Countdown to Baby T. Rex: Pregnant Adoptee Feelings and Dino Decal Decisions (29 Weeks)

I started “writing books” when I was four, dictating to my mom from the bathtub, my thick, dark brown hair smooshed up on top of my head with frothy shampoo. Mom would listen carefully, hand-print my words on blank construction paper pages I’d illustrate later with crayons. I adored stories. I relished in make-believe. Mom said, lovingly, that I had an overactive imagination.

My parents read with me a lot, pretty much every day as far back as I can remember. When I was a little older, my dad would read young adult literature to me and “do” different voices for all the characters. I was reading children’s books on my own by the time I entered kindergarten and short chapter books by first grade. I’d get completely immersed in the narratives, lose track of time and let my mind traverse across Madeleine L’engle‘s strange and transitory landscapes, find solace with Roald Dahl‘s lonely beasts and heroines.

Stories are about journeying; about discovery; about a sense of place; about a beginning, middle, and end. My story begins with blank pages, an empty journal that starts, jarringly and robustly, from the middle. There is no exposition, no framing, just a vague temporal beginning documented in my adoption papers in English translation.

Photo from my naturalization papers

Photo from my naturalization papers

I was abandoned or as my adoption papers describe it, a “foundling.” My earliest months are recorded roughly by the orphanage and adoption agency and seem partially fabricated. According to my paperwork, I liked to play with dolls, something that seems patently false. I liked dogs, which I believe is true—I’ve always felt close to animals and took to my family’s golden retrievers right away. I had two large purple burn marks on my right forearm that are to-this-day unexplained, what’s left of a lost narrative I’d love to know, however painful. They’ve faded to soft, rippled scars that look more like birthmarks than wounds.

My story began on an airplane, a transatlantic flight to Alaska and then to JFK airport in New York City where I met my parents. My younger sister is also adopted. For my family, kinship has never been about blood. “Blood is thicker than water” simply isn’t true for us. Chosen family has always made sense to me because my family chose me.

Dad holding me at the airport on June 15, 1984, shortly after we met for the first time.

Dad holding me at the airport on June 15, 1984, shortly after we met for the first time.

Being adopted means I’ve always been filling in those first pages of my story with my own ideas, my own illustrations, some suggested by my parents, some discovered on my own. It takes someone with an overactive imagination to create your own context from scratch, to imagine yourself into the world. If you aren’t adopted, it’s probably hard to understand not knowing where you came from.

There are probably stories you’ve been told about your birth, about your gestational parent’s experience with pregnancy, about how you were conceived. You were born in a hospital or a bed or on a kitchen floor or the backseat of a speeding car. You were a quiet baby or a fussy baby or a happy baby. There are shared experiences between the parents and siblings in your family across generations. Births are compared to one another. Stories are passed down. Histories are created. You are tethered to your origin, whether you want to be or not. Kinship is in your blood. You know the exact time and place you went from an idea of a person to a squirmy human being with air filling your lungs.

I can’t imagine my birth story or even my infancy. I was a toddler when I began to exist in any documented way. Anything before that is intangible. When I imagine where I came from, I envision a train track split in two or three or four directions, a redacted manuscript with page-after-page of immutable ink blots. Or just a sidewalk that ends unexpectedly, surrounded on all sides by grass and weeds, like the scattered bits of concrete paving in my rural hometown. Imagine if your beginning was as unwritten as your future. How do you navigate a journey without a starting point?

Being an adoptee has made being pregnant all that much more strange and interesting. I’m building a story with my body, one I’ve never known before. It’s unfamiliar. It’s completely new. I can read about it in forums and books, but it doesn’t feel like something that’s real to me. It doesn’t feel natural. Maybe this is why I don’t feel a strong kinship with other pregnant people, with mama culture. Maybe this is one reason that “having a baby” was never part of my identity as a woman.

When I played make-believe house with my friends in first grade, I always volunteered to be the family dog. I was neither the baby nor the mom. Those weren’t roles I knew how to play or wanted to. My parents shared parenting roles and they never pushed us to have kids or get married. My mom was never pregnant with my little sister. She wasn’t pregnant with me. She was an amazing parent and educator, as was my dad. Baby-making just wasn’t part of my family’s narrative.

There is no birthing wisdom passed down between generations for me. My grandparents have passed and my parents have their own experience with family-making that is theirs and is challenging and wonderful in different ways than mine. My mother-in-law talks to me about pregnancy like it’s this normal thing that people do. It is. For most people. To her. I don’t feel “normal” in this pregnant body, though. I don’t feel like I’m carrying forth some family tradition of womanhood or embodying my mother or carrying forth the wisdom of The Mothers. Most days, I feel slightly out of place.

I’m not sad about this feeling. I recognize it. I sit with it. I hold it, see the hardness and the fragility in the words I used to say: “I don’t want to have kids.” “I don’t think I have a maternal clock.” “Writing is how I create and birth into the world.”

In many ways, being pregnant has forced me to contend with the loss I never fully grieved as an adoptee. It’s not a loss of family. My family is whole and complete. It’s not loss about being adopted or unwanted. I’ve never felt anything but loved, that I can remember. It’s the loss of my own beginning, of my story, my starting point, my origin.

Little me with my doggie friend.

Little me with my doggie friend.

It’s the realization that I don’t know what I looked like as a baby and there aren’t any pictures, something I never thought about until recently. It’s my unexpected need to find a South Korean donor, something I didn’t know I wanted until I wanted it, urgently, deeply, unapologetically. Because I long for someone who looks like me. Because I want to share my ethnicity with my child. Because I want my child to love being Korean. It’s my insistence that we use an open donor for the benefit of our future kid, who may one day wonder about their origins, too. It’s the daily reminder played out in the feeling of feet and hands poking me from the inside that I’m writing an origin story for Remi and that my story remains unwritten.

I am a mother. I am becoming a mother. Before I was a mother, I became a writer, a storyteller, fabricating fiction from wisps of truth, shadowing and lining the angles of my memories into essays, connecting letters into words into images with smokey lines of verse. I started writing my stories in the bathtub with my mom. I created fictions to fill in the gaps. I illustrated the pages of my books. I am writing a new story now, with my body, for Remi, who will never know or understand what it means to be birthed by airplanes and adoption papers and mythology.

10 Random Baby-Making Feelings I’m Currently Over-Processing

1. Drumroll, Please: The Dino Decal Winner!

You’re probably wondering what we decided about the dino decals. Well, there were a lot of votes for all the decals. A mixed bag, if you will. Ultimately, the most votes were for the top left and top right decals.

dinodecalscollage

With your input, we decided to go with a set by the same Etsy seller as the top left option because the colors are really bright and fun and go well with our bright and fun nursery. However, we went with a set that is kind of a hybrid of the top left and top right, dinos with cute and happy facial expressions and bright colors and eggs and trees and volcanoes. The pink pterodactyl in this set really sold Waffle.

Winner winner T. Rex dinner. (decals by YendoPrint on Etsy)

Winner winner T. Rex dinner. (decals by YendoPrint on Etsy)

Thank you all for your feedback! I hope you like the decals we picked with your input. (I mean, ultimately we have to like them first-and-foremost, but I hope you like them, too!)


2. Doula Want to Hire a Doula?

We have a childbirth class scheduled for later this month so we can learn about breathing techniques and I don’t know…whatever you learn in a birth class.

baby mama

The place we booked our birth class through also provides doulas. I’m still deciding if I want a doula attending our birth. We are working with a midwifery group and a midwife will deliver T. Rex. But it’s not like a traditional midwife. We don’t have one individual midwife, so depending on how many women are in labor, our midwife may not be able to stay with us at every moment.

Also, we’ve never done this before and I’ve heard a doula can be as beneficial for the non-gestational partner or support person as they can be for the person in labor. I think it might be helpful to have one, for Waffle and for me. I’d also love to labor as long as possible at home before heading to the hospital and my plan (very open to amelioration) is to attempt natural birth.

Mostly we have to see if the cost is worth it to us and I’m not quite sure yet. Have any of you hired a doula to attend your birth? Did it make the experience better?


3. Perks of Being Preggers

I parked here the other day and I felt great about it.

No shame.

No shame.


4. The Best and Worst Pregnancy Symptoms

I keep saying I’ve had a mostly easy pregnancy and it’s true. I have a good amount of energy, enough to get through the work day and evening commitments. The gestational diabetes diagnosis in the first trimester was a momentary setback, but it’s forced me to make lifestyle changes that make me feel better like eating breakfast and exercising every day. My diabetes is still well-controlled without medication. I haven’t gained much weight at all, so I don’t have a sore back…yet…and my boobs are pretty much the same (large) size as they were before I was knocked up.

I have a lot to be thankful for. There’s still a lot of weird stuff happening, of course. Here’s the best and worst of the pregnancy symptoms I’ve had or been spared.

The Best

  • Regular as F*ck: Pooping regularly is a big part of my daily routine and I was super worried I was going to be constipated for nine months. But so far, so good! Fiber is my friend.
  • Not Hungry: The gestational diabetes eating plan means having three meals and three snacks every day, so I’m eating from morning until bedtime. It’s a lot to remember to pack snacks all the time, but I rarely feel hungry.
  • Strong Nails: After 28 years of biting my nails, I finally quit last year, but they were in sad condition. Prenatals, hormones, and time have made my once-brittle nails super strong and thicker than they’ve ever been. It’s great! They’re starting to look half-way decent even without polish.

The Worst

  • Itchy Pits: About two weeks ago I started getting really itchy in my left armpit and left side boob due to pregnancy hormones. I gave myself a rash, in fact, which was very visually appealing and a whole heck of a lot of fun. I treated it with witch hazel and tea tree oil and lotion and now I just have an itchy pit that’s prone to rashes if I let myself scratch. I’m controlling it with lotion and witch hazel applied three times a day.
  • Mood Swings: The crying stage of my hormonal journey seems to be over, but the bitchy stage has kicked in in full force. I find myself snapping at Waffle for no reason. I know in my head I’m being unnecessarily mean or reactionary, but I literally can’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth.
  • Daily Leg Cramps: I wake up with what feels like a horrible charlie horse in my leg almost every day. This morning, I had one that was so bad that I started doing pseudo-Lamaze breathing into my pillow because I wanted to scream, but didn’t want to wake Waffle up.
  • Popping Joints: My joints are loosening all over and especially in my hips. I sometimes wake myself up by popping my hip or knee joint when I roll over in my sleep.
  • Carpal Tunnel: Apparently you can get carpal tunnel symptoms during and after pregnancy, which I definitely have because my wrists are achey every day after work. Wee!
  • Diabetes: It’s definitely not fun. I feel lucky that I can control it with food and exercise choices, but it is a huge part of my daily life in a way that’s kind of obnoxious. I’m grateful I’m in control of it, but I’d be really sugar-coating it to say it isn’t kind of a huge bummer. I miss white rice, a lot.

5. Squirting and Not the Fun Kind

Bladder control is something I usually feel pretty good about, but lately my confidence is waning. I sometimes spring a leak if I sneeze or cough.

I hear this gets even better after giving birth, so I’m really looking forward to that. In the meantime, I’m trying to kegel my way back into control, but I can’t stop my uterus from expanding into my bladder area, so I’m not particularly hopeful.

6. Building a Badass Library for Baby T. Rex

Books are a big deal to me. Books were my very favorite thing when I was growing up and I plan to read to Remi all the time.

My mom was a first grade teacher and she’s been gifting me a lot of amazing children’s books with accompanying stuffed animals because that’s the kind of lesson planner she is.

I’ve been looking up as many Korean children’s books (in English) that I can find, as well as feminist and LGBTQ children’s books.

Some wonderful friends gifted us this dark and hilarious book and I’m totally into Jon Klassen now.

iwantmyhatback

Of course, we’re also acquiring board books and soft books in some of childhood favorites. Mine is Moo Baa La La La by Sanda Boynton. Waffle’s is Sleepy Bunny (but not this reprint, the 1982 Johnson & Johnson version).


7. Things I’ve Googled in the Past Week:

  • gestational diabetes cookie recipe
  • what do labor pains feel like
  • breastfeeding large breasts
  • preparing for maternity leave
  • labor how much poop
  • cooked paneer safe pregnancy
  • wrists hurt pregnancy
  • baby won’t kick for partner
  • sunburn pregnant

8. Can’t Stop Keeping My Hands to Myself

I keep touching my stomach with my left hand and I don’t know why. It’s just a thing that’s happening, like I’m being compelled by some invisible belly-hand magnetic force. I’ve always wondered why pregnant women are constantly touching their bellies and I still wonder it, as I’m constantly touching my belly. Touching my belly while I’m driving. Touching my belly while I’m standing in the grocery store. Touching my belly while I watch Game of Thrones. Touching my belly while I check my email. Touching my belly while I proofread this post.

WHY IS THIS A THING?

WHY IS THIS A THING?


9. A Wiggle, a Bun, a Kitty, and a Dino

We’ve always had a lot of pets in our home. At one point, we had two guinea pigs, a rabbit, four rats, and a cat in our fur family all at the same time. We’re down to just three furbabies. I’m glad Baby T. Rex will be exposed to animals from an early age. Loving and caring for animals is something Waffle and I share and I think it builds empathy for kids to interact with animals.

However, I never meant to still have two high maintenance pets like the bunny and wiggle pig (guinea pig) at the same time as a newborn. It kind of stresses me out to think about. It’s a lot of poop to deal with on the daily, is what I’m saying.

poopmachines

Additionally, both of those furbabes are getting older and probably won’t be around for more than a couple years. The wiggle may not even make it through this year—she has a chronic bacterial infection that’s untreatable and inoperable. We got extra pages for Remi’s baby book for the three pets we currently have, but I wonder if Remi will remember them at all.

The cat should have many more years with us and will also be around the baby more than the smaller furkids, so I’m hopeful Remi will remember and love the cat, at least. I don’t know if the cat will love Remi, but I’m optomistic. Luckily, our scaredy cat is also very gentle, so I’m not worried about the cat ripping off Remi’s diaper like my parents’ cat did to me.


10. How to Maternity Leave

I’m so, so, so blessed to be able to take some time off via my day job employer’s parental leave policy plus accrued vacation time. The U.S. is one of the only countries that doesn’t have federally mandated paid parental leave. My employer chooses to offer up to six weeks of paid leave for birth or adoption. On top of that, I’m using some of my vacation time and sick time.

Note the left freaking hand. WHY? (image via Shutterstock)

Note the left freaking hand. WHY? (image via Shutterstock)

Waffle’s employer doesn’t provide any paid leave, so he’s decided to use his vacation time for two weeks, but he had to schedule it way in advance, so we’re just hoping the baby comes in the two-week period he requested off.

I can’t believe I’m already in the third trimester. I have just about two months until my paid leave begins (unless I deliver very early) and I’m working on getting things situated at work for my co-workers while I’m out. I’m the director of a small office of a statewide nonprofit, with three staff (myself included) on-site and most of my co-workers six hours away in NYC, so it’s a lot to prepare for.

Like, who’s going to sign off on timesheets, but also who’s going to fix the printer when it disconnects from the wifi?

I have never taken this much time off of work before. The last time I had three months off was during summer break when I was a college student. For the last five years, I used a lot of my paid vacation time to travel for my second job as a professional speaker and sexuality educator. I just haven’t prioritized time off since I entered the work force. I’m grateful for the weeks to spend with Baby T. Rex and to heal and mend after delivery.

I imagine I’ll be exhausted most of the time, but I wonder what I’ll be doing in-between caring for Remi and sleeping. Reading books? Watching Netflix? Taking up radical cross-stitching? What do you do when you don’t go to a 9-5 job every day? Suggestions?

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KaeLyn

KaeLyn is a 40-year-old hard femme bisexual dino mom. You can typically find her binge-watching TV, standing somewhere with a mic or a sign in her hand, over-caffeinating herself, or just generally doing too many things at once. She lives in Upstate NY with her spouse, a baby T. rex, a scaredy cat, an elderly betta fish, and two rascally rabbits. You can buy her debut book, Girls Resist! A Guide to Activism, Leadership, and Starting a Revolution if you want to, if you feel like it, if that's a thing that interests you or whatever.

KaeLyn has written 230 articles for us.

47 Comments

  1. my fiance has been a doula for some time now (and is currently in midwifery school, so I will definitely be forwarding your articles to her because they are incredibly well-written and articulated and i know she will love them!) but as she explains it, if a partner is present for the birth and wants to be involved, the doula’s main goal should be coaching the partner through the birth experience. that is, showing them supportive positions, ideal spots to massage, breathing techniques, etc. birth can be overwhelming and a doula should be a calming force in the room even if that means being silent and hanging back. i know a lot of couples worry that a doula might “take over” the partner’s role in everything, but a good doula should be there to support both of you!

    • That’s really good to hear, @samamas! I think it could be helpful for Waffle and for me to have additional support. I’m usually the one who keeps the situation calm in our relationship and I’ll definitely probably not be feeling calm while I’m in labor. I I’m definitely considering it. Our friends had a doula and said it was a huge help.

  2. This is a beautiful, thoughtful article. I’m a therapist and I plan to save this for my adopted clients. Thank you!

  3. “Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb” is the original “Blood is thicker than water” phrase, which encapsulates the sentiment that you embody with your family.

    Coming from a difficult family, I’ve always brought this “original” version up whenever someone tries to bring up their strong connection to their birth family (of which I seem to lack); yet feel a deep and lasting connection to the “family” that I’ve made!

    Best of luck to you!

    • I love that, @asteria! I didn’t know the longer version and that makes so much sense to me. I feel so deeply that family is about kinship and love NOT blood relation and it’s really validating to learn this!

  4. I’m into Jon Klassen and I don’t even have kids! Guess I am the kid here. “This is not my hat” stole my heart.

    • Literally came down here just to recommend this book! When I worked in Youth Services at the library, I tried to incorporate it into storytime as often as possible.

  5. We feel so, too, @owl. We got some of them up last night and they are pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself.

  6. Fellow adoptee and mom…I could relate to SO much of what you wrote here. I never played mom…always “big sister” and never imagined being pregnant. When I did get pregnant I felt like the only woman ever to be pregnant and had a hard time not being able to go to my mom for advice ( and found it awkward to be teaching HER about things like cervical dilation.) And then when my baby was born it was magic until he was 3days old and I couldn’t stop crying because hormones and looking at his sweet face I kept saying “how could she have given me away?” all my rational self talk left and my raw grief came rushing out.

    But I love being a mom now and watching tiny humans grow up to be who they are is a beautifully fun thing.

    Also there’s a book from some adult adopteees that I know…it’s called something like Parenting as adopteees.

    • I just want to give you consensual adoptee mom hugs!

      I over-analyzed and over-processed pretty much everything about getting knocked up, but I was surprised by the adoptee feelings coming up again. I thought I’d fully processed and come to terms with my adoptee stuff, but being thrust into pregnancy and socially-reinforced “mom-ness” brought old feelings of loss and loneliness up in ways I’d never considered them before.

      I am so happy that your experience with parenthood has been a beautiful experience. I have trouble even imagining what it will be like to see my baby for the first time. I just have no context for meeting a biological relative for the first time. I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose it. And I kind of can’t wait for it, too.

      Thanks for the book suggestion. I’ll definitely check it out! <3

      • When I was a kid and was asked “where do babies come from?” I answered, “offices.” lol.

        Meeting my biological sons and knowing them from the beginning is such a fun experience. Though I got really annoyed when anyone said they looked like my husband. I didn’t know how much I craved seeing my face in my baby’s face. It’s a real trip.

        I love that you’re writing about it.

        • Yeah, I was planning to adopt myself, if I ever had kids. This is honestly the better option for a multitude of reasons I’ve written about previously. After we decided to get knocked up, I was surprised by how much I cared about my kid looking like me. I didn’t know it was something I even wanted until it was an option!

          Luckily, my partner doesn’t care if our child looks like him or has a genetic relation to him. We both know that’s not what makes a family, family.

  7. I found all of the stuff to do with your origin story incredibly moving. Thank you for sharing – I really connected with it.

    P.S. You were/are the cutest little bubula ever!

  8. I love this, and it’s not just because of those adorable photos of tiny Kaelyn.

    What beautiful words.

  9. This was so beautiful and poignant. “I long for someone who looks like me” choked me up and really brought home for me how much I take for granted in my own family history.

    On another note, after reading this I looked down and noticed I had my left hand resting on my belly which I’m pretty sure is not something I usually do, so whatever that mysterious magnetic force is it seems to be strong enough to influence even those of us who are not pregnant through the power of sheer suggestion.

    • I really was a cutie. I mean, if I’m honest, I mostly want to have a kid who has my genes because I was so damn adorable.

  10. Love this post! It made me tear up, too.

    I’m a doula, so obviously I’m biased, but I chose not to have a doula at my own (home)births, so maybe I’m not so biased. But … I think you’d like having a doula and find it probably worthwhile. But it would be important to find one you both REALLY like, maybe someone who’s queer or super queer-friendly, who feels like a friend and would be fun to hang out with during the intense, intimate experience of being in labor and having a baby. I think it could be particularly useful at helping you achieve your goal of staying home as long as you can (which is a great goal!), and just generally being like you in many ways — except with a bunch of labor and birth knowledge and comfort that, for understandable reasons, isn’t part of your and Waffle’s toolbox. Plus all the pretty solid research on reducing pain (“if doulas were a drug, it would be unethical not to provide them”) and reducing the chance of needing a c-section. Which is an amazing thing if it’s needed, but gosh, those early weeks are so much easier if you don’t!

    Leg cramps — I’m pretty sure there’s a nutritional link for those. I’m not going to take the time to look it up right now, but ask your midwife, or Google it. Some of your pregnancy complaints there’s not much you can do about, but I think those you might be able to help with the right supplement or dietary tweak. I could be wrong, though.

    • Thanks, Dorian! I really appreciate your informed input on doulas. We are going to meet a few and see how we feel about it. We’re such private people about this kind of stuff, when it comes down to who is actually in the room with us for private moments. But having someone with knowledge and experience there who we can trust might really improve our experience. I doubt either of us will feel comfortable laboring at home for too long without a doula, just due to us not really knowing what we’re doing. Also, yeah, I’d like to try natural birth. I mean, if I get to that moment and change my mind for whatever reason, that’s fine, but it seems like it might help to have a doula to coach Waffle and me through the pain if that’s my plan.

      I’ve heard dehydration makes leg cramps worse, but I don’t know what else I could be doing about it. I’ll have to bring it up at my next midwifery appt. Mostly I’m just dealing with the symptoms I have and grateful that I don’t have the other ones! I feel SO blessed that I skipped the morning sickness and the constipation. That’s what I was dreading the most.

  11. This series is so important! Babymaking isn’t in my immediate future but it’s so good to hear about as I consider it and as other friends go through it right now <3

  12. Im so happy for you @kaelynrich =)))))) I love the decals!! Are you putting A Very Hungry Caterpillar in the library? It reminds me of when I first wanted pizza LOL

    • Um, of course A Very Hungry Caterpillar is going in the library. In fact, we already have the book and a hungry caterpillar stuffed animal to go with it! :)

  13. I can’t believe the US has such terrible paid parental leave policies! I mean, I can, but it’s just appaling.

      • OK so I was staring at this looking for the United States around the rim for, like, AWHILE.

        • Hahahaha. I appreciate your honesty. Also…it’s pretty pitiful. Just a big red “0”.

      • We (australia) get 12 weeks of paid maternity leave! And 2 weeks paid partner leave! But it’s all called parental leave so I don’t know if that makes the infographic feel a bit weird about the whole business.

        • we’re also entitled to up to a year unpaid leave and most places will let you double your parental leave at half pay. my partner is a parental leave nerd.

          • Ugh. We get 12 weeks of unpaid leave. That’s it. Employers who offer paid leave do so at their own cost and discretion. Everyone I know is jealous that I get 6 weeks paid, which is a LOT of paid leave, particularly for a nonprofit org.

            One of the issues we advocate for at my day job is paid family leave, though, so it would be kind of hypocritical not to at least try to offer it to our employees. We just won paid family leave in NYS, but it won’t go into effect for a couple more years.

            It’s really ridiculous that the U.S. doesn’t mandate paid leave. :/

  14. Thank you so much for sharing all of this!

    I LOVE the decals. The volcanoes still make me irrationally nervous, but the dinos are beyond adorable.

    • They’re huge, too! Way bigger than we imagined they’d be. They look so good on the wall!

  15. Hi I’m so late to this, and it is so sweet and filled with feelings which I could comment on, but what I really want to say is that the title image needs to be a meme or a reaction image of some kind, like, as of yesterday

    • Thanks, Michou! My dad is Italian and I’ve always “talked with my hands.” We joke that I got it from his side of the family. I was (and am) a hamball.

  16. <3 <3 <3

    Just want to send waves of love and support! It's so inspiring to see people taking the opportunity to heal when the feels come up.

  17. This article was amazing, but is it bad that my favourite things about it were the hitherto-thought-humanly-impossibly cute photos of baby KaeLyn

    • That’s just the tip of the cute-baby-pic iceberg, my friend. My mama took a LOT of pictures of me and I was/am a huge goofball.

  18. I love that you’re keeping us posted through the pregnancy. Thanks for letting us be privy to all the feels, confusion, and funny stuff that goes along with baby making. <3

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