I am Pregnant!

I am thrilled to share with you that we are expecting our 3rd baby. Yep! I am pregnant! In January “Team Girl” or “Team Boy” will be getting a new member.

First of all, let’s dig into the fun stuff before I share some of the struggles we had getting to this point.

What is your due date? –  mid January 2017

How far along are you? – I am 17 weeks, and tomorrow I will start month number 5!

How are you feeling? – I am feeling much better now that I am in the 2nd trimester. The 1st trimester was not much fun. I was exhausted, light headed, and very nauseous. I never threw up, but I would gag or dry heave daily if not multiple times a day. It was pretty common for me to hear the kids yelling for Nate while I was hunched over the kitchen sink. “DAAAAD!!! MOM IS THROWING UP!!!!!!!” It is funny now. Kinda.

Did the 1st trimester symptoms get in the way of life or were they just annoying? – A glance at my flower beds and garden will give you the answer to that question! My garden is dead from lack of watering. Yet the weeds in my flower beds are fully thriving. I never planted flowers for my porch. We ate a lot of convenience foods. And going on vacation just about pushed me over the edge! I was in tears trying to pack for vacation early in this pregnancy. I just didn’t have the energy to get it all done, but magically I pulled through.

How did you tell your kids? – We sat down together as a family and I gave them the big news in a very straightforward way. We didn’t want to do anything too cutesy because we wanted to be sure the message was clear enough that it didn’t go over their 6 and 4 year old heads. Nate recorded the whole thing, which we will share soon. They were thrilled!

Are you showing? – Yep!! They say you pop faster after your first baby, and boy is that true! I have been joking that my bump is part baby and part ice cream. Haha! I was able to hide my growing bump from friends at the pool with this ruffled swimsuit from Target. I bought it in Electric Blue. I can’t recommend it enough to anyone who wants to disguise a belly bulge, whether it is caused by a baby or ice cream!

Any cravings? – My biggest craving this time around has been baked potatoes with butter and sour cream. I craved Taco Bell with Grace and oranges with Noah. It is fun to see how each pregnancy is different. The picture above is from June when I couldn’t help myself, and I became a pregnancy cliche as I bought myself some pickles.

Will you find out the gender? – Nope. Especially after they were wrong about Noah!

And now for our struggles . . .

Our decision to add another little one to our family did not come easily to us. Right after Noah was born, our dear friends experienced the horrible tragedy of a stillbirth. At the very moment we heard that there was no longer a heartbeat, I was convinced that we would never try to have another baby. I was terrified at the thought of us opening ourselves up to that kind of loss.

However, 3 years later we took a deep breath and decided we would try to have another baby afterall. If we were going to take this plunge, I wanted to have as much control as possible. I figured out the best month possible for our next baby to be born, and we waited until then to start trying. While we were waiting, I filled my freezer with meals and planned ahead as much as I could to make my life with a newborn the next year easier.

Yet it didn’t work out as I had planned. We didn’t get pregnant when we had hoped, and when we did get pregnant it didn’t last.

This past December we had a miscarriage 6 weeks into our pregnancy.

From the moment that we found out we were expecting, Nate and I felt uneasy about the pregnancy. I was very anxious, and the complete lack of pregnancy symptoms didn’t help. It was as if we knew our pregnancy wasn’t going to last, but that didn’t make the loss any easier to manage.

With a broken heart, we tried our best to get through the Christmas season. I wrote this the day after the miscarriage started. As I shared on Instagram, I was going through the motions, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Time passed and we found ourselves pregnant again, but this time it wasn’t nearly as micromanaged as the last pregnancy. The new pregnancy didn’t erase the pain from our miscarriage, but it did help. Nate and I are very thankful that from the beginning we had a peace about this pregnancy that we never had with the last one.

I am looking forward to celebrating this baby with you. It will be fun to share my progress with you here on the blog and in my monthly newsletter. In fact, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for the first glimpse at my baby bump! 

For even more pregnancy fun, listen to this week’s Sorta Awesome podcast. Megan and I share strange pregnancy symptoms, awful comments we’ve heard from strangers, why Nate and I always fight when picking out baby names, and many more pregnancy confessions!

Thank you for allowing me to celebrate this little one with you while we continue to grieve the loss of our little one in December.