When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true

Since I’ve been away from social media for so long, which included the entirety of my pregnancy, and because of covid quarantining, I missed out on a lot of people seeing my pregnant belly grow. I thought it would be fun to share a bit of my pregnancy journey here and have it documented somewhere to reflect back on.

In late summer of 2019 we started trying to get pregnant and we desperately wanted to have a baby. We were tracking my cycle and were staying super on top of the calendar. We did not end up getting pregnant that first month of trying but we were so incredibly blessed to be able to get pregnant the second month. I truly did not think that getting my period that first month of trying would hit me as hard as it did. I knew that it was possible it could take a while for us to conceive. And yet even with all of my mental and emotional preparation, I still was completely heartbroken when I realized that my womb was empty that month. I sobbed and felt like I had done something wrong for my body to betray me. After only a month of trying. I could never try to understand how it feels to have a miscarriage or to lose your baby in any way at any stage, but now I can see a small glimpse of what those women must go through.

On October 4th, 2019 we found out we were going to be parents! I anxiously took a pregnancy test, I took it pretty much as soon as you possibly could. We decided that we wanted to experience the whole process together so I peed on the stick and then Brian and I waited around the kitchen for the next 3-5 minutes while it laid face down on the counter. Those 3-5 minutes were the longest of my life, I kept asking Brian if it was time yet to check it. Was there a person growing inside of me? Or did we need to keep trying?

We flipped it over together and could just barely make out that faint second line. I was baffled. So many emotions coursing through me at once. Obviously we were trying to get pregnant but the idea that there was a small being growing inside of me was challenging to wrap my brain around. I just kept asking Brian, “Wait, is this real?! We held each other and cried happy tears together. It’s one of my most special memories that we have shared as a couple. That feeling of knowing that you created this life together, it’s real and the promise of the most wonderfully exciting adventure you’ve ever embarked on out ahead of you.

It’s such a wonderfully exciting feeling to share such an enormous life altering secret between the two of you. But we knew that we couldn’t keep it under wraps for too terribly long. We always thought about how it would be so much fun to reveal that we were pregnant to our families in some exciting grand gesture but weren’t ever sure what it would look like. Well, we didn’t have to look too far this time! We found out we were pregnant on October 4th, went in for an OB appointment on October 9th to confirm the pregnancy and we had a week long trip to Disney World planned with my mom and my cousins that we left for exactly a week later, on the 16th. At my appointment we asked a laundry list of questions such as, “can I still go on rides and roller coasters at this stage in my pregnancy?” You know, those hard hitting questions.

We knew it was pretty darn early to be sharing this big news with people but my mentality has always been that if something terrible were to unfortunately happen, the people that we were sharing this news with were the people that I would feel comfortable coming to for support during that kind of life event. So for me personally, I saw no harm in being transparent with those that I am closest with. SO. We concocted up a plan to surprise my family and completely flabbergast them with our big news in Magic Kingdom, the most magical place on Earth.

In the weeks leading up to our trip I had went onto Etsy and ordered the tiniest little onesie that we would use for the big reveal. We waited and kept quiet until about halfway through our trip. We knew that we wanted to do it in front of the castle in Magic Kingdom so we waited it out until our park day there. It was so difficult to act completely normal the whole first part of the day, knowing that soon our little secret would come out and be big news and it would become so much more real once we shared it with everyone. Brian had been carrying the onesie around in his pocket the whole morning, waiting for the right moment to pull it out. We sat down on the curb of Main Street all lined up and waiting for the Festival of Fantasy parade to start. There was a Photopass castmember doing photo ops in the street while waiting for the parade to begin. My family took turns taking pictures and for a minute we contemplated jumping up to get our photo taken and pulling it out then, but one of my cousins had gone off for a drink and nobody was paying attention so we decided it wasn’t the right moment.

After the parade, we walked a little further down Main Street and saw that there was a Photopass spot going on directly in front of the castle. We just knew, this was it! This was the day we were all wearing our matching family shirts, so it was the perfect set up for an excuse to take a family photo. I remember whispering back and forth with Brian about our plan and how we were going to execute it. I also remember shaking anxiously about the excitement of sharing our news with everyone. We took a big group family photo and then Brian and I said that we wanted to snag a photo of just the two (I mean, three) of us.

We snapped a couple of pictures and then…Brian pulled the onesie out of his pocket and we each held onto a sleeve. At first, my family wasn’t paying much attention as they were chatting amongst themselves. But then my cousin Grace noticed and just simply stated, “Um, guys? You might want to pay attention. I think something is happening.”

And then a lot of startled sound effects and gasps. And everyone just started crying and asking, “Oh my god, are you serious???” All I have to say is god bless this photopass castmember!!! She had NO idea that this was going to happen and still managed to get some awesome shots for us to forever remember that super meaningful moment!

The sweet hat & onesie my mom got for us after we made the announcement & the original announcement onesie 😎

We spent the rest of our vacation celebrating and relishing in the excitement of our newest family member. It was beautiful and so meaningful as this was not only my favorite place but the place where Brian and I honeymooned and celebrated our new marriage and now we celebrated our new baby and everything came full circle.

When we came back home to Lincoln to pickup Cooper from my in-law’s house, we revealed the news to them with Grandma and Grandpa Disney World mugs. They didn’t catch on at first because we refer to them as Cooper’s grandma and grandpa so they though nothing of it 🙈 but once Brian told them, “Well Mikayla is 5 weeks pregnant", Rhonda shouted, “YOU ARE??!! OH MY GOSH.” And lots of tears and happy weeping all around!

Well we arrived back home to KC after our trip and had our 10 week sonogram scheduled 2 days later to see our little nugget for the first time. And wow. Even though it’s hard to make out too much during that first one, it made everything so incredibly real to see that little heartbeat fluttering on the screen for the first time. There was life inside of me. And we had created it together. I teared up and was awestruck at this tiny little soul that was forming inside of me.

Up until this point I had been feeling pretty good, no weird symptoms or morning sickness. Well, that all changed pretty quickly! A week or so after we got back from Disney and Halloween approached, I was so incredibly sick. I had terrible nausea and morning sickness for 2-3 weeks. I had to make sure I was continually eating to keep my blood sugar up because the moment it dipped I would get super nauseous and throw up. At the time I was working the front desk at the chiropractor’s office and it was becoming increasingly difficult to stand up there all day without throwing up or pretending to feel good when I could barely stand up without getting woozy. I did end up finding a few things that helped stave off the nausea temporarily: lemon drop candies, ginger chewing gum and these tiny little acupuncture needles on the backs of bandaids that the chiropractor I worked for applied to my wrists on a weekly basis. They were a life savor!

There were a couple of times that I didn’t come back to Lincoln with Brian for one of his drill weekends and I think my family was getting a little suspicious because I never missed a weekend coming back. But we played it off like I was just sick or not feeling well. Good thing Cooper was such a good, supportive buddy for me during those times when I was kicking it by myself! This guy was ready for his big brother duties!

The beginning of November we were signed up to run the Longview 10k here in KC and my nausea was subsiding a little bit but still hanging around. I was super nervous about running the race, as the weekend prior was the one that I couldn’t even go back to Lincoln for because I was so sick I slept on the bathroom floor for two nights. Well I just kept getting the little acupuncture needles on my wrists replaced because they seemed to be doing the trick and six days after the weekend of non-stop vomiting I ran that 10k alongside our buddy Brian Ebbitts! We ended up meeting up with some of our friends for breakfast later that morning after the race and revealing the big news to them all at I-HOP. Of course, they all thought we were joking because Brian has a long history of making one too many jokes over the years 😊

At the end of November we went down to Excelsior Springs, MO and spent a weekend at The Elms to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday. I was still feeling a little nauseous from time to time and I remember my in-law’s being so worried about me and constantly making sure I had access to food at any given time 😂 VIP treatment for the carrier of their first grandbaby!! We decided to get the genetic blood test done to find out the sex early but told our family that we weren’t finding out until our 20 week sonogram. We wanted to surprise them all and reveal the gender at Christmas. So little to anyone’s knowledge, I went and got my blood drawn for the genetic test the Friday that we left for our Excelsior Springs trip.

We went back to Lincoln that next weekend and got to tell our best friends that we were having a baby! Jenna was pregnant at the time with Marlow so we had babies all around!

Monday, December 2nd, after we returned from Lincoln, we got the call that our genetic test results were ready. I received the call at work and immediately called Brian to see if he could pick up the envelope on his way home from work. That was such a difficult day for me to get through! My mind was racing all day wondering what was folded into the contents of that one envelope.

We both got home from work and I had Brian tear open the envelope and read the results first because I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, I was so nervous. He started out by telling me that no genetic defects were detected which was a relief but of course I could only think about one thing.

“We’re having a boy!”

Brian tried to be as supportive and excited he could for me but I think he knew what was coming.

What came next was something that I was definitely not expecting. I completely broke down emotionally and couldn’t stop sobbing. I truly didn’t think that I had any sort of preference for if our baby was a boy or a girl. I thought that I would be happy and content either way. However, I think that deep down in the backs of our subconscious, Brian and I had both been fantasizing and envisioning our futures with a little girl. I come from three generations of girls on my side of the family, I just never thought about myself as having a son. This is so incredibly difficult for me to talk about at this point in my life right now, because in hindsight all of this seems absolutely ridiculous and I feel so overwhelmingly guilty for ever having had these feelings. I am so over the moon in love with my sweet Jude, I adore being his mom, a boy mom, and I would never ever change anything about our lives because I’m so incredibly happy. However, I do think it is super important to be transparent and honest and be open to talk about what I felt and went through because a lot of other people have went through the same feelings. It felt so taboo, every time I brought it up to somebody they would clam up and not know what to say. Weren’t you supposed to be so incredibly happy and excited that you were having a healthy baby? In all reality, in a perfect world, yes! I should have been and of course I was so happy that my baby was perfectly healthy! But my hormones and emotions were unbalanced and running rampant making me think and believe things that weren’t true.

Luckily, I had my best friend to talk to but I wish that more people spoke about their experiences with gender disappointment. I wish that when I was going through it back then that I had more resources available to grieve these ideas that I had created in my mind that I now had to let go of. Like envisioning Brian with our daughter and how good of a girl dad he would be. It took some time but eventually I came around mentally and emotionally and was able to be so genuinely excited about my little baby boy.

Mid December we attended Brian’s work Christmas party together at Union Station and we got to share our big news with a lot more people which was a ton of fun.

The time had finally come and we went back to Lincoln for Christmas! We were so excited to surprise all of our family (again) and tell them that they were going to have a grandson! We not only had that news to share but our grandparents still didn’t know we were pregnant so their Christmas gifts all tied into telling them the news! We gave our parents picture frames with our announcement photo inside that had Grandson embossed into the frame. It took them a few seconds but they caught on quick! 😂 Brian’s mom opened the frame and said, “Aww” commenting on the frame and then her expression turned on a dime and with her jaw gaping open she turned to us in shock and said, “I't’s a boy?!?!” You guys found out??? We thought it was going to be January!” Gotcha Rhonda 😜

We gave both of my grandparents their frames with the ultrasound picture inside and both of their reactions were priceless. My grandpa stared and stared and finally said, “What am I looking at? Some sort of cave?” Brian said, “I mean, yeah, Mikayla’s cave!” 🤣 They started freaking out and crying and hugging us as soon as they realized. We also gave my mom her Grandson frame and she said, “Oh nice!” We gave her a minute and she said, “Wait, it’s a boy??? How did you find out???” HA. Gotcha mom 😜 My grandma took the same amount of time starting at the frame trying to figure out what she was looking at. She said, “Well hold on a minute, I can’t tell what I’m looking at, it’s dark down here. What is that? Is it what I think? It’s a sonogram? Are you serious?? OH MY GOD I’M GONNA START CRYIN’” Ugh, keeping this secret for so long was totally worth it for these solid reactions!

We spent our time back in Lincoln celebrating with all of our family and getting more and more giddy at the idea of their new grandson coming in June!

Next up was Brian’s Christmas party for the guard. Another fun evening of sharing our news with Bran’s friends and coworkers!

At the end of January Brian and I went to Aruba together. My baby bump was just beginning to pop out and show and I spent the whole trip so obsessed with documenting it and rubbing it. We also took our first “family” photo where you could see Jude and I was so so excited about it 😜

I also spent the majority of this trip so unbelievably excited and on cloud 9 dreaming about seeing our little man for the first time (and reading baby books on the beach) because our 20 week sonogram was scheduled for two days after we returned home.

We returned home and headed to the doctor’s office two days later. After so much daydreaming we finally got to see our little man’s face clear as day. We always joke that he was still a little undercooked but still cute as a button! I got so teary watching him move around for us on the screen, he was really hamming it up! He even gave us a little wave at one point! Our sonogram tech had a little difficulty getting him to turn around because all we could see was his spine for a little bit but he must have heard us because he turned around and gave us a good show after that! She told us that he had really long fingers and was a super active little guy. And boy, could I believe it! I can’t remember exactly when I started feeling him moving around in there, but it was aggressive and constant. By the end of January he was moving around enough that I could see it from the outside and started filming videos of it. He would move so much that it would physically hurt or take the breath out of me. He would push himself super hard into my ribcage all the time and eventually, towards the end of my pregnancy, he ended up bruising my ribs. Which made sense because it hurt to breath in too deep and to sleep. As is the story with most pregnancies, he was the most active at night when I would lay down to go to sleep. Long story short, he was a VERY active little guy in there! Never stopped moving once he started.

Aaaaaand here he is! Our first look at Jude bug!

Seeing his little face for the first time was a dream. I started taking more bump pics and getting more and more excited to meet him💙

Lunch with my mom & grandpa back in Lincoln. I remember once again being SO proud of that tiny bump 🥲

In mid February we finally cleared out the furniture in Jude’s nursery and painted the walls gray. We still needed to paint the accent mountain wall but we wouldn’t end up doing that until about a month later.

Throughout the end of my pregnancy I continually made Brian take pictures of either just me or of the both of us and he so willingly and lovingly obliged lol. I think I was feeling a little sad about the fact that not many people were able to see me and my growing belly after quarantining started and not sharing my pregnancy with my loved ones kind of made me feel like it wasn’t happening so I just took loads of pictures to document every moment. I talk a little more about these feelings in my post about being pregnant in a pandemic which you can read here.

At the end of February, we headed back to Disney World for the Princess Half Marathon Weekend where we would run our 10k and half marathon together. I wrote all about this experience and running two races in one weekend pregnant right here! Check it out!

Here are all of the pics from that trip though where you can see the bump 🥰

On this trip I found Jude’s first Mickey that he still sleeps with to this day 💙

When we got back home it was finally time to finish Jude’s nursery and we spent a whole weekend painting the mountain range on the wall. Brian freehanded the outlines of the mountains based off a photo he found online and to this day I am so impressed and proud that the pulled it off as well as he did!

Around this time is when my sister-in-law sent out the invitations for my baby shower and I remember getting so excited imagining the scenario where all my loved ones were gathered together to celebrate the little life growing inside of me. It’s still difficult for me to reflect back on and I still feel really sad about that fact that the shower never got to happen. I am happy with our decision to cancel it because it took away a lot of my anxiety about keeping us all safe for the birth but it is still a sad memory to look back on.

In the meantime, my belly kept on growing!

And GROWING!

We had both of our parents down for Easter and had a great time all collectively sharing in the excitement of Baby Obe!

They say that animals can sense a fetus in the womb before you even know it’s there and this picture definitely shows that Cooper knew something was in there 🤣

We FINALLY finished up with Jude’s nursery after painting and got all of the furniture arranged and things hung on the walls. I absolutely love the end result and am so so happy with the neutral palate we choose and the theme! You can see my full post on Jude’s nursery here! Cooper and I would spend a lot of time in here together in the weeks leading up to Jude coming.

We had plans for Brian’s parents to come down to visit us the first week of May and they ended up bringing everything they were going to use to decorate for my shower, all of the gifts and food and set up a surprise shower for me at our house. It was so sweet and touching just to know that someone cared and was acknowledging that our experience was unconventional. They had all of the gifts shipped to their house and we filmed ourselves opening everything so that we could send the videos out to whoever got us the gift for them to see us open it. It was such a special memory and so much fun regardless of the fact that no guests were there. I did a small little post about the shower here!

Cooper was always hanging around really close to me, wondering what was going to happen next. He also really liked my body pillow. More than I did actually!

Towards the end of May I finally got Jude’s going home outfit picked out and Brian bought this entire coconut cream pie for me to eat by myself if that tells you anything about the 3rd trimester 🤣

This was Brian’s birthday, just a little over a week before we would meet our son!

My sister-in-law Chelsea embroidered us a bunch of burp clothes with the sweetest little details and sayings on them!

And here were the very last pictures we got of the bump! 38 weeks! My water ended up breaking a little over 24 hours after these photos were taken.

My pregnancy journey was definitely far from ordinary. And sometimes that makes me sad. But after all is said and done, I am actually very thankful that things worked the way they did and I in hindsight I can see God’s hands all over this experience. I learned about so much strength that I wouldn’t have had to dig deep down for otherwise. I learned about humility and that even though it’s completely okay to celebrate exciting things in life, sometimes the the celebration isn’t what is most important. And I learned so much about leaning into and trusting the Lord. Ultimately, He has our fate in his hands. Our paths are already paved by His plans for us. My trust in Him has deepened through this experience far more than I could ever put a price on. And I have no sadness or bitterness when I reflect on that and when I look upon Jude’s sweet face. It was entirely worth it and I’d do it all over again.