Four more months to motherhood—only 20 or so more weeks
before we get to meet our little ecua-gring@! Wow! It’s hard to believe that I’m
already 20 weeks along! But then again, we’ve done so much in the last 5
months. Picture this: just 5 months ago, my husband and I were visiting the
magical coastal village of Canoa in Ecuador while on vacation. There was a soft
breeze, beautiful waves, warm sand under our toes, great people all around, a
sense of peace that came over us in this magical place on Earth.
Tragically this past Saturday Canoa and many other coastal
villages and towns in Northern and central Ecuador were destroyed after a 7.8
earthquake hit. Over 500 didn’t survive. Hundreds are still missing. Many more
are injured and even more have lost their homes and businesses. Hundreds of
aftershocks have occurred in the same area since Saturday and one early this morning
was 6.2 on the Richter scale! We pray the rescuers can find more survivors
today and that the aftershocks finally stop. I just can’t imagine the terror
and trauma the survivors are living right now. It has been an extremely
emotional week, to say the least.
One uplifting thing though, despite all the devastation and
tragedy, is seeing how the Ecuadorian people have united to support the
affected areas. Lines of people in the major cities form to provide donated
items and caravans of donations are on their way to the Manabi and Esmeraldas
provinces, which were most hardly hit by the earthquake. The Ecuadorian
community abroad where I live in the Seattle area have come together quickly to
put together a fundraising event this Sunday so all the proceeds can go to
helping the victims of this tragic natural disaster recover and rebuild their
lives.
Blogs and
articles
have been written about donation sites for those who are far away and still
want to help. I know it’s still not enough because the damage is so massive,
but it does fill me with a little more optimism and hope for the future for
everyone affected by this disaster.
And this very same week on the homefront, our baby has
started to tap! I wouldn’t call it a kick or jab yet, but just two nights ago I
started feeling a tap-tap from inside, especially after eating something sweet.
I know the baby has been moving all around for awhile now but he or she is
finally big enough to tap me! Our little ecua-gring@. And tomorrow we get to see
our baby on the ultrasound to make sure everything is developing well and to
find out the gender!
So many different kinds of emotions, and add pregnancy
hormones to the mix and you have one weepy mama here. And on top of it all, the
many things I have been meaning to start doing during my pregnancy are starting
to catch up with me—prenatal yoga, reading all those great holistic pregnancy
books, reading more about bilingualism and child development, learning more
lullabies, taking birthing classes, preparing for my maternity leave at work,
going on more romantic dates with my hubby, organizing the house, starting my
coaching business—eek! And all this is supposed to take place in the next 3.5 months—holy
cow! That’s not that much time, is it? It’s amazing how fast 40 weeks can go by.
Truly it is! It also helps me think about prioritizing because that is A LOT to
try to get done in such a short amount of time when I’m also working full time,
when we have a busy social and family schedule, when I’m offering my first stress management class
in the community on May 1st, when we’ve had visitors from Ecuador
and New York over the past month, when we sometimes just want to (and need to)
rest and relax and have a little fun. So staying realistic about how much I
truly expect myself to accomplish while I only have a little over a month left
in the 2nd trimester and then the 3rd trimester begins!
Wow! It’s all very exciting though!
It’s really hard to describe the vast range of emotions I’ve
felt this week—the roller coaster of fear, despair, horror, sadness with the
news of the earthquake in Ecuador, and then hope and gratitude for all the
support of the victims, and love and excitement filling my heart for the new
life developing inside me. Wow. This is life, huh? The full range of it. The
good, bad, ugly, beautiful, and miraculous parts of life.
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| Click here for more information about my upcoming class on creative stress management. |
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