Hey there. We’re the H-G Family. We have one of those epically long last names, so we stick to just The H-G’s. (Let the record state that for all the people that thought it was crazy that our kids would also have hyphenated last names, our first kindergartener could spell every last letter and dash by second semester. So THERE. And even if our next kid struggles with letter placement, we’ll still be hyphenated. So also, THERE).
This blog space began as a way to keep family and friends from afar updated on our first baby a loooooong loooooong time ago in a galaxy of naivety and inexperience far far away. Oh how we have learned since then. But here are some flashbacks to give you a taste.
It began with the White T-Shirt Experiment. That was legit fun seeing my belly grow and grow and bust out of my husband, Brad’s, work undershirts.
Then baby two came along a mere twenty months after the first. Turns out that’s the exact timing between two kids when you have a positive pregnancy test on your kid’s first birthday and baby two goes the full forty weeks. That was when I did the Baby vs. Belly Challenge.
We figured after that point we’d just tear off the baby-having-band-aid and line up all three close together. But, much like all things in parenting, our plans were skewed and we got a little humbled.
My pregnancy with Baby HG3 (as we called him/her) miscarried a little after twelve weeks. Man, it sucked. It was the suckiest of sucky things to go through, and if you’ve been through it, or you’re experiencing it, I’m sorry. (Side note: if you want to read a little more about me and seven of my friends, I wrote a post called I Miscarried, Now What? because googling the internet to find out about miscarriage details is terrifying and awful. It’s a good post to read, and helps with the nuts and bolts of different people’s experiences. You can also read my series on miscarrying called Tough Stuff).
I eventually got pregnant again, and we viewed said pregnancy so differently – heavier emotions, heavier insights, heavier worries. All we could really do was hope. Pregnancy after loss is hard. We were fortunate enough to have a healthy baby boy, and then I proclaimed that I was done in body, mind, spirit, anxiety, and stretch marks having more babies. I even wrote myself a post as to why I was done (in case you want similar reminders) to calm any desires my ovaries may have upon clutching someone else’s baby.
So we were the H-G Five. Five and done… until we decided to foster refugee children. You won’t see their photos here, but I’ll talk about our experiences. It’s been a big shift from first pregnancy when we Knew How To Be Amazeball Parents (gigantic eye roll here folks), to where we are now with a smidge of experience enough to know that parenting is about shifting and not knowing but instead working your best to figure it out together and in community. Parenting is anything but stagnant.
We’re a little loud sometimes, a little rowdy, and our catch phrase will forever and always be Good Chaos. But we’re doing our best. I hope you join us in the ever-changing adventures of being a family and seeing people as human and knowing we’ve all got junkity junk in our stories, but it’s how we use that junk that makes us who we are. We’ve had a lot of crazy-good-and-awful adventures so far, and I look forward to those that are headed our way.
~Maggie H-G (boss lady and #hotmessuvamom, at your service) plus the other four H-G’s, plus all the honorary ones that have been added to our hyphenated life.
P.S. The highly professional photos in this post were done by my pal Samantha with Augusta Rae Photography. She’s a genius every single time.
