Kimber's Navy Family

My husband walked around the bed this morning to kiss me good-bye before heading off to work. "How did you sleep?" he asks. He asks me that. 32 weeks pregnant with our 5th kid (6th pregnancy). How did I sleep? I had heartburn. I woke up a little after midnight and thought I would puke. I had Braxton Hicks. I felt like I needed my inhaler every time I rolled over. And forget about finding a comfortable sleeping position when your hips slide out of place every time you lay on one side too long. Lately I've been doing a lot of pregnancy grumbling. Like a lot of people, I hate being pregnant. The waddling. The huffing and puffing while doing small tasks. Braxton Hicks while trying to load and unload children from school pick up and drop off. The aches, pains, discomfort, irritable uterus, post-partum, all of that. It is all so frustrating. Of course there are amazing things about pregnancy. I love the excitement of seeing two pink lines when all I've been seeing is ne...

I was reading some blog posts recently and they were discussing how we as parents should be more vocal about our miscarriages and open about whether or not we are trying to conceive. There were a lot of points in these posts that I agree with-- how isolating miscarriages can be, how heartbreaking a negative pregnancy test feels, the emptiness and longing as you pass your due date without a baby in your arms. But some of the other points made me think about my own experiences with miscarriages and my current pregnancy. I think I have finally sorted out my thoughts into a blog post... So, first of all, I'd like to clarify that we do not struggle with infertility; my fertility is normal. When I talk about trying to conceive, all of this is within a year of trying to conceive without fertility treatments. I am adding that only because I am not trying to misrepresent myself or to represent a journey that I have never taken. I have many friends that struggle/have struggled wi...

"We are pulling up one more chair to the table... Baby #5 due June 2016!" The last time I wrote a blog post was on November 1st, 2015.... so Happy New Year! What's been going on over here with me?! Well, first of all, we are expecting again! Baby #5 is due June 2016. We are thrilled. Of course we are hoping that this one is a girl. A friend of mine with four boys recently gave birth to her fifth and it was a girl. I feel like there is *hope* but I also feel that after delivering 4 boys, it is a bit of a long shot. Who knows. Fingers crossed, right? I'm 16 weeks right now so we should find out in the next 2-4 weeks what the gender is of baby #5. I think the biggest reason I haven't blogged in so long is that this pregnancy was off to a really rocky start and it sent me into a bit of a depression. Initially the pregnancy didn't look viable. The ultrasounds didn't look good and we weren't given much hope. In fact, they ran bloodwork to rule out ...

    Motherhood is challenging to navigate. There is so much out there on, well, everything.   "You must buy this!"   "If you want your baby to grow up feeling loved, do this..." "Remember to always speak this way." "It's the little things that count." Even on this blog I talk about how I do things and about the products that I have liked with our boys. But that's what they are: things that I liked. That doesn't mean that you will like them or that you should parent how I do. It doesn't even mean that you should do things how I do. I'm talking about things that work for me and my family. Why? Because I like reading about how other people do things. I like talking to other people and finding out about how they solve some of the more difficult challenges of motherhood, how they fix the small and big stuff. I like hearing other people's family schedules. I like knowing that I am not the only one ...

Another year, another baby! We are excited to announce I'm 14 weeks pregnant, due July 1st, 2014. We kept the news under wraps during the first trimester because of my history with miscarriages. This is my 5th pregnancy and my 3rd time making it past 13 weeks. My first pregnancy miscarried shortly after 12 weeks. My fourth pregnancy showed issues on the first ultrasound, at 7 weeks, but wasn't declared a miscarriage until 10 weeks. I had a D&C for both my first and fourth pregnancies during my 12th week. I've definitely felt nervous throughout the first trimester with this pregnancy. We have wanted another baby so badly and that last miscarriage was very hard for me to handle (read " Holiday worries "). We've also kept this pregnancy secret from our children until this past weekend. With my fourth pregnancy, we told our oldest from the beginning and even brought him with us to our first ultrasound. He was heartbroken when we told him that the baby w...

It's Christmas Eve and I'm loving it. I'm cooking our Christmas Eve feast right now, where we celebrate Jesus' birthday and spend time together as a family, eating cookies, watching holiday movies, eating more sweets, and playing games. I love this time of year and I'm loving it this year, being home for Christmas and embarking on our own family traditions. With all that said, I'm feeling a little down. I keep getting these emails from baby sites (that I keep unsubscribed from!) about the progress of our 4-month old baby, the baby that was never born. Our baby would be 4 or 5-months now (since I've never made it to full term). We would be getting past the constant feeding newborn stage and into the fun interaction stage. We would (most likely) be done having children. We would have a nursery set up in this house. We would be celebrating Baby's first Christmas. Perhaps I'm just looking on Facebook at my friends' pictures of their babies' fir...

So I'm trying my first "link up" and I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, so please bear with me. I discovered this blog, " Eights on the Move ," and she does a Military Monday topic where people link their blogs up to hers and answer the questions posted on the topic. This week's topic is about Family Planning. Here is the link to her blog to see what other people posted, " Military Monday: Family Planning ." Being a military family influences many aspects of your life. For instance, you never know if your husband will actually be present for your plans. Some plans are fine, like a family movie night that you really wanted to have-- easy enough to cancel or reschedule. Some are frustrating, like family pictures with a professional photographer ("Um, can you Photoshop my husband in...?"). Some are emotional, like your wedding; my husband didn't tell me at the time of our wedding that he did not know until a couple days ...

Here is my follow-up post on my partial molar pregnancy. All in all, I had the best possible outcome with a molar pregnancy: no complications and my numbers went down quickly. Things I've heard a lot of throughout this whole process: "At least it happened early in the pregnancy." "At least you have 3 healthy boys to focus on." "You can try again soon." "I'm sure those complications won't happen to you; don't worry about it." "My friend who miscarried just gave birth to a beautiful baby." Sometimes it felt like as soon as I talked about the molar pregnancy or answered questions about what a molar pregnancy is, people would rush to assure me that it was all going to be fine or not to worry about it or that we will get pregnant soon. While talking with my doctor, he told me that the chances of me having the more serious complications of a partial molar pregnancy (read " Molar pregnancy ") were very l...

"I am so homesick now for someone that I never knew. I am so homesick now for someplace I will never be. Time won't let me go; time won't let me go..." -Time Won't Let Me Go by the Bravery I posted awhile ago about getting " a little help from my friends ." Lately, I've really needed a little help from my friends. I have felt so stuck with this past miscarriage and molar pregnancy . I feel so sad about losing this baby and I feel so disappointed we have to wait to start trying again (thankfully, not wait as long as we were originally told, read " 3 weeks, 3 months "). There is a weight on my chest and I feel like I'm going through the motions. Yesterday I took the boys to the park and let them play in the woods. They had so much fun running around together and playing. I sat down against a tree, leaned back, and let the sun shine on my face. The foliage kept whispering in front of the sun beams as the wind blew threw the...

I had a follow-up appointment for my partial molar pregnancy today. While a molar pregnancy is far from good news, thankfully my molar pregnancy is "behaving." As I explained in my blog post " Molar pregnancy ," the treatment for a molar pregnancy is monitoring your hCG levels after the D&C to make sure they keep going down and then remain negative, typically over a span of 6 months. I did some researching and asking around regarding the wait time to start trying again after having a molar pregnancy. A friend of our family who is a doctor said that waiting for 6 months is a very conservative approach and may not be necessary. He said that he would recommend 3 weeks of negative test results followed by 3 months of negative test results. I asked in my molar pregnancy support group and was given a study called "Low Risk of Relapse After Achieving Undetectable hCG Levels in Women With Partial Molar Pregnancy." It has a long list of authors: from the Dona...

  I told one of my girlfriends when all our troubles started that I was going to cook away my misery. That's been the goal and, I have to say, it has helped. I have enjoyed keeping busy and I've enjoyed the fruits of my labor (good food!). I like talking on the phone to my sister while I chop and saute. I love giving the kids new foods to try and testing out new recipes. I talk to God while I work on my recipes; I like this focus of energy as I pray. I don't understand why I had a molar pregnancy (read my blog " Molar pregnancy "). I really expected to hear that we needed to wait for a cycle and then start trying. Instead we are looking at 6 months... and that is if we don't have any complications. So what recipes have been keeping me busy? Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's Chicken Pot Pie I'm going to include a link to the recipe online at On My Menu: Pioneer Woman's Chicken Pot Pie , however, I recommend buying her cookbook, Pioneer Woman Cooks...

I went in for my D&C follow-up appointment this past week only to find out that this last pregnancy (that ended in a miscarriage ) was a molar pregnancy. What is a molar pregnancy, you ask? I had the same question. My OBGyn gave me information from the Mayo Clinic (view it here, or Google "Molar Pregnancy Mayo Clinic" ). I'm going to use that source as well as What to Expect When You are Expecting by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee Hathaway (I have the third edition), the two sources I have used looking up molar pregnancy. My doctor said that sometimes Googling things leads to finding out really scary information and I've decided that I don't need more stress (he also told me to call him if someone tells me something upsetting that I want to ask about). I'm going to do my best explaining a molar pregnancy with those two sources. There are two types of molar pregnancies: a complete molar pregnancy and a partial molar pregnancy. I had a parti...