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A Must-Do Item for Your Pregnancy List

After reading the positive results from my pregnancy test, I immediately felt excited, scared, and hugely overwhelmed—mainly overwhelmed. I am so glad that one of the very first acts my husband and I did as parents was pray, right there in the bathroom. When you are newly pregnant, you have some idea about taking vitamins, drinking more water, touring the hospital, signing up for a breastfeeding class, creating a registry, and researching strollers, car seats, BPA-free bottles, and more. Pregnancy is a very physical experience as your body changes in ways you have little control over. Regularly seeing an OBGYN and preparing for birth are two must-do physical aspects of pregnancy.  In our culture, I also think there is a large emphasis on material things in pregnancy, as well. Creating a registry, researching products, designing a nursery, having a baby shower, draw us into an acquisition mode with an extensive list.

While all of this is both fun and overwhelming in itself, I think there is a big piece missing when it comes to pregnancy and preparing for a new life.  My actions and thoughts don’t always reflect my desire to do so, but my goal is to always put God first in my life.  When bringing a new life into the world, my husband and I hope to share, what we consider most important, a relationship with God.

I think all too often the spiritual side of welcoming a new baby is pushed aside for the physical and material.  Going to the Newborn Promise Project group Bible study with my husband was one of the best things that we did! It helped us meet other expecting couples going through the same thing, strengthened our own marriage before becoming parents, and most importantly, focused on the spiritual foundation of our family.

My husband, Nick, and I have been together since we were 15 years old.  Last week we celebrated 9 years of marriage and 16 years together.  I thought that with our relationship history, we would have an edge on all the other expecting couples out there.

Turns out, becoming parents and navigating the new roles of both mom and dad, and husband and wife, is just as hard as everyone says it is.  Doing the Newborn Promise Project together was a very sweet way to spend our last months as a family of two together.  Adding a third person to your family is one of the biggest leaps and life experiences!  Learning how to be both wife/husband and mom/dad is challenging for anyone—no matter how long you have been together. I’m grateful that we have an amazing God, each other, and a supportive church family to help love us through it all!

The Newborn Promise Project helped to put everything in perspective, as I would be daily overwhelmed by the physical changes or even overwhelmed by something as banal as having the “right” stroller. Now it seems silly, but at the time, those small things seemed to loom large.  The Newborn Promise Project group Bible study was a constant reminder, that through all of this “stuff”, God is on his throne and the most important thing is not what we buy or what parenting strategy we use, but that we teach our little one about God’s love for him.

Listen to the Podcast: What is a Newborn Promise Project?  or download the App for the complete resource hub.

Jamie Alter is Graham Blanchard’s New Mama-in-Residence who shares her insights and lessons learned on the roller-coaster new parenting  journey. She is the Director of Brand Development at Alter Endeavors, a digital marketing company founded with her husband Nick.