Growing and growing

Our little family of five will soon be a family of six! Baby #4 is due on January 9, 2011. This pregnancy started off with a little bit of a hiccup but everything is looking good now. When I was 7 weeks along, I went for an ultrasound to date the pregnancy because my cycles run a little long and the midwife wanted to get an accurate due date. The ultrasound tech told me that there was a little bleed but it probably wasn't anything to worry about. So, I went home, feeling great and so excited to share the news with our families. A few hours later, I got a call from my midwife's office saying that they scheduled a follow-up ultrasound for me. Huh? I just had an ultrasound and everything looked great, to my untrained eye. I was finally able to talk to a nurse at the office and she told me that the baby's heartbeat was around 50 beats per minute and I had a subchorionic hemorrhage. She told me that the pregnancy may not be viable, I may have a miscarriage and there was nothing I could do about it. All the hope and excitement I had felt was gone. And to top it all off, Amelia got a nasty gash in her head that night that we went to the ER for. Talk about an emotional roller coaster.

So, two weeks later, I went to my 9 week ultrasound. Everything turned out to be fine. The heart rate was up around 150 and the bleeding was still there but didn't seem to be a reason to be concerned. A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and now we could finally celebrate this new little one joining our family. I was later told that the 50 bpm that was reported after my first ultrasound was most likely just a typo. Um, thanks.

At 12 weeks, I took Amelia, Ashley and Elliot to my appointment. Amelia got to help the midwife with the Doppler to find the baby's heartbeat. Since things got off to such a rocky start, we hadn't told the kids that we were expecting so Amelia was really surprised to find out that there was a baby growing in mommy's belly. She was actually a little upset with me that I hadn't told her sooner.

I am now 21 weeks along (finally past the half way mark) and feeling great. We had our ultrasound on August 18th and found out that we are having a....Wait, this story needs a little background information. When I was pregnant with Amelia, Guy and I decided to only find out ahead of time for every other baby. We didn't find out with Amelia, then we did find out with Ashley, didn't with Elliot, so technically we were due to find out. The only problem is that I really enjoy not knowing. I think it is fun to keep everyone guessing. But this time, we had our older kids to consider. Amelia we sure that the baby was a girl. She kept talking about all the things that she would get to do with her sister and on and on and on. I tried to tell her that it could be a boy, but she wouldn't listen. I even asked her and Ashley if they wanted to find out before the baby was born if it was a boy or a girl and they both said that they wanted to wait. Guy, of course, wanted to find out and he thought that I was influencing the girls' decision. Then, the day before the ultrasound, Amelia changed her tune and said that the baby was a boy. Ashley was still convinced that it was a girl, Guy thought that it was a boy, and I thought we were having another girl since I was experiencing more morning sickness, just like when I was pregnant with Amelia. So wouldn't you know that the very first thing we see on the screen during my ultrasound was evidence of a little baby boy, clear as day! Ashley has nicknamed the baby Goober and tells me all the time that she wants to see baby Goober out of my belly, not just pictures. Elliot is excited to get a big boy bed, and the girls are excited to move downstairs and decorate their new room as a princess room.

Just 19 weeks to go and so much to do. I'm hoping that our basement bathroom will be finished so the girls won't have to come all the way upstairs in the middle of the night to go potty. However, that bathroom was originally supposed to be done before Elliot was born, so I'm not getting my hopes up too high.