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Posted on October 14, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

This is the final chapter in our birth story of three parts. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. This one will be a long one, fair warning. We left off on the day we went in for our routine 38 week ultrasound, to be told that we were being sent to the hospital to have our son that day. Surprise! Also, the OB who had been with us since the very beginning, with my first pregnancy, wouldn’t be delivering our son. It works like that of course, in a practice you’re either on call at the hospital that day, or one of your partners is. 

I was in it now. There would be no turning back. My heart rate quickened at all the news coming our way, biggest of all being that this was it. We were going to have a baby outside in the world, no longer tucked inside. I would have a stranger walking us through the next part but c’est la vie. Let’s do this.

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Posted on September 3, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

Welcome back! Today, is part 2 of our birth story. At the end of this post, you’ll find a link for Part 1 in case you missed it…

The pregnancy

In a nutshell, my pregnancy was generously easy. I never had morning sickness (only slight nausea less than a handful of times) and my main symptoms were back and sciatica pain (those were pretty persistent and un-fun), and fatigue.

I was on the high risk path and saw a specialist as well as my normal OB. However all visits at the specialist went so well, that I stopped going after a few months once everything was checking out. The high risk doctor did change my due date as he was measuring on the smaller side. The original due date was the 19th of June, and the high risk doctor changed it to June 24th, where it stayed.

As we began our every-2-week appointments and neared the every week appointment, they of course started to take a closer look. With the quarantine practices, James stopped being able to come with me to appointments. Since we didn’t do ultrasounds past week 24 or so (due to my clearance of things going well from all doctors), he stopped coming and I would just call him and have him on speaker each time.

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Posted on September 2, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

This is a long time coming. Jaxon, our miracle son, is over two months. For a writer mom, this is a highly anticipated rite of passage. At least it feels that way. This is Part 1 of 3. Here we go – our birth story..

The origin

We found out we were pregnant in October of 2019. Earlier that year, we had our first pregnancy and our first loss at 11 weeks. I share that chapter of our life here. November was the due date of our first baby. We had planned a trip for the due date week so we wouldn’t be home dwelling in the pain. We decided a trip would be a healthy way to honor our first and to process together, the weight of it all, while also giving ourselves a peaceful scenery in which to do it all.

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Posted on August 5, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

I am overdue to post the birth story for our son. That will come soon, but for now, I wanted to begin by sharing the name story: how we arrived at the name we did for our son.

When we found out we were pregnant with our rainbow baby, we waited a bit before starting to discuss names. We had an initial “all is looking good” appointment and I believe we even waited to be sure we heard a heartbeat and knew there was development. We mused over a few and downloaded a fun app to get some ideas and mark what we liked and didn’t like.

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Posted on May 14, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

It’s been since February that I’ve come here to type and outwardly ponder.

Late February and early March brought a world of transformation to almost all countries, all people.

This quarantine life has become a surging, ever-challenging, sometimes changing long-term reality for us all. We are far from new to this quiet routine and while it’s hard to allow oneself to hope, there may be light in the not-too-distant future of a reopening of life, of exploration, of interaction with one another physically.

Everyone handles this differently and what I hope emerges is more compassion, less fear. More grace, less hatred (oh the events of this time could fill volumes). More contact, less distance. More love, less judgement.

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Posted on February 4, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

There’s that saying, we never stop learning.

I’ve always appreciated what that meant. I loved College not for the normal reason of meeting great people, being on your own, going somewhere new. All of that is valid and played a vital part of why I loved the years in my College town. However what I loved the most is getting to tailor my education to topics I loved and was interested in.

Yes, there was the first year filled with requisites that I had to suffer through (I dropped physics when I found out there was calculus involved – yikes!) however getting to start right away with courses that would be towards my major (I began as an Elementary Education major but changed after my 2nd year to Creative Writing/English Lit) was such a refreshing time.

I love to learn new things. I think it keeps me young, on my toes, and advances my ability to have compassion on myself and others.

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Posted on January 11, 2020 by Leigh Gorham

I am camped in the guest room of our house, curtain partially back over one window, watching the steady snowfall we were promised here in Missouri today.

My husband is diligently doing all he can for our family, by sacrificing his weekend to plow in the city where he works (he is in city government/urban development, but part of their options are to plow when it snows). I won’t get a snowed-in, movie day with hot cocoa, games and blankets with him, but I know he has chosen wisely and I’m so thankful for the ways he provides.

I have cozied up in the guest room, dog snoozing beside me, music playing through the tv. I have my water, my decaf coffee, and all I need to enjoy the beauty outside. I try to use this opportunity to write. So my laptop is open and here I am.

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Posted on October 7, 2019 by Leigh Gorham

 

I’m looking forward to the day when the baby section at Target doesn’t cause an anxiety attack.

 

I sent that text this morning to my husband and a couple friends.
It is because it is a visceral memory that grabs me and shoves me roughly back to a painful moment of my pregnancy, before we knew the end was coming.

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Posted on August 23, 2019 by Leigh Gorham

Have you ever been curious about what goes through someone’s mind at any given moment? The times that seem as if it’s just the same old life, only to realize that it only takes a second for everything to shift?

Maybe it’s an innocuous memory, maybe it’s a random replaying of a conversation. Maybe it’s a note-to-self “oh I can’t forget to pick up milk”. For me, while I can’t remember what was going through my mind that day, I do recall that exactly one week later, it was song lyrics. Song lyrics that I was singing in my head to carry me through the next sentences spoken…

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Posted on July 23, 2019 by Leigh Gorham

Seven Months.

That’s how long it’s been since I came to this space to speak.

I’ve gone longer, but it still dampens my spirit, the hiatus between the coming. My sister-sage-writing hero- friend Kris Camealy declared the most perfect insight on the practice. She put in syllables what my soul tries so desperately to convey, when her son asked her “Why do you write?“:

“I tell him, with a rock-sized lump in my throat, that I don’t always know how I feel until I touch my pen to the paper, and only then, does my own heart come into focus.”

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