baby #4: different journey, same goal🙏🏽
/🙇🏽♀️
in september of 2018, i did a hard thing. i mustered up the courage to leave my amazing group fitness instructor position at the best gym in the city after almost a decade. i loved the members. i still keep in touch with my fellow instructor friends and managers there. i had a handful of other gym jobs too at that time! i left them all on the same day. the Lord had been dropping hints to me about leaving (that i blatantly ignored) for longer than i’d like to admit. the day i walked away i felt a huge void, but i also felt peace at the same time. how? God sent me a handful of specific friends who rushed to my side (sometimes randomly and out of nowhere seems like) and comforted me with their presence & their words. it’s like He told them exactly what to say and they said it when i desperately needed to hear it. i’m so grateful for their obedience! i knew i’d be OK…eventually. the shift in my daily routine was incredibly difficult to break away from. i would wake up at 4:15a on tuesday and thursday mornings like clockwork but instead of going to teach, i would go to a gym close by my house for my own early morning workout. what did i do while working out? i would eye the clock on the wall and envision what portion of the class was being taught by my replacement at the time. e.g., “ok, it’s 5:50a, so they should be using the figure 8 band working legs right now.”, and so on and so forth. just crazy!! i kept that up for months…until i finally didn’t think about it anymore. i knew i had done the right thing, but i just felt so…. so devastated. everything seemed so right, routine, and comfortable, but i just didn’t have peace in my heart about the direction i was going in. Sonny and my brother got up early and joined me for my very last 5:30am class.
on the bright (best) side, i was able to completely focus on Fit Phix, our family fitness company, instead of splitting my time amongst so many other roles i was no longer supposed to be in. Sonny felt that i was finally onboard and that we could progress in all areas of our business. we buckled up our seat belts and braced ourselves for the rollercoaster that is entrepreneur life…. together. 2019 was one big faith walk for us, but the struggle is different when you know God approves of your direction. #covered
*spongebob voice*
ONE YEAR LATER …
in september 2019, the Lord answered a huge, long-time prayer of mine. i prayed this prayer years ago and kinda forgot about it honestly… i just got so used to living without it. “it”… is my period.
i got my period back!!!
i’ll never, ever forget that fateful evening. it was on friday, september 13th. lol! definitely the only time i will ever be excited to see blood on that infamous date. Sonny and were loading up our truck and headed to drop the kids off at my sister in law’s house so that we could head straight to New Orleans to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary the next morning. i was the last one in the house cause i was using the restroom upstairs. i wiped and stood up, but it felt like I didn’t quite wipe well enough. so, i wiped again. i pulled my hand up and to my complete surprise, i saw blood.
omg. that’s blood.
OMG!! THAT’S BLOOD!!
and it came outta me! what!? i immediately ran downstairs and up to Sonny who had just finished buckling the kids into their seats. i practically shoved the tissue in his face! he saw it, took a moment to process it, smirked, and said, “wow, since 2009!”. yes y’all, i hadn’t bled on my own for a decade. TEN YEARS! i praised God and rejoiced immediately with my close circle of family and friends about my answered prayer! you might be saying, “but you have 3 children already…how did you get pregnant with no period?”
each time we desired to conceive, my fertility doctor would prescribe meds to bring my cycle back. after taking those meds and receiving a ‘man-made’ cycle, i would then take clomid to help me ovulate. i would then use an ovulation kit to test each day until it gave a positive reading (or not). i would give myself a self-administered shot of ovidrel if i didn’t ovulate as expected and pair it with timed intercourse. this was basically the process we used for all 3 of our blessings. (i actually didn’t need ovidrel for our 2nd baby, Dego; i ovulated on my own). even after my breastfeeding journeys ended with my boys (approx. 19ish months each) my period would never resurface. i nursed our 3rd baby, Kosi, for 2.5 years and she finally weaned in july 2019. while i read about and knew other moms who stopped nursing and got their periods back the very next month, i just kept waiting. i prayed that my cycle would come back one day…. i just didn’t know when that day would ever be of course.
aunt flo definitely didn’t put a damper on our anniversary plans; we had a wonderful time celebrating in NOLA and got some amazing, uninterrupted rest.
after running my very first marathon in janurary 2019 (the chevron houston marathon) and representing as an ambassador, i was ecstatic and wanted to immediately apply again for 2020. the ambassadors were encouraged to do so and i felt that i would have been chosen again. however…the Lord told me not to. i thought about it heavily and almost signed up anyway just to secure my spot, but i finally accepted that i would not be running and forgot about it. a few months passed, and the announcement for the 2020 ambassadors was posted. i felt a huge pit in my stomach. i was supposed to be in that group!!! i immediately regretted not applying again, even though i knew i wasn’t supposed to run this year. i eventually let it go.
the night my period came back, i wondered if we could possibly conceive without the use of infertility meds. it was one of the first things that crossed my mind. was i tempted to go running back to my fertility doctor immediately though? absolutely. absolutely! but i felt a super strong conviction against it when discussing that option with Sonny. the Lord reminded me over and over again to just be patient, trust Him, and do our part. i finally stopped thinking about it to death and prayed about it. i shared our desire to conceive naturally with my prayer circle and i also began to prepare my body for it. my body needs to be at rest when trying to conceive and fights the process when i’m lifting heavy, sweating it out 6 and 7 days a week, and training for long runs. when going through the infertility processes, i had to just sit down somewhere and let my body rest way, way more. i stopped lifting heavy around November 2019 and focused on treadmill incline walking only for my personal workouts. i also focused more on coaching instead of completing the workouts while teaching my Femme Phix classes.
when my cycle appeared back in september, i downloaded an app to track it cause i could finally use one! however, my cycles for september, october, november, and december were quite irregular.
it bounced from from 39 days, to 30 days, to 33 days. were Sonny & i trying all those months? absolutely! my good friend reminded me about ovulation strips in november, so i bought a box. i had honestly forgotten all about them. i was hoping to be pregnant by christmas so that i could surprise Sonny with the news on christmas morning. however, my cycle started on christmas eve😢. at that point i was like, “man, i could have run in the dang marathon! i’m still not pregnant. what gives, Lord??” each time my cycle started, i chose to be grateful that by body was ‘working’ again rather than sad and disappointed that i wasn’t pregnant. been there, done that!
wednesday, january 29th rolled around… and still no period after 37 days. but hey, that’s ‘normal’ for me, right?🤷🏽♀️. i could have sworn my cycle was going to start for about 2 weeks straight prior to that day. each morning i would lay in bed and feel cramping; it was low intensity and i felt the discomfort all across the bottom of my abdomen. that would then rev up to menstrual-like cramps. it felt like i could sneeze or cough and my cycle would just start right then and there. but, it didn’t. every single time i used the restroom and would wipe, i’d look down at the tissue and expect to see blood. but, i never did. once i got up and started moving the cramps would subside.
later that evening, i decided to take an at home pregnancy test. there was no way for me to know if i had missed my period. well, ok, maybe if i had waited 2 whole months before testing, haha.
i asked Sonny to pick up a test on the way home from training that evening because yall, i just wanted to know. i’d be fine either way but i just wanted to know so i could move on with my life accordingly TBH. i decided to take the test in our downstairs powder room while Sonny watched ESPN on the living room couch. i did the do, flipped it over, walked out of the bathroom, and closed the door behind me. i told Sonny to go and check it after 2 minutes and that he could be the one to find out first this time. lol. he took an exaggerated deep breath, got up, went over to the restroom door, turned the knob, and went in. i stood a few feet away and watched him walk out with a smirk on his face- i truly could not decipher the answer until i saw the stick with my own eyes.
WOW! i cried tears of joy in Sonny’s arms as Kosi buzzed around and asked, “mommy why are you sad? mommy, why are you crying??”. i assured her i was crazy happy and informed her that she would be a big sister!
what i know in my heart of hearts: disobedience absolutely delays or blocks blessings. i have found so much more life balance on this ongoing journey of yielding completely to Him. sometimes we know what to do and feel God pushing us a certain way or urging us to do a certain thing and still don’t do it🙆🏾♀️!
get out of your own way.
the kids are crazy excited and everyone except Sonny believes it’s a girl! we decided to snap announcement pics in front of the dormitory where Sonny and i met TWENTY😳 years ago this past february! this was taken in early march before things got extra crazy with the corona virus.
to GOD be all the glory. He restored my menstrual cycle in His time. He allowed us to conceive naturally without the use of fertility meds this round. i absolutely believe obedience was a gigantic factor and turning point in my life, and i only want to do more of that moving forward. i’ve been holding all this in for months!!! but i truly wanted to hear His voice over the noise (social media mainly). God has made himself so real to me and i know so many women who message me about desiring to be pregnant. i encourage you to truly seek Him and not only listen to what He’s telling you to do, but to intentionally do those things. God is always speaking! i encourage you to quiet the noise, shut down every distraction, plug all the way in often, and see what He has to say to you.
thank you for your LOVE and for rejoicing with us!
