Letter from TeriLyn – December 2023

Happy New Year friend! I missed the November Letter so I’m going to add a few November details into this one and call it good. (You can read more Letters here.)

WORK

November is one of my busiest months all year when it comes to work. Besides the usual content that goes out on my blog, in my newsletters, on Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest, I had the most sponsored partnerships that I’ve ever had in one month. It was a GREAT thing but it made for a very busy month, especially since I was traveling the week before Thanksgiving for a wedding in Utah and then hosted Thanksgiving and family for a week right after I got back.

In addition to work, my pregnancy appointments started to get more frequent and more varied as various issues have popped up so in any given week, I’m going to the OB, pelvic floor PT and/or the chiropractor.

All that to say, by the time December 1 rolled around and Black Friday and Cyber Monday were behind me, I felt like I’d been sprinting for weeks. But I got it all done! (Big thanks to my content manager, Hannah, who helped make it happen too!) And thank YOU for supporting by business by shopping with my links and sharing your purchases in IG stories. It truly makes a difference and I’m so grateful.

PREGNANCY

The downside of pushing so hard with work is that I ran myself into the ground and have been sick for six weeks, no exaggeration. First it was an awful cold that lasted over two weeks where I lost my voice (again… that also happened in October with a bunch of work travel). Then I had a fever, body aches and a sore throat for a week. Then, I got the stomach bug. And I developed severe insomnia in the midst of all of it so most nights I don’t fall asleep until 2 or 3 am and there have been multiple nights where I didn’t sleep at all. Like, zero minutes of sleep.

It’s been rough, to say the least. I’m trying so hard to be grateful and soak in these last few weeks of pregnancy, but I’m worn out. I think my immune system is just shot and my pregnancy insomnia and restless legs have gotten worse as time as gone on. (And I’ve tried everything for it, including multiple types of magnesium, benadryl, unisom, tart cherry juice, epsom salt baths, and prescription sleep aids, to no avail. Gosh, I miss my CBD sleep gummies!)

I feel like I’ve been sick for a solid year since my fertility treatments made me sick for 5 months before I even got pregnant, and then I had nausea the entire first and second trimester since I was still on progesterone shots. Then, once I got into my third trimester, I got sick from all the seasonal stuff going around. And I’m just sick of being sick.

Our baby boy is currently breech and I’ve been seeing a chiropractor trained in Webster for months but no luck yet. I’m trying moxibustion with a acupuncturist on Thursday and then I have an ECV scheduled next week. I’m really hoping to avoid a c-section but if the baby wants to be breech, there must be a reason. (He’s been breech for months…)

Like I shared in this IG post, I’m SO grateful that I am pregnant after such a tough journey to get to this point, even though it’s not been nearly as easy of a pregnancy as my first. I feel like I’m complaining about this pregnancy, but I want to share the reality that it’s been HARD. So if you’re pregnant and it’s feeling rough on multiple levels, know that I understand and empathize. You can be grateful and struggling at the same time – two things can be true at once!

TRAVEL

Since I got back from Utah, the only travel I’ve had are trips to Boone for some family holiday things. Usually that’s very easy since we have our own place there, but my insomnia was worse when we were there so it wasn’t ideal.

Since I’m 36 weeks, I don’t have any other travel scheduled but gosh, I could really go for a beach trip. Maybe I’ll be brave and take a newborn on a warm-weather getaway in February. It hasn’t been too cold here (thankfully) but the last few years, Tommy and I have booked warm trips in January (we went Dominica last year) and I’m bummed we can’t make a warm-weather trip happen this year. And we didn’t get a babymoon in either. I’m glad I’m having the baby after the holidays, but it makes it easy to lose track of time.

Case in point: I still don’t have my hospital bag packed and I thought I was going into labor last week and starting putting things in a bag at midnight one night. Thankfully the contractions stopped, but I HAVE to get my bag packed this week (here’s what I’m packing in my hospital bag) and figure out where our diapers and newborn clothes are. Oh, and figure out how to use the Halo bassinet (a hand me down from a friend).

It’s a very different experience with a second child and also when it’s not 2020. With Thomas, not much was happening given the dumb C*vid crap that shut everything down, and I had more time to prep and plan since I didn’t have a toddler. It’s so different this time but hopefully that means the newborn phase will feel a little easier and more laid back, like the prepping (or lack thereof) has been.

LIFE

We have been working to furnish and decorate our house with Roux MacNeill Studios for about six months and a lot of new furniture arrived in the last two months so that’s been fun! We also got some window treatments that I was really hesitant about but I love them now. And we’re ordering some things for the nursery too. It’s nice for our house to finally start to feel put together.

Now that the house is coming together, I really want to work on getting some landscaping done since the exterior of our house could really use some work, but maybe tackling that right when we have a newborn isn’t the smartest time. We’ll see.

Our church recently moved into a new building that’s much bigger and it’s a bit surreal to see how quickly it’s grown, but I’m so grateful to finally have a church in Winston-Salem I love. The community there has become a large part of our life and I never saw myself as being a community group leader and hosting a group each week, but I’m so grateful for that group of people.

Alright, I’m off to go on a walk! I’m trying to get outside and walk more often (and hoping it helps my little babe flip from his breech position!).