Year eleven! How wild is that? I can’t wait to catch up and tell you about our past year (so buckle in).
I guess we should start off with the good: we’re pregnant with boy #2! I’m 21 weeks this week and still unbelivelably anxious about it. If you remember, we lost a baby last year. I never really shared about it online becuase it was (is) just so hard. But I found out at 13 weeks that the baby stopped growing around 9 weeks (we guess soon after our first scan). And it was a really, really hard hit. We got pregnant similar to how we did with our first; quickly and surprisingly.
So, while we were devastated after my D&C, we thought it would be easy to get pregnant again. But it didn’t. It took about 10 months (with a chemical pregnancy in April) until we finally saw those two lines. And, like the pregnancy I lost, I was so unbelievably sick. This pregnancy, I think I threw up every day for 6 weeks straight. There was no end in sight! But I am finally out on the other side feeling much better but still worried every day about losing this baby. I thought after my first trimester, or my 13-week scan, or even my anatomy scan, I would start to feel a little less pressure, but that has yet to ease up. And it really stinks. I was actually just in the hospital last week getting a check-up because I hadn’t felt the baby move in 48 hours. All is ok and he is looking great but the haunting feeling of losing a baby sticks with you longer than you think.
And I know I’m not the first person to go through this, so I hope that if you’re in a similar place, you know you’re not alone. I never thought I would be one of those women added by other’s announcements, but for most of this year, I was, and it was hard. So again, if you’re in the same place, I hold space for you in my heart and prayers. Sending you all the good baby juju!
And since we’re on the train of sad, horrible news (this year was challenging), we lost my beloved father-in-law in February to his two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed officially two days after our first was born and got put in hospice in January of this year. I’m really thankful that I got to be by his side throughout, but to say it wasn’t one of the most traumatic moments of my life would be a lie. I was a shell of myself for most of the year. And while I feel better now (time does, in fact, heal), it still hurts so deeply. Not to mention the holidays coming up… it’s just really hard.
So before I start sobbing and abandon this blog post (still not really ready to talk about it), I’ll leave you with the wonderfully serendipitous news of our baby boy being due on my FIL’s birthday. I love how the world works like this and I’d like to think he had a hand in all of this.
Ok… on to something happier?
Andrew is doing as well as expected after losing your father. But he still loves and takes great pride in his job, absolutely adores being a father, and is the best husband anyone could ever have.
For me, Penny Linn has grown past my wildest dreams, and I thought last year was wild. I had no idea what this year had in store for me. We have more than 4Xed our revenue from last year and did it all through such loss and sickness on my end. We were featured in the BBC and just filmed for the Today show last week. We built out a team of 15 employees (4 full time), we signed a lease for a new 6,000 sq ft retail/ecom/warehouse space, and had a brand and website refresh, and most of all we had a lot of fun doing it all. We taught so many people how to needlepoint and felt like we expanded our community 10 fold. I’m eager to see what 2025 has in store for us. I feel like the sky is the limit here…
For our son, he started a 2’s program and is having the best time. He is so funny (truly — the kid has great comedic timing), so smart, so kind… really all the things you wish for your kid to be, he is. There was even a point in our TTC journey that Andrew and I agreed that while we’ve only ever wanted two kids, that if it just wasnt in the cards for us, we would be fufuilled and satisfied with just our son. He’s that special.
I hope to find time this year to connect and update you guys more than once a year but life is busy (and about to get a lot busier lol). But if I don’t, I hope you have a wonderful and happy end to 2024. Wishing you and your family only good things to come.
