Noah's Rainbow

December 25, 2020 To my Rainbow Baby, Today, I am 31 weeks pregnant! It is also Christmas, and we have just arrived home from spending a wonderful day celebrating with your Gammaw and Pup-Pup Heilmann. We got to see your Uncle John and Aunt Denise on the computer, too. Tomorrow, we’ll head to Pennsylvania to see your Grandma and Grandpa Miller and Aunt Ashley. Those will be our only celebration this year. We’re skipping our big gatherings with Pup-Pup’s family and Grandma Miller’s family because things are still not safe for get-togethers of that size. It has seemed somewhat strange so far, not to be travelling so much and seeing all those people. I have never spent a Christmas in Ohio in all of my life. But I’m also relishing the quiet and slow-down this year, not having to feel like we’re running ourselves ragged to see everyone in a few short days. It has allowed me to pause and cherish this Christmas being pregnant with you. There’s so much to celebrate despite this yucky year, and

Listen to this post here    It seems fitting that I am writing this piece just before Christmas. In my previous piece on guilt and mercy, I promised to discuss their siblings, shame and grace. While shame is closely linked to guilt, it is a battle all its own. It’s been a while, so let’s refresh our memories on that vocab lesson from last time: Guilt is thinking, “I did something bad.” Shame is thinking, “I am a bad person.” The losses we suffer on our journey to motherhood can heap immense guilt upon us, some of it earned but some of it not. Regardless of how the guilt gets there, the remedy is always mercy: “compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” This mercy comes from God, who doesn’t punish any of these sins as they deserve, but shows us His loving kindness in our afflictions from guilt. But guilt can be a tricky business which will lead us right into the lap of what we’re going to look at today. If we don’t confro

December 18, 2020 To my Rainbow Baby, Today, I am 30 weeks pregnant! Oh, my sweet little babe, there’s furniture in your nursery! There are freshly washed hand-me-down clothes in the drawers of your dresser! Soon there will be paint on the walls! I cannot believe how fast time is flying in this pregnancy and that you will be here in just a few months. In so many ways, I’m beyond ready to do this mom thing. I’m ready to hold you and change your diapers and feed you and rock you to sleep at night. I’m ready to watch you grow and learn and laugh and play and dream. I have been praying for God to make me a mom for as long as I can remember, and now those prayers are so close to coming to fruition! I simply cannot wait. In other ways, though, I’m starting to feel the anxiety creep in. Your momma has a low pain tolerance, and I’m so anxious about labor and delivery. I’ve started an online course to help myself be better prepared, but I’m honestly so afraid that I won’t be able to do it. I tr

December 11, 2020 To my Rainbow Baby, Today, I am 29 weeks pregnant! Lots of preparation has happened for your arrival this past week! On Saturday, your Grandma and I went to look for paint for your nursery. I picked a few shades of green that I liked, and today your daddy painted some swatches of the wall for me to look at with the furniture when it gets delivered tomorrow! We finished moving everything out of the spare room and, except for some odds and ends for Christmas gift giving, everything is out and that room is officially your nursery! I am beyond excited to have the furniture in there tomorrow, so that I can start sorting through hand-me-down clothes I’ve been given and getting what I already have organized and ready for you to come home. Each little step makes things feel so real, and this is a huge step into that place where I know your arrival is so close!! The other thing your Grandma and I did on Saturday was stuff and seal the invitations for my baby shower! Because of

December 4, 2020 To my Rainbow Baby, Today, I am 28 weeks pregnant! I have officially reached the third trimester! How is that possible?! It seems to be flying by- as if only yesterday, you were a tiny embryo being implanted in my belly. And now here we are, 6 and a half months later, and there are only 12 weeks to go until you will be in our arms at last! I can hardly contain my excitement and joy thinking about it. This week has been another big shift for me at work. My school returned to a 100% virtual learning model, and I am beyond pleased about it. So much about the first quarter of the school year just worked, given everything else that is going on in our world and in my life. Being pregnant in a pandemic is nerve-wrecking. I want to be safe and careful and do everything I can to protect you and myself, but I also don’t want to go overboard and completely stress myself out. Knowing that I didn’t have to teach a room full of germ-carrying teenagers put my mind at ease, and workin

  November 27, 2020 To my Rainbow Baby, Today, I am 27 weeks pregnant! We are officially entering my favorite time of year, and already things look so different from what we usually do. Yesterday was Thanksgiving; we typically drive to Pittsburgh to have dinner with part of your Pup Pup’s family. Then I get up super early with your Grandma and shop until lunch time for all the best Black Friday deals. Then your dad and I hope in the car to go to Grandma and Grandpa Miller’s house, where we have another Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with Grandma Miller’s family, and then we make the long trek home on Sunday just in time to go to bed for work on Monday morning. Then I spend the next day or two frantically putting up Christmas decorations so that I have the entire season to enjoy them. This year, we are still in the midst of a pandemic, and the situation is getting much worse than it was when it started. To keep everyone safe, especially you, we decided to skip all of our travels. Your