preeclampsia” high but high enough that my OB upped my dosage from one pill a day to now twice a day!!! I got a little nervous but just tried to keep trusting that everything was okay. My OB decided that at 38 weeks, if I didn’t go to into labor before then, he would induce me. I felt like we weren’t going to make it to 38 weeks! Our daughters head was in the birthing position. I was huge. She was coming soon. She HAD to come soon.😩🤣 So one day I’m home and I started feeling kind of weird. I thought maybe I was just imagining things but the feeling wouldn’t go away. I took my blood sugar and it was normal. Then I took my blood pressure and it was kinda high so I went and laid down to see if I started feeling better and I didn’t. I checked my blood pressure again and it was higher. I called my OBs office and was told to go to Labor & Delivery ASAP to get checked out. Omgosh. I let my job know I was logging out. I knew I wasn’t coming back home pregnant. I just felt it. It was too close to me being 38 weeks. This. Was. Happening. I called my husband. Thank God he only worked like 10 minutes away even though he got to me in what seemed like 2 minutes.🤣 I had already had my hospital bag packed so I grabbed it. I then just walked around my house imagining our daughter in every room I walked in. As I walked, I talked to God; just asking Him to settle my nerves because my BP being high could mean I was preeclamptic and I did not want to have a C-section! Chris got to me. We got all packed up in the car and headed to the hospital. By then, I was surprisingly a lot calmer than I expected I would be. I think it was a combination of ready to see my baby, sick of being pregnant and a little more trust in God that it would be OK. We got to the hospital and my BP was not coming down so of course they had to admit me. We let our immediate family know – ready or not – it’s happening sooner than expected! They got me to a room. Hooked me up to an IV. Here we go.

I went into the hospital on 07/23/2021 about 12:30 in the afternoon and on 07/24/2021 at 1:50 PM, Kristian Rae’Lynn Simon – two days before Mommy’s birthday – made her way into the world! Natural labor was one of the hardest, most painful experiences I’ve ever had but it was also the most beautiful, fulfilling and rewarding experience of my life! My husband didn’t leave my side; he, along with my mommy and mother in love helped me through the process! Still to this day it amazes me that I actually pushed this perfect little human out but I couldn’t have done it without them and God! God gave me the perfect combination of people to be my support team and man, I’m so very thankful!!!

I learned so much during my journey of pregnancy! There are things that I initially wished I could’ve done differently but ultimately, it happened, I can’t change it and I just want to make sure I’m striving to do better, so the next pregnancy, if we decide to try again, won’t have those obstacles! Since giving birth, I’ve dropped all of my pregnancy weight and I’ve loss 20 lbs of my pre pregnancy weight! My goal is to get off the blood pressure medication and to ultimately be mindful of what I’m putting into my body! Especially since I’m nursing our child! So even when I want to give up or not care, I remember – God has blessed me with what I’ve always wanted and it’s a dishonor to God to not take care of myself in order to be the best Mommy I can be! I can pray all day for healing from high blood pressure but what am I doing that shows I want healing also? Like I told y’all – why pray if you’re not going to do your part?! There’s work to be done! Go do it!!

I want to end this by speaking to the women who are dying to be a Mother and you feel like it can’t or won’t happen for you – rather the doctors tell you “No” or you haven’t been found by the man God has for you: DO NOT GIVE UP ON YOURSELF AND YOUR DREAM BUT INSTEAD GIVE IT TO GOD!!! I spent years worrying and wondering if I’d ever be a Mommy and trying to do it my own way and it put a lot of extra stress and problems in me that I could have avoided!!! When I gave it to God and surrendered to Him doing things His way – even though sometimes I didn’t always trust like I should – it worked out better than I could have ever imagined! So just think about how things can turn out if you really add some faith to it! Your wait will be a lot better!!! But whatever you do – DON’T STOP BELIEVING THAT IT WILL HAPPEN! I look at my daughter and I am still amazed that after all of the years I dreamed of being a Mommy and the doctor telling me “No” and every time the pregnancy test came back “negative” – GOD WAS JUST WAITING FOR HIS PERFECT TIME!!! And I can honestly say – His way is absolutely the best, most perfect way! I’m glad all of my “No’s” led to His perfect “Yes!” And if He did it for me – He can and will do it for you! Don’t be like I WAS though – TRUST HIM through the process!

With Beautiful Brokenness,

Kiesh💕

Heyyyyyyyyyyyy!! So no games to play – let’s pick up where we left off!

No genetics testing being done on our unborn child! That was the decision. That’s what we decided. Time to move forward, right? Wrong. That nagging feeling of the unknown is brutal. It’s so daunting. It’s so scary. And your mind never really stays on the possibility of everything working out just fine – nope! Well at least not with me. My mind goes for the worse possible scenario! And now that frame of mind was regarding my baby! My dream. God👏🏽Help👏🏽Me.👏🏽

Looking back – I tried my best to hold it together! I took my prenatal vitamins. I prayed. I talked to my husband about every emotion I felt. I ate good food. I cried when I felt it. I wrote in my pregnancy journal. I read my devos. I read mommy to be blogs. But my mind was always in one place: “what if?” And then on top of all this, I felt the pressure of making sure my “wifely duties” were in order and that I was “on track” in my relationship with God! If you haven’t gotten the gist of it by now – I have had a battle with trying to be perfect in every aspect of my life and that battle within myself causes me to weigh myself down with unrealistic expectations. Everyday my husband made sure I was well taken care of and made sure to let me know there was nothing for me to do except carry our baby and just be but just being wasn’t something that I was used to. Anyone so used to taking care of everything by yourself that being taken care of is so weird it makes you uncomfortable? 🙋🏽‍♀️ My husband literally had to put his foot down and let me know “SIT👏🏽YO👏🏽BUTT👏🏽DOWN‼️👏🏽” And then when it came to my relationship with God: I was so sick and exhausted most of the time. I couldn’t read and pray with the same energy that I did before and it bothered me really bad! I felt so disconnected from Him. I know that was just a trick from the enemy but I was really feeling a way that I couldn’t give more time, energy and effort in serving God! I wanted to read for hours without feeling like I was going to vomit or talk to Him without falling asleep mid sentence because I was so tired. I felt like I was neglecting Him. I felt like He was a million miles away. Of course He would understand that in my heart, He was still my number one but Him understanding wasn’t enough for me so I was feeling super heavy in my heart and nothing I did would shake it!

As the pregnancy continued, my vitals seemed to be holding up really well and I wasn’t gaining weight uncontrollably, thankfully! I had stopped worrying so much about if my baby, who we had now discovered was a GIRL, had a disability or not since nothing had been seen on the ultrasounds! There was slight worry but for the most part since nothing was SEEN (🤦🏽‍♀️), I was a little more confident!! Y’all saw that “SEEN,” right??? Lawd. Why was it so hard to just trust the word God had given me that our child was OK? Not because of what I saw but because of what God said?! Believe me y’all – I am working to do better at remembering in these moments that GOD HAS NOT AND CANNOT AND WILL NOT FAIL‼️ So that way I don’t have to go through all of this! Anywho, I was feeling pretty good besides the exhaustion and it had come time for me to take the test to see if I had gestational diabetes! Ugh! Every friend I had that had kids told me about this and how terrible it is because of the drink we have to drink! On top of that – you have to wait for like an hour after you drink it to have your blood drawn and in the midst of COVID, that was not OK!!

PLOT TWIST: My husband and I found out that we had COVID. I mean, really?! 🗣COME ON‼️ Covid during pregnancy was extremely difficult because they can’t really give you anything to soften the symptoms in order to keep the baby safe. I could just take basic cough syrup and suck on cough drops which were no match for what was happening because I had the worse cough and my body was sore from all of the coughing! I had to eat and keep hydrated as much as possible. Which was extremely hard because I’m a person that when I’m sick, I don’t want to do anything. Just give me medicine and let me sleep but it wasn’t just about me but our baby girl. Plus my husband was sick too and his symptoms were way worse than mine so I had to push through even more to help take care of him. All I kept thinking about was my husband and my daughter. No matter what, they had to be alright.😭🙏🏽

After the longest two weeks 🗣OF MY LIFE: we were feeling better & out of quarantine! THANKS TO GOD WHO BROUGHT US THROUGH‼️ We never wanted for anything and even though we were off work, God made ways to keep us afloat! Now it was finally time to take the test to see about the diabetes. The whole time I was thinking – I cannot have gestational diabetes. There is just no way it’s going to happen. I was already feeling like I was dealing with so much and I was feeling as though I was failing my child and stressing my husband out because whatever is going on with me, affects our baby and who wants to keep having conversations about what can be possibly be wrong? Of course my husband NEVER made me feel this way. He was THE most supportive, loving person someone could have in their life but that nagging feeling of having everything perfect kept my mind in that thought process. (SMH FOREVUHHHHHH!!!) Anywho, I got my results back and my blood sugars came back really high so that meant I had to confirm if I had gestational diabetes or not, I had to take the 3 hour test – drink more of the nasty crap and sit in the office for 3 hours while they took my blood every hour. Thankfully, I had awesome nurses and they had me a nice room with a recliner so I was able to nap and read while I waited so it made the process a lot better; however, at the end of the day, I was still diagnosed with gestational diabetes and it got REAL!!! Our baby girl was about 2 weeks ahead of her growth schedule because of my diagnosis and if my blood sugars were not kept under control, it could make things a lot harder for me and the baby during the pregnancy and could result in a C-section versus a vaginal delivery and could even result in our daughter being born having problems with her body processing insulin as well. When the nurse and doctors explained everything to me – although some of their deliveries weren’t the best, I had never felt more like a mamma bear than in those moments. All I kept thinking is, my daughter really needs me to get myself together so she can have the best chance at life available. I could not allow my health to harm her in anyway. I had to change my diet. Drastically.

I WAS HUNGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!! I was on a low carb diet, checking my blood sugars and taking insulin 4 times a day. This was different. This was exhausting. This was a lot. Every time I wanted to give up or not do something, I thought about my baby! I was now going to two different doctors once a week: my OB on Tuesday’s for NSTs and the Maternity office at the hospital for an NST & ultrasound. At 28 weeks. I still felt like I had a long way to go and having all this new stuff was going to make it feel even longer but I just cared about doing whatever I had to do to ensure my daughter and I came through the rest of this pregnancy as safely as possible. So I stuck to my diet and checked my blood sugars and went to the appointments with no complaining and things started to get better. I started losing weight and my baby’s growth rate slowed down to where she was on track for her age in the womb.

Another thing happened: I began to really realize how much I allowed the circumstances to mess with me during my pregnancy and how there was a lot of work that needed to be done within me spiritually. I know God but I started wondering, why is it so easy for me to forget what He has done when life gets messy? It came to me in watching a local preachers sermon: My trust in God is still limited! Ugh! I hate the sound of that but I realized that is exactly where I am. It’s hard to admit it but what have I always said: SELF HONESTY IS THE BEST HONESTY‼️ I shall get free! Yes, God has brought me a long way but I still have so much work to do! Let me let y’all in on a little secret I found out: IF YOU ARE NOT DEAD, GOD IS NOT DONE‼️ Don’t let fear of not looking like you “have it together” keep you from being honest with yourself and getting free!! So yes, I realized that while God has done some amazing work in me and I trust Him more than I did, I still need to learn to trust Him no matter the circumstances!! Especially with what was right around the corner….

Until part 3!

With Broken Beautifulness,

Kiesh💕

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💕