Welcome to the story of your birth. This blog is my attempt to record various milestones during your mother's pregnancy with you. I did it through your sister Madison's birth so it is only fair that I make one for you as well. I know my parents (GiGi and The Colonel) sort of stopped remembering things pertaining to children born after me and I don't think that by the time you're old enough to want to ask me about your birth I'll be able to remember it with the clarity that I'll be able to record it here.
Here is you at 8.5 weeks:
I'll start with when we found out your mom was pregnant with you. We had just returned from a weekend at Mimi & Boompa's lake house with some of mom's friends. We had just decided that we wanted to have a second child. Normally this takes a while to go from "lets have a child" to "we're pregnant" but in your case, just like your sister's, you were immediately conceived. In fact, as found out at the first sonogram, you were actually conceived a week before we went to the lake!
(At this time Madison came over to me and I asked her if she wanted to say anything to you and she said, "I love you and I'm going to be gentle with you!" Hopefully by this time you two still love each other and there is none of the sibling rivalry that my sisters had when we were growing up...) BTW this is your sister using a wash cloth as a "dress"
So surprisingly the very first pregnancy test your mom took came out positive. Now from Madison's pregnancy we knew that there is virtually no way for a pregnancy test to be a false positive. Apparently there is an enzyme it detects to be positive that only a pregnant woman will have. Regardless we still had to take a couple more just to be sure. After those we knew your mom was pregnant with you but it really didn't "set in". It happened so quickly and you hear about couples who have to try for months to get pregnant and yet we got it done on the first try. It really didn't fully set in I think, for me at least, until that first sonorgram and we got to see you there and hear your wonderful heart beat. 174 BPM and more importantly only ONE heartbeat. You see twins and triplets run in your mom's family and twins also run in mine. Thankfully there was only one of you in there - we don't know what we would have done with twin newborns and a 3 year old. It would have been madness!
Now that we knew you were on the way we had to figure out a clever way to tell your grandparents. Half the fun of having a child is surprising your family with the news. Luckily my parents were flying into stay with us that weekend so we decided to buy a shirt for Madison that said "I'm going to be a big sister" and put it on her and see how long it took the grandparents to notice. My parents arrived and Madison kept being shy and cuddling with me or your mom not showing her shirt. Your mom, not being able to keep a surprise, eventually just told them "Look at her shirt!". Then my parents got it and there was much yelling and cheering (my mom loves babies). Mimi & Boompa were coming over as well for a BBQ so we tried the same trick with them. This time Madison was running around with the shirt in clear view but neither of them noticed! Again your mom was like "Do you like Madison's new shirt?" and then they got it and there was more cheering and hugs.
Here's the shirt:
Since Aunt Erin is in Chicago and Aunt Kim and Uncle Chris are in Georgia I had to text them that picture. They got it a lot faster than the grandparents although I was talking to Chris on the phone while I sent the pic and he didn't look at it. All through the call I didn't tell him and after we hung up he texted me back "You couldn't tell me that over the phone?!".
So that's the story of how we found out and how we told the family. Currently you're making your mom very nauseous at night and very tired. She's usually in bed around 830-9p. She'll be very happy when the evening sickness portion of the pregnancy is over with! Only 31ish weeks until we meet you - looking forward to it!
Love,
Dad
