bumpdate: 24 weeks and showing

I got called out for the first time two weeks ago. I walked into the Trump tower to start shooting a bride getting ready for her wedding, and a very smiley bellhop had to give me access to the elevators. While we were waiting in awkward silence for the next available lift, he said "are you expecting eh bebi?" in a darling Eastern European accent. It was the first time a stranger has brought up my pregnancy and I was surprised. 

"Yes I am", I said.
"Oh (smile smile) congratulations".
"Thank you!"

And then I stepped into the elevator and when the doors closed, took a look at myself and realized that it really was obvious, even under my flowy black dress.

I really relished the 22 weeks I had of pregnancy anonymity before this. I had a secret and no one knew. Even when I had the awkward pudge that looked to be perhaps a pregnancy and perhaps not, it didn't bother me because I knew what was happening with my body. I could show up to a 12-hour wedding with not a hint of weakness and smile through exhaustion and nausea and hide my face behind my camera and get no questions about how I was feeling, which, in a professional setting, I always tend to believe actually means "are you sure you can handle this?".

It's not a very big deal, I'm just aware that I've jumped categories in the world from "lady" to "pregnant lady". I try not to feel judgement as I step outside of Starbucks with my hot drink and notice a few older women whose eyes are on my belly. "It's decaf, I promise!", I want to tell them, then wonder why I care.

In the last two weeks since the bellhop started it all, I've gotten lots of (positive) comments from those who know me about my changing shape. I think most people feel an obligation to voice the fact that they notice the change, lest it seem like they don't care. If I were to be completely honest, this part just makes me uncomfortable and squirmy. I feel exposed. BUT-- I know that people are kind and happy for us. Their hearts get warm at the thought of us having a baby and they're just trying to express that, however it happens to come out of their mouths. So when my instinct is to bristle at the slightest mention of my girth, I try to resist and instead thank them genuinely. The only comment I've really liked came from a woman who saw me for the first time in a while and said: "Oh Bethany! You look so healthy!". I really loved hearing that.

So far no one (outside of family) has reached out and touched my belly without invitation. I'm not sure what I'll do when that happens. I just don't like the thought of it at all.

61 years

I love this picture that Tim took of my grandparents this summer. Sitting together, waiting together. 

Doris and Bill Brown, married 61 years. 

on the job. together.

I never thought I'd be the type of person who could work with my spouse. When Tim first broached the idea of me joining him in his business, the idea was intimidating. I told him I wouldn't do it.

There were lots of factors playing into the situation. One of us had to move to be near the other, and we decided together that it would be in the eventual best interest of both of us for him to not give up or displace his business (we knew we were probably getting married). That meant I had to quit my job and move to Chicago. Coincidentally, all this happened during his biggest year yet in his wedding photography business, and he needed help. All signs pointed toward me working with him, but I was resistant.

In the world of wedding photography, it's pretty common for couples to work together. But I wasn't in that world yet. It wasn't the idea of working with him that scared me, it was the idea of working for him. I loved boundaries and independence and earning my own wage and dropping it in my own bank account.  I also loved catching my own mistakes early and fixing them before anyone else saw my error. I knew I would have a lot to learn and I would be putting myself on really shaky ground by having my boyfriend be my boss and letting him teach me a new trade and give me a paycheck. It didn't sound safe. 

As we made plans for my move, I started applying for lots of jobs. Looking back, I was ultimately acting on distrust for Tim and pride in myself and fear of failure as a photographer. I wasn't getting any job offers, and Tim was patient and intent on proving himself to be trustworthy. He kept letting me know that he wanted me to be happy in whatever job I chose to do, but his offer stood open in case I wanted to work with him.

Then he asked me to marry him. There's a lot packed into that question. It's really a question of many questions, a whole book of questions, and one of them is: "will you trust me to take care of you?". Also; "will you allow me to provide for you?". And I said yes to him, so some strongholds that I needed to survive being single had to fall away. I agreed to work with him.

So, Tim works from home five days a week. This I knew. This meant that we would be together all the time. Forty plus hours per week of time together spent on work alone, not to mention free time and wedding planning time and dating-each-other time. We'd never even lived in the same city at that point. It was going to be a steep transition, and I was afraid of conflict. But we moved forward. I cried tears of loss as we drove away from Kansas City with my life packed in my car, and cheered for the joy of a new beginning when we saw the Chicago skyline. The next day, we started working together.

He handed over client communications to me first, and I mean really handed it over and let me do it all without looking over my shoulder. For a girl who majored in Interpersonal and Public Communications, and who was also planning her own wedding, I couldn't have asked for a more well-suited job than emailing with brides to put them at ease about our part of their wedding day. I loved the work, Tim had hated that part, and suddenly he had about 20 more hours per week to work on editing pictures. I could see the immediate difference I was making in improving his workflow and stress level, and I loved it.

And then he put his cameras in my hands. I didn't even know how to use them (I had plenty of experience being an amateur with my own DSLR, but none with his professional grade equipment) but the clients were only paying for Tim's services, so whatever I added to their wedding pictures was gravy and it was a low-pressure environment to learn. It was kind of like getting thrown in the deep end of the pool with a couple of arm floaties. On our way to our second wedding together, Tim told me that he would usually get that pitted feeling in his stomach right before every wedding, but with me by his side he wasn't nervous anymore. I started to realize that he wasn't measuring the support I brought to him from a purely monetary perspective like I was.

I shot twenty weddings with him that first season, all for free to the clients so I could learn all that I needed before we added my second-shooting services to his new contracts. I learned so much during that time and gained a whole new confidence in myself as a worker in a new field. I started calling myself a photographer. This didn't feel like dependence, that icky word I feared as a single person. It felt like partnership. 

We've been at this for over a year now, closing in on our second wedding season together, and we've gotten really good at being a team. I can tell when he's under pressure and I know how to help him. He can tell when I'm struggling with a new technical situation and he always has the answer. 

And we have so much fun. If I had any idea how much fun this job would be, I never would have resisted in the first place. This is a no alarm clock job. We get to attend dance parties every week, we see people at their very best and happiest (...usually). Even when it's hard, it's still fun. We work until we're so tired it's hard to make it up the stairs at night, but we like working hard and we like working a lot.

We gets lots of different reactions when we tell people we work together, and they always make us smile. We know we've got a unique dynamic going on here, but it's perfect for us and if we wanted to change it, we would. 

It takes humility and gentleness to make this work relationship work. All that we do on the job is on display to each other and that can be hard, because we can't hide our mistakes when we make them. I get grumpy when I get tired, and he gets grumpy when he gets hungry, and being tired and hungry is part of almost every wedding day, so we get stretched and have to work not to hurt each other's feelings, and then be quick to apologize when we do.

But as long we keep putting our client's and each other's needs ahead of our own, working together doesn't cost our relationship anything, it only adds to it. All the time we get to spend together--have to spend together--is a good thing. My fears of not being able to survive without copious amounts of alone time (classic introvert here) evaporated somewhere along the way of settling into our marriage and work arrangement. 

And some people still think I quit my old job and didn't pick up another "real one". And that's okay. I am a stay-at-home wife just as much as Tim is a stay-at-home husband. We're just usually doing the above all day long at our stay-at-home job.
Except when we're busy trespassing and such :)

One year!

Today is our one year anniversary! We're not really sure how to celebrate an anniversary because we've never had one before. And we ate the top layer of our wedding cake the last time we were down in Florida visiting my parents. We needed dessert on a particular night and I couldn't exactly pack a frozen layer of cake in my suitcase back to Chicago, so you know.

So far today I've gotten a haircut. I bonded with a new stylist named George (or Georgie?) whom I might call my own from now on because I love my new hair and he's very kind and gave me a hug on my way out and called me sweetie. It's so great to have someone you trust cut your hair, no? Was I supposed to be focusing on my anniversary?

Anyways, then I stopped by Trader Joe's on my way home and bought Tim all his favorite treats. Meaty lasagna (I don't make lasagna from scratch. takes too long), frozen pizza, chocolate raspberry candies, and those mochi Japanese ice cream things that I don't like. While I was standing in the frozen aisle, my dad called and sang me the anniversary song. It's an original. 

I got some excitement and kisses out of my guy when I got home because I have hot new hair and his favorite treats. Happy anniversary, baby. Then we started working and now the day is escaping so we need to go out and do something celebratory. Oh, and we ordered our crib! Super great.

I couldn't resist posting some wedding pictures because I'm reminiscing a lot today. Our wedding is a beautiful, beautiful memory. 

 It's funny though, the ritual and celebration we performed one year ago today in front of 80 people was nothing compared to being launched into the work and joy of marriage that we've been privately experiencing since then. It's so very, very good. This year has seen us wrapped in a cocoon of safe and gentle transition into marriage. We are better at loving each other now than we were a year ago. I thought he was amazing when I married him, but he's so much better than what I was aware of even then. Marriage too. It gets a bad wrap a lot and I was scared of it a little, but marriage can be a profoundly good thing and I'm very glad I'm signed up for life. I want many more years with my Frenchman.

ultrasound recap. and all those feelings.

So, I was pretty nervous about the ultrasound.

We opted out of all genetic testing leading up to now (a decision I'm still happy we made), so this was the big important first ever examination our baby was going to have by the medical world. We'd already decided to wait to find out the gender until the birth, so I didn't have that excitement to distract me from the potential for discovering problems. I was so nervous about it that I didn't even consider what the experience of seeing my baby move around on the screen would be like for me.

Let me backtrack here and also share that I had been waiting to have an emotional attachment response to my baby. That sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I thought that when I found out I was pregnant, I would feel this huge sense of love for the child I'm carrying...and I didn't. It was more like "I'm carrying a child? Where is it? My body looks the same. I feel the same." And then when I did start to feel the physical effects of pregnancy, they were not good. They made me cranky, tired, doubting of my physical abilities to do my normal routine, and generally pretty sick.

So then I thought "when we hear the heartbeat at 11 weeks, then I'll fall in love." And again, I didn't. It was nice and reassuring to know the baby was still alive inside me. It was a cute sound and it made me happy. But I didn't fall in love that day, and I was really hoping I would.

I started to doubt that I would have any emotional attachment until the birth. It was odd and I felt a bit defective, because I hear other women talk about how they loved their unborn babies from the moment they found out they had conceived, and I always thought I would be like those women. I've always wanted to be pregnant and really looked forward to this whole process, but I was having a hard time really believing there was an actual living human inside me. It felt a lot more like a persistent stomach virus than a baby.

I hit a wall at 17 weeks and got sad and discouraged. I had expected morning sickness to end with the first trimester, and it didn't at all. With each day that I spent hunched over my vomit pail, missing out on seeing people and being social, completely bored with laying on my left side but unable to find comfort in any other position, I started to hate being pregnant and wondered why I signed up for this. This lasted for about 3 weeks.

On the night before the ultrasound, full of anxiety, I laid in bed and started praying. I have a lot of friends who are hurting right now, specifically because they or someone they love is really sick. I know that God's love for my baby and everyone else is not dependent on whether He keeps us from going through trials, and I confessed that I was scared of Him and what He might decide to put us through. It was a pretty honest and raw place I was in. I had no words articulated, except "Jesus, please..."

And then--right then--an answer that I needed but wasn't asking for at the moment came: "You do love this baby."
What? Yes! Of course I did! Here I was begging for mercy on behalf of my little one, wanting so badly for him or her to be born strong and healthy with every chance to achieve anything they want in life, and it was my own proof to myself that I cared. That I was starting to become a real mother with all the motherly feelings and deep, deep love for the tiniest details about my baby's life. It wasn't a promise that everything would be alright and we would get a good report on the baby's health the next day, but my growing confidence in myself to have the love I need to face any hardships that may come definitely helped me walk into the office the next day with more peace than I had the night before.

Our ultrasound tech was less than friendly. She was a bit gruff at the beginning of the appointment and I tried to soften her and win her over with complementing her ultrasound skills. "I can't believe you know what you're looking at!" It sort of worked?
"Your baby is breech."
Thanks. I'm sure the next 20 weeks will allow for plenty of time for the baby to flip around once or twice. 
"Head circumference looks good."
"Really?! Because we have a family history of anencephaly so I was worried..."
"The head looks really good."
"...thank you."

And then, she moved on to the heart. That's about when I lost my composure and tears slipped down onto exam table paper under my head. I could see four perfect little chambers pumping regular and strong. 145 beats per minute.
"Heart looks good."

Then, a perfect strand of pearls arched down the baby's back. Moving in line with the kicks I was feeling.
"Spine looks good."
We have a family history of spina bifida too. More worries erased.

Two feet, two hands. A little birdcage of tiny ribs. A stomach, a diaphragm, and two kidneys. We got to see a perfect little skeleton wiggling around on the screen. I squeezed Tim's hand with each new relief. The reality of this baby's physical body and presence in our lives finally hit me in the deepest way. I was so happy.

wearing clothes while pregnant

It's the night before our 20 week ultrasound, and because I need a distraction from my natural tendency toward worry and pessimism, here's some thoughts about wearing clothes while pregnant.

I used to think that wearing maternity clothes would be this cool rite of passage thing, but as soon as I started to need them and look around on websites at maternity clothes, I realized that it wasn't going to be as fun as I'd imagined. It seems like popular clothing brands water down style and upcharge a lot when it comes to maternity clothes, and their maternity departments are really small so there's not a lot of options.

For instance, Gap Maternity is still trying to sell me this skirt; the acid washed split denim number from 2002.

Not only that, where are these mysterious maternity clothes that are advertised online? They're not in the stores. Only a small number of brands actually have maternity sections in-store,  you usually have to order online to get the clothes, which is far less than ideal when your body is changing sizes in different places. I hate ordering clothes online and then sending them back when they don't work.

I got discouraged at first and imagined myself having to adopt a very matronly uniform for this next season of life. What do women do when they need an entire replacement wardrobe for the 5 months that they can't wear their old clothes? Clothes can be so expensive, and the thought of spending hundreds on a temporary fix that I didn't even really like...I didn't like.

 Then I found a very unlikely ally in my search to wear clothes while pregnant and still feel like my old self: Forever 21.

I normally hate shopping there because the stores are so chaotic, the clothes so temporary, and everything is so full of Lycra. But, as it turns out, temporary, cheap stretchy clothes are kind of essential to dressing a pregnant body. I scored big and I learned a few things.

First: I needed camis. This right here is a cami that costs two dollars and eighty cents.

All I needed was a larger size than usual to give me some room to grow. I purchased seven of these in the happy colors below and I've worn them practically every day this summer. In the fall and winter I'll layer them and add a cardigan and scarf. 

Second; I learned that anything that gives my belly the freedom to expand counts as maternity friendly. This stretchy striped dress was around $8 and I can add leggings to it in the fall.

I needed a new black dress to wear to shoot weddings and I didn't know how I was going to get around the typical defined waistline that most dresses have.  My third lesson was that any dress with a removable belt lets me pick my own waist definition spot. I got this dress for around $22 in a larger size and I just move the belt up over the belly, closer to my ribs and it looks darling. It even hides the bump a lot right now, which I like for work situations because it takes the focus off of me being pregnant.

And then I applied the same principle for casual dresses. Plenty of room for the bump in these loose-fitting numbers and the belt lets me choose where to show a waistline.

I also picked up some leggings for $5 each so I can adapt these looks to colder weather. I think I spent around $80 to get all this stuff, plus a cardigan. I feel so much better now that I can wear clothes that I actually like!

I did have to make the fateful trip to Motherhood Maternity to get some maternity jeans. There's just no other way around the jeans issue (besides the hair tie looped through the button hole trick, which I've taken to the limit). I don't love them, but they work. Also; bras. I got a gentle scolding from my midwife for wearing underwire ("your body needs to be free to change and expand!") so I've switched to sports bras for now because underwire bras are my former favorite and that's all I have.

Anyone else have any tips for me?? I haven't reached the 3rd trimester yet and I have a feeling that's going to be a whole new world of dressing girth. Eep!

a post about AC units

This summer has been rough on our love affair with our apartment. Remember our perfect apartment?

When we were deciding to live here, I spent not one second contemplating the fact that it didn't have central air. It just didn't occur to me. It was winter, and this place had beautiful light pouring in from huge windows in every room and offered free radiator heat. Free heat! In Chicago! We were going to save thousands.

And we probably did. From February to May, life here was so comfortable and our monthly bills are a fraction of what we used to pay to heat and cool a townhouse. But then, summer set in early and weather records starting getting broken with the heat. Right around the same time, I started to get sick. At 5 weeks pregnant, I was nauseated and depleted of energy and started getting very sensitive to temperature and odor, and then we had a couple of 100 degree days.

It was a bad mix.

We went out and bought an air conditioning unit, and it was $150, which is fine for one AC unit, but we weren't going to buy any more at that price. Tim installed it in our bedroom and for the whole month of June, I spent my days and nights in that room working on my laptop and napping and vomiting and generally being pregnant. Tim toughed it out in the office (where we used to spend all of our working hours together) until he could stand it no longer and bought another $150 AC unit to give him some relief. Those two little units allowed us to work and sleep, but didn't improve much else at home. Call me cheap, but I wasn't willing to spend any more than $300 on improving a situation in an an apartment that we might not even live in next year. It would have cost us another $600 to outfit the rest of the rooms in our apartment with new AC units, and that was neither appealing nor in the budget.

Leaving the protective igloo of our air conditioned bedroom to run an errand or even go to the bathroom brought on a wave of heat, which brought on a wave of nausea, and I was so miserable. Those beautiful big windows in every room ushered in the full heat of the sun, and being on the top floor only increased the temperature as heat wafted up through the floorboards. Turning on the oven to cook dinner brought the kitchen to over 110 degrees, so we ate sandwiches. I left windows open to try to catch a breeze, and with it came extra dust that coated the floors. By the end of July, I was talking about moving out.

I was so mad at the situation. How could my life be made so difficult by the absence of one modern invention? Tim and I both grew up without air conditioning (albeit, in a cooler climate) and we survived. I hated the feeling that buying more really expensive stuff would make me happy, and had resentment that being pregnant was turning an irritating situation into an unbearable one just because of hormones and the fact that my body was changing outside of my control and couldn't take the heat. The absolute worst part of all this, the part that made it all plainly sad and unlivable, was that when Tim would reach for a hug, I couldn't return the affection without an inward grimace. He's just a big, warm man, and I was forever overheated and pukey.

And then last week, salvation came. We saw our downstairs neighbors packing up and moving out. Soon their kitchen window, which we had to walk by in order to get to our car, was bare and displayed a totally empty apartment save for 4 AC units grouped on the tile floor. We acted immediately by leaving a note on their door asking if we could PLEASE buy those units from them? And they called back and said yes, we could have all four for $100.

I don't have a moral to this story. Life in my home is livable and enjoyable again, and it's because of stuff. I don't know where we'll put them in the winter when we need to seal our windows again, and I don't know if we'll be able to recuperate any of the money we spent on these when we eventually move out, but I can cook a meal in my oven and eat at the kitchen table with my husband and hug him for a long time without having to pull away. So.