Our Life is…

Yes! K is going to be a big sister at the end of March (or more likely, the beginning of April)! See?

I realized that although we are halfway to baby, I hadn’t mentioned it here at all. Oops!

We are all very excited, thankfully, but we weren’t sure how the kids would take the news…especially K who has been the baby for almost a decade now! We had to renovate a room for the baby, but before the kids knew I was pregnant, we let them think it would be a guest room. When we decided to tell them, we stuck a sign on the old crib that said, “ATTENTION: LONG TERM GUEST ARRIVING MARCH 2015.” with a cartoon of a baby, and below that “(Yes, we mean a baby. Congrats Big Bro and Sis!)”.This is how the kids reacted (and no, N did not really have any idea I was pregnant. He just really likes to pretend he’s in the know. 😉 ) Their reactions are SO indicative of their personalities and I’m so glad we captured it on video. N is a total baby person and he is just as excited, underneath the complaints about diaper changing.

Everything is going well so far. Even though I was sick for several months (still not sure I’m totally past it yet), it has definitely been my easiest pregnancy. Maybe being off gluten has been helpful or maybe the Unisom and B6 is working fantastically, but whatever it was it made for a much less miserable first trimester (and on into the second…). A little miserable at times, but much less so! We decided not to find out gender this time (a first for us) and man, does that make some people crazy! It is pretty entertaining how strongly people react to our decision. The baby’s nickname is Little Duck and that is good enough for us for now! We had our ultrasound a few weeks ago and everything looks perfect! I think the baby is probably a boy and have since the beginning, but the pregnancy itself has really been much more like N’s than K’s. K is fervently hoping for a girl. N wants a boy (he’s very outnumbered by girls in the family). And Josh doesn’t really have an opinion one way or the other. I think we’ll all be thrilled with whoever this little person turns out to be! One benefit to waiting to find out is that whoever is “wrong” won’t have months to be disappointed about it, because they’ll just be so excited that it is our BABY and it is HERE!

What else? Hmm. I’m seeing a midwife this time around and plan to deliver at the birth center instead of a hospital. My births have been without complication and I never get an epidural anyway, so it just feels like the most supportive environment for that kind of birth…not to mention the cost difference. It will be a new experience, though! We also plan on cloth diapering, so figuring all that out has been a fun learning experience, too. Even though we got rid of pretty much all of our baby stuff since K, we are pretty well stocked already at this point. Friends and family have been very generous with passing things on to us and we’ve had good luck with finding other items secondhand. It has been neat to watch God provide all the various things we need (and want even!)…down to funds for renovations and such! Here is a peek at the nursery (I’ll try to put up a post with reno pictures soon. Josh did such great work!), but of course, we still have decorating and such to do in there:

Little Duck is a busy little baby, always wiggly, and is growing right on schedule and has a strong, easy to find heartbeat. He/she is a pushy baby, too! I was feeling him/her push around in there long before the actual kicks started and even though there is plenty of kicking happening nowadays (strong enough for Josh and the kids to feel now and for us to see from time to time), there is still a lot of pushing around into weird positions. I suspect he/she will love swaddling, so there is still some resistance in the world to push against! Hopefully the second half of the pregnancy will be just as “easy”…no preterm labor scares like with K! We are so excited to meet him or her this Spring…19 weeks to go!