Week 5 ~ Telling Your Family the News!

Baby's now the size of an appleseed!

Your baby, which doesn't look like much more than a tadpole right now, is actually starting to form major organs (heart, kidney, liver, stomach) and systems (nervous, circulatory, digestive). Baby's presence in your uterus triggers production of HCG (the hormone detected by pregnancy tests), which triggers the production of other hormones like estrogen and progesterone, which triggers all those great symptoms you've probably been noticing! (credit-www.thebump.com)

This was an exciting week for us (hubbie and me) as we had been waiting to tell our children about my pregnancy.  I had swagged "ideas for telling your children about pregnancy" and came up with several that were fun and interesting, but not quite fitting for telling our young children.  It just so happened that it was almost our youngest son's 2nd birthday who had not yet received the honor of the title "Big Brother."  So we decided to write on his cake "Happy Birthday Big Brother Nathan" hoping that someone would figure it out (my parents didn't know yet either).  After we sang to him and waited a few seconds, we realized that no one got it.  So i told my oldest son to read the cake outloud, then one-by-one, they realized what it meant and the cheers of excitment and joy started ringing.  It was priceless!  We had been hoping to become pregnant for almost 6 months by this point and since the children weren't expecting it anymore, they were truly surprised.  It is a moment in time, etched in my memory forever, and probably their's too!  I also had saved an apple seed earlier in the week and was able to pull it out and show the kids exactely how big our baby was right then.  They loved knowing the size of the baby by relating the size to an everyday food object.  All week long i heard, "How big is the baby?  Oh yeah, the size of an apple seed!" 

On a side note, i know that many people like to wait to "tell" friends and family until the window of miscarriage is past around 12 weeks.  Over the past 11 years I have experienced 8 pregnancies, meaning that I have lost 2 babies to miscarriage.  My experience was that since we didn't tell anyone, it meant that we (mainly I) had to go through it all alone.  Miscarriage is hard, but its even harder when you don't have the support and love of family and friends to help you through it.  I recently had the priviledge of helping a sweet friend deliver her miscarried baby at 16 weeks (gestation about 10 weeks).  While these kinds of deliveries are so hard for the grieving family, the Lord showed me such a beautiful picture of the sanctity of life, at any stage, and the importance of support.  Although this tiny baby was only about 1 inch long, we could see the hands and feet clearly and make out all of the parts of the body develeloped at that point and he/she was beautifully encased in a thick, strong placenta.  I am so thankful to have been able to serve my friend during this very hard time in her life and appreciate her willingness to let me be there to help her through it.