A 'little' announcement!

Hello everyone,

Well I think it is time to let you know the rest of the story of what has been going on for us these last few months.

It has to do with exhaustion...
A few extra calories...
A rapidly increasing bra size...
Not being able to eat many of my favorite foods...
And a big Birthday week (or two) at the end of April...

Yes, we're PREGNANT!!!!

Brent and I are over the moon. So for the next 30-odd weeks you will be able to read about this exciting, strange (and likely, at times, scary) journey as I go from Jen-size to whale-size, and Brent and I prepare to make that no-turning-back transition to having a child. (Don't worry, for those of you who are sick of everyone having babies left, right and centre, there will still be interspersed news of the rest of our lives as well)

We decided to let you all know now because we just had our first ultrasound. I had my first prenatal appointment last Friday, and rather than giving us the comforting reassurance we hoped it would, a smaller uterus size, low position, and undetectable heartbeat combined with a slight decrease in my (fortunately) negligible symptoms, to create some suddenly scary looking bogeymen where previously we'd seen pink and blue visions of cherub faces.

While it made for a very anxious weekend, the midwife on call insisted that to ally my worries, we should go in again this week and have an ultrasound rather than waiting the 2.5 weeks until my first one was scheduled. So with much trepidation (and a weekend of feeling like my skin was no longer breaking out, my breasts were shrinking and my food aversions were dissipating), we went to the clinic today and were greeted instead by the most amazing dark, fuzzy, black and white image we have ever laid eyes on.



Our baby was indeed there, looking much larger than I had anticipated, with a fluttering healthy, strong heart. While we watched she (or he) began to move, and even started showing off her (or his) kicking abilities while Brent and I gazed with true parental (dumb-struck) love. The midwife (a wonderful man who has been practicing for 26 years) quickly printed us a clandestine image, then at Brent's request, switched the ultrasound machine for a Doppler, to listen to the baby's heart. After a few minutes of searching, it was found up near my bellybutton, a loud, clear and rapid tum-tum-tum-tum... going at 180 beats a minute (scary to hear what my heart would sound like after an all-out sprint).

Our baby did not feel inclined to lay flat, however, so the midwife was not able to get an image where he could measure the length completely, and therefore let us know the baby's actual gestational age. It seems that the smaller uterus and position may be due to a slightly "younger" baby than we thought - perhaps by up to 5 days. Our original due date was, ironically, April 27! Smack in between Brent's and my Birthdays! So after we have our next ultrasound, we will hopefully be able to have an accurate due date (give or take the standard 2 weeks of when the baby will hopefully decide to make her/his appearance).

Well, there's lots more to say about this crazy process we've embarked on, but we have around 30 more weeks to bore you with all of that, so for now, baby, Brent and I need to have some breakfast and get to work.

Love to you all, and thanks for sharing our news and putting up with our excited parent-to-be ramblings :-)

Jen, Brent and the strawberry (baby websites' current size-metaphor)

The crazy month of September and some good news!

It has been a crazy few weeks full of fun, but I am totally tuckered out and it's all just beginning!

First there was our trip to VT for a long Labour Day weekend to celebrate Brent's grandfather's 90th birthday with many of his extended family who I had never met and he hadn't seen in ages. There were family dinners, lunches and brunches, poolside BBQs, housework and backyard camping complete with smores, farmer's markets and birthday cake. What more could you ask for the last weekend of summer?

Then we returned to a flurry of activity -Brent returned to the busiest month in the US resettlement calendar, I started my new job at the International Peace and Justice Institute (IPJ), and my sister Lindsay arrived for a visit, all on the same day!

The weeks since then have been a blur of ups and downs - it was wonderful to have Lindsay here before she embarked on her long-awaited trip to do a pilgramidge hike from Leon to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Then it was an equally wonderful surprise to have my mom come back for a week to see us before she and Dad head to England for the year. And I have been absolutely thrilled with my job at IPJ - my woman PeaceMaker is even more impressive in person than she was in theory. A lot of my life currently involves writing about her, so while I intend to tell you more about her, now is not yet the time to do so. To give you a glimpse: my days at IPJ generally involve 2 hours of interviewing Sylvie in the mornings, then returning to our beautiful office overlooking San Diego and the ocean and transcribing the interview for up to 4 hours. Then if there is any time left at the end of the day, I can start preparing my writing assignments on the DRC conflict and extracting stories to write from Sylvie's life and work. So it's fun and challenging but also incredibly exhausting. The staff and team I am working with are fantastic though. I'm still a bit shocked at how well the PeaceMakers and the Peace Writers are all getting along with eachother, with their partners, and as a larger team.

The IPJ is also keeping our lives interesting with other events - fancy lunches, city tours on double-decker busses, and then currently, our participation in the IPJ's annual international human rights conference, for which we also have access to the VIP events! Last night for example, we got to go to a private session and a catered dinner with Louise Arbour, the (Canadian) former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights! In fact, this entire conference is made up of super-human women who make terms like "inspirational" and "courageous" sound hollow and overused. Many of them are championing the unthinkable against incredible odds, which makes the progress they have acheived even more astounding. Tonight we watched a private viewing of the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. It has not yet been released, and only a couple of months ago it won the top Tribeca Film Festival award. Please, please see it if you can! It is about the women's peace movement that effectively moved Liberia from a state of civil war to peace, and then on to elect Africa's first woman head of state. The leader of the movement is at the conference, and discussions with her in person demonstrated how she could be such an incredible force for change in the Liberian situation.

Unfortunately with so much going on it can also be challenging... Brent has been working very very hard as IRC struggles with a huge influx of last minute arrivals before the end of the fiscal year at the end of the month. He has also been faced with some difficult individual cases of refugees arriving in the US suffering from acute and at times, emergent medical conditions which have required nearly 24-hr care. His case managers are doing amazing work, but they are really overstretched. Hopefully things will calm down for him a bit in October, though with the upcoming US elections and a change in funding policy, he doesn't know yet if things will actually slow down or not.

Then I had the huge disappointment of having my laptop (my Christmas/graduation present last year from my folks, Brent's folks and Brent) stolen from work out of our LOCKED office! In addition to the monetary and functional worth of my computer, I was most hurt by the loss of all of my photos and documents that I will not be able to get back. All of our photos from the last 9 months were on that computer, so I am afraid it will be a while before I post any. Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it now. The IPJ has been incredibly supportive (even if the University of San Diego's attitude was "oh this happens all the time", and so they are doing nothing to retrieve it or to try to prevent these apparently rampant thefts from occuring) and are working hard to get me a stipend to replace my laptop asap.

Though we do have some good news to end with... today I got notice of my immigration interview! YAY! So, please everyone cross your fingers for Brent and I on November 6 at 10am west coast time. The interview itself will likely be quite rigerous, but once it is finished I will know one way or another whether or not I can stay!

I'll try to write again more frequently than I have been for the last month!

Hope everyone is doing well, wherever you may be.

Jen