so this baby is due next month and now i'm getting the feeling i should write a few things down before the pregnancy is over and i can't remember anything before that cute little one.

this pregnancy has been a bit rougher from the start. our trip to india in the first trimester though could be partially responsible for the extra morning sickness and fatigue though. but the sickness seemed to stick around a little longer this time.

by about christmas time though i started to feel more like myself again, plus things always get a little more fun once you start to actually look pregnant.

i actually may have started showing a little later this time around, but this kid has really made up for lost time in the last month or so. i definitely feel just a huge as last time at this point, if not bigger!


seeing the belly grow has been exciting for jia and really made things start to click for her. plus she got to take a big sibling class at the hospital which was pretty cool.

the tough part with a toddler this time around has been trying to keep up the bigger i get!

this week i paid the consequences of that as i fell from a swing and landed hard on my bottom! i wasn't hurt, but when i stood up my pants were wet! now, with a 25lb belly sitting on my bladder at this point i knew it was very possible that i had just peed myself, but this far along there is just so much pressure down there that it's impossible to know where anything is coming from, so we went to the hospital just to make sure i wasn't leaking amniotic fluid. after a quick false positive test at the hospital that totally freaked us out, they ordered the better fluid test to confirm. if you're leaking amniotic fluid you basically get the joy of living in the hospital bed until your baby arrives. i could not even think about spending a month in that room so we were praying like crazy! thankfully that fluid test told me i'd just peed myself, and i've never been so happy to hear embarrassing news like that!


another interesting thing we're keeping an eye on this pregnancy is that i have a low placenta. at our 32 week appointment it was borderline...almost a safe distance from the cervix, but not quite. apparently where your placenta ends up is totally random and based on wherever the embryo decides to implant at conception. however a low placenta can mean dangerous hemorrhaging during birth so often a c-section is required. but unfortunately my placenta is also in the exact place where they would normally go in for a c-section, which means the old school more complicated kind of c-section would be likely. so we're praying hard that things will still move a bit more! despite having a horrifically long vaginal delivery with jia, i'd much rather deal with the recovery from that than an old school c-section!

but other than all that things are going well. of course heartburn is a major part of my life at this point, but i think that's par for the course when you're carrying a hairy half indian baby! ;) thankfully this time i'm taking nexium, which is working miracles! i wish i'd known about it last time! also i may be less achy this time...maybe my body has already been broken in! :)

i have my usual cravings this time around...eating ice and smelling rubber and leather. weird i know. which i did discover i'm a bit anemic at my hospital incident this week though, so that could explain things. and at least i'm not eating anything weird!

i'm getting excited to meet this kid though. she seems a bit spunky, and is often hanging out in some crazy position when we get to peek at her in ultrasounds. but still it would be best if she gets to hang out in there until around her due date though because i still have so much to do!

so with our daughter jia we decided to be surprised and wait until the birth to find out the gender. it was a ton of fun, and i totally recommend it! after a hard 36 hour labor it was a pretty cool moment to look down and learn i had a baby girl.

probably some of my other favorite things about waiting to find out were hearing everyone's guesses and wives tales, and getting a lot of practical baby gifts rather than being over loaded with blue or pink. however i'd say the cons were the annoyance of constantly being asked what i was having, and being terrified every time i visited the doctor's office that someone would give it away! lol.

so this time we went into the pregnancy totally prepared to not find out the gender again. however one day my husband had a change of heart and suggested that maybe we could find out this time since there's a good chance this will be our last child, just to experience it both ways.

at first i wasn't sold on the idea, but then when jia started saying she wanted a "girl baby" and i realized she wouldn't be there in the delivery room to share the moment of truth with us i changed my mind. this is a big life event for all of us as a family now, so we decided to share as much of it as we could with jia in a fun way.

my family was meeting up with us for my birthday the same week as our 20 week ultrasound, so it seemed like a good time to do an intimate little gender reveal party.

during the ultrasound anatomy scan we asked the tech to seal the gender up in an envelope for us rather than tell us right there. strangely we were watching the whole ultrasound and didn't even notice when she took a peek at the genitals. i usually have no idea what i'm looking at unless someone tells me apparently!

later that day we handed the envelope off to our good friends with instructions. we decided to do the whole balloons in a box style of reveal since jia loves both balloons and opening gifts...it seemed like a win/win!

on the day of the reveal jia started to change her tune and say she wanted a boy baby. after some conversation we realized she didn't really know the difference between a boy and a girl...try explaining that one to a toddler! lol.

let me preface the big news by saying that another reason i was ok with finding out this time was that i knew i would be completely equally happy with either outcome. with our first pregnancy i had a slight secret preference for a girl, just because i knew that was what shomik really wanted! so since we already had our girl that took some pressure off. but i loved the idea of this one being a girl so that jia would have a sister, which is something i never had and i hear it can be such a special relationship. also, from a practical standpoint, since the babies will be almost exactly 3 years apart, and of jia's girl stuff would totally work for another girl. but my husband and i are also both from families of 2 kids of the opposite gender, so a family with a boy and girl is something we're familiar with, and a boy would be fun and new!

but i knew that God would give us whatever we needed, so we were excited for the box to reveal....



another GIRL!!!

and jia was super excited about pink balloons! lol.

so it looks like shomik will continue to be the king of the house, and he is absolutely thrilled. he told me afterwards that he was secretly hoping for another girl. i think my husband may be a bit sexist...against his own gender! lol. though i know that the father/daughter relationship is such a special one so i don't blame him for reveling in that, and i know for a fact that little girls are a blast!

i must say that so far i have no regrets about finding out. it's really fun in it's own way and i'm glad for both experiences! :)



so we're feeling very thankful and blessed, and most of all we're thankful for what looks like a healthy baby! thanks for all your love and prayers!