Hey there! I’ve been MIA on my blog the past couple of months because of a combination of extreme busy-ness and a difficult pregnancy. I don’t know when I will be resuming my usual posting schedule, but I wanted to send out a life update since so much has happened. This is super duper long, because there has been a lot going on. :O

Since January, I’ve been busy with my life coach training, which I am now over halfway through. It’s coming along really well and I’m confident and excited to finish my training and become certified. If anybody reading this is interested in a few complimentary life coaching sessions, I would love to practice my skills while helping you move forward in life! So hit me up. 🙂

Anyway, the training course takes up about 5-6 hours of my time per week, so it’s been a big deal in my life. On the other hand, my Hypnobabies Instructor training hasn’t been taking up any of my time, since I completed almost all of the prerequisites before January. However, this coming week will be a big change because we are flying to New Mexico for the intensive almost-week-long in-person training portion. It’s going to be Cody’s first flight, and the first time I have to be away from him for about 9 hours a day while Cory takes care of him all day. It’s going to be a very interesting switch!

My pregnancy is going well in terms of baby’s health and my health. In terms of my comfort, it has not been a walk in the park. In fact, this pregnancy has changed my and Cory’s minds about any future pregnancies. While we still want to have more children through adoption, we are done with pregnancy. As a birth educator (in training), I deeply value and appreciate the wonder of pregnancy; it’s an amazing gift to be able to bring life into the world, and a truly miraculous process. That being said, my experience has not been very enjoyable. In fact, I find pregnancy to be months and months of discomfort, often to the point of being debilitating and limiting my ability to enjoy life. I certainly envy the many women who enjoy being pregnant, and I always thought I would be one of them! For me, being pregnant is something I will never regret, but it’s something I prefer not to repeat again. Especially now that we know we are having a girl! One boy and one girl biologically… Could it be any more perfect? I’m feeling good about that decision to pursue adoption from here on out.

As far as our baby girl’s development goes, she seems to be growing and thriving beautifully. At almost 19 weeks, I have a very noticeable baby bump and both Cory and I can feel her kicking and moving in my belly. She’s very active several times each day, and likes to give me little reminders that she’s in there. In just about 5 months, we’ll be meeting our precious daughter, Abigail MarlyAnne Westropp. We can’t wait!

Cody has been adjusting really well to the idea of being a big brother to a baby sister. He knows her name, and talks about her sometimes. In this way and so many others, he’s such a smart and sweet boy! He talks a ton now, understands concepts that surprise me, and shows random moments of sweetness very often. He’s also a two-year-old… and with that comes a BIG attitude, a seemingly unlimited capacity for whining and tantrums, a glaring lack of patience, and at times a thirst for mischief. He’s certainly a handful, just as he always has been, but this stage has also been a lot of fun and it’s been so incredible to watch him growing into a full-blown person with his own ideas, will, and complex emotions.

Because of my pregnancy, nursing became first uncomfortable and then excruciating. In early February, I had to finally wean Cody because nursing was unbearable. He’s accepted this change remarkably well, and was very understanding about how we couldn’t nurse because it hurt mommy. I’m so sad that we had to end our nursing relationship earlier than I had planned, and that we won’t be able to experience tandem nursing. It has been such a special part of our relationship and an intense way of bonding, and I do feel the loss now that he’s physically independent from me. Our relationship has changed, and I see him less as a baby and more as a kid. It’s sad as a mom, but it’s also wonderful to see him growing and becoming more independent.

In other news, we spent the last two months finding, buying, and moving into our very own house! It has been a complicated and stressful process, but everything went incredibly smoothly in the purchase process. Not only has God blessed us with the unexpected ability to buy a house in the first place, something which we hadn’t anticipated being able to do for many years, but he kept his hand of blessing on the entire process. We even closed escrow five days early! Truly, the most stressful part of the process has been the moving itself, as well as the many projects we had to complete before moving in and the many more we have to work on now that we’re here. Making the house what we want it to be is both fun and exhausting!

Unfortunately, in the chaos of move-day, we experienced a tragedy that has been heavy on our hearts for the past week. In our old home, our guinea pigs’ cage was upstairs, putting two baby gates between them and the dogs. In our new home, we had not installed the baby gates on the stairs yet and after a very long day of moving, we left the house to go back and get more leftover items from the old house. All it took was a moment of forgetting to close a door. When we got home, we didn’t immediately see the dogs. We realized they were upstairs. We realized the pigs were up there too, and their door wasn’t closed. We ran up, but it was too late. We found our dog Sky standing in their cage, and our three precious guinea pigs were dead.

Replaying these horrendous moments has been my brain’s way of processing. I remember the thoughts racing through my mind. My shout of, “the pigs!” as soon as I realized what was going on and we raced upstairs. My knowledge before I even walked in the room of what I was about to find. My husband’s cries of horror and his emotional meltdown, which I now believe was a panic attack. My shock and panic and I tried to process and stay calm for Cody’s sake and the baby’s sake. Trying to stop my body from shaking all over. Holding the pigs one at a time, calling them by name, crying softly and telling them how sorry I was. Placing them side by side in their carrier for the night and shutting their door tightly. Thinking, “if only we hadn’t forgotten.” My childish prayer as I lay in bed that we would wake up and it would be the same day and we could do it over. The anxiety that overwhelmed me and kept me up half the night, a terrible fear that something worse could happen, particularly that I could lose Cory or my children.

The next day, we chose a spot in our backyard to lay our piggies to rest. One by one, we wrapped them in a cloth, held them one last time, and laid them in the ground. We said goodbye to each, and gave them one last serving of veggies, their very favorite thing in the whole world. We placed a stone over their grave, a spot we can visit when we miss them. In the past week, we’ve spent a lot of time grieving. It comes over me randomly, but less and less with each day. And I know some people won’t understand this. They’re guinea pigs, not dogs, and certainly not people. But they were precious to us. They were so full of personality. In honor of that, I want to take a moment to write about each one, and what we will miss about them all.

Penelope, our Penny. She was the oldest, but only by a couple of months. She was the one we had the longest. We adopted her has a tiny baby, just over a year ago, along with our piggy Charlotte who passed away from a long illness in December. After Char passed, we adopted Amelia and Clementine, and Pen became the alpha. She was a beautiful piggy with a smooth brown and white coat. She was the one who purred and popcorned the most. (Guinea pigs sometimes purr when you pet them, and “popcorn,” or spasmodically hop around, when they are happy or excited). I have a small amount of comfort from the thought that Penny and Charlotte are together again; they were a bonded pair, so that means a lot.

Amelia, our skunk baby. She was black and white with long, unruly fur. She even had a tuft on her lower back that stood up and reminded me of a skunk’s tail. We adopted her as a tiny baby as well, just over three months ago. She was only four months old. Even at her age, she was already nearly the size of the other two, who were fully grown. Amelia was going to be huge, the biggest piggy by far. Between her size and her spunk, I suspect she might have given Penny a run for her money as alpha. She never really liked to be held, but she was the most outgoing of all three. She had a hilarious habit of burying herself in the hay pile where she could hide, sleep, and of course eat.

Clementine, my Clem. Of course Cory loved her too, very much, but Clem was special to me. Penny was the one Cory picked out to begin with, and Amelia stole his heart when we adopted her; but Clem was the one I thought of as mine, after Charlotte passed. She was mostly orange, with some white, and one very small patch of black in the middle of her back. She had one brown ear, and one pink. She was the sweetest and mellowest pig I’ve ever seen. She was the easiest to pick up and would sit calmly and contentedly in your lap. We adopted her three months ago, and she was about to turn one year old this month.

I will miss their excited “wheeking” when they heard us preparing their veggies every night. I will miss seeing them popcorn around their cage when they were really happy about something. I will miss their soft fur and their quiet purrs when we pet them–they each had their special spot they loved to be pet the most. I will miss walking by their cage and seeing them sprawled out, each in their favorite spots, relaxing and enjoying the pig-life. I will miss watching them devour their veggies each night with such enthusiasm. I will even miss laughing at the incredible mess they were capable of making out of their cage in such little time–pigs indeed.

Our loss has been painful and hard to accept, but it’s more than that. Because we were their caregivers, we were the ones who were supposed to keep them safe. We failed them, and they paid with their lives. They died in fear and pain. I can only hope it was fast. We will always have to live with that regret, knowing that such a small and simple mistake cost everything from these creatures we loved. We will have to go on living with our two dogs who we know were only following instinct, but who nonetheless took something precious from us in a way that we can only see as savage. (Marley and Sky were the ones who killed them; Lila was in her crate.) It’s a depressing and horrible situation all around, and as you may tell from the length of this writing, it’s been heavy for me. The only thing we can do now is to never repeat this mistake. As long as we have dogs, we will never again own guinea pigs, or any small animals who could be killed by our dogs. It was irresponsible of us to do in the first place, no matter how careful we were. It only took one moment and one mistake. This is something I will always regret.

So, sorry to leave this post on such a sad ending, but I really needed to write about this and share my pain.

Even though this has been very tough, life is good otherwise. God has blessed us in so many ways. I am thankful. Although losing pets is nothing like losing humans we love, it has been a sharp reminder that life can end very suddenly and without warning. We must treasure it, every moment we can. I certainly have much to treasure today.

In loving memory of Penelope, Clementine, and Amelia.