Preparing for Baby #3 – Part II

I am doing a mini-series about preparing for baby #3’s arrival in less than a month.  Here is a link to part I to get you up to speed.  

I left off finishing up my first trimester still feeling yucky but relieved that we were expecting a healthy baby.

Valentine’s Day weekend was at the beginning of my second trimester.  Steve and I decided that we needed to get-away for a few days to spend some time without kids so that we could really talk and “digest” all of the changes that were to come.  We ended up finding a nice place with a weekend package in Washington, DC and found a great sitter to come over and stay with the girls for two nights so that we didn’t have to worry about packing them up.  It was a good thing for us.  I was able to get some extra rest without little ones waking me up and I was able to talk with Steve about the emotions I was feeling about having another baby.  I was really struggling with feeling selfish.  I was only looking at how this new baby was going to affect me and my daily life.  I was having trouble seeing past those sleepless newborn nights and all of the challenges a new baby can bring.  I wasn’t seeing the big picture of the happiness, joy, and love that this new little one was going to bring to our family and those around him. 

It was at this point that we were ready to start sharing our news with people outside of our family.  We actually shared the news with Natalie over dinner one night.  We knew that she wouldn’t understand that the new baby wouldn’t be here until late summer so we held off telling her until we were ready to tell others.  She was very excited and actually told lots of people about our new baby.  The day after we told her she went to school and told her teachers and then went to Ukrop’s and shared it with the employees in all of the different departments that we were going to have a new baby.  It was interesting to see people’s response.  Some people would look at me and say, “really?”  and some thought she was talking about getting a new doll and then later asked me if she meant a real baby.

I began to pull out the bin of maternity clothes I had and received bags of clothes back from friends who had borrowed my clothes during their pregnancies.  The world of maternity clothes, it is a love/hate relationship.  They are so comfortable at first because your regular clothes are getting too tight, but they are really too big for early in the second trimester so you feel like you are just trying to hide the fact that you have put on some extra weight.  I fell in love with anything with an empire waist.  It helped to hide the growing baby bump without making me feel frumpy and they were long enough to cover up the fact that the only pants I was really wearing now had an elastic waistband.

I was finally starting to feel good, the yucky symptoms of my first trimester had finally gone away.  I started to feel like I had energy again. 

We found out at my 20 week appointment (that coincidentally was April 1st) that we were having a baby boy.  Steve and I really thought it was going to be another girl.  We also found out that there was one possible problem – he has a two vessel cord.  Babies are suppose to have a three-vessel cord.  This is a very minor problem and with monitoring really doesn’t result in any long-term problems.  Babies with two-vessel cords can be on the smaller side, and sometimes the kidney on the side that isn’t getting as much blood flow can show some problems.  They also sometimes have to be delivered a little early because they seem to have low levels of amniotic fluid.  We have friends that had a healthy little guy in September who went through the same issue, so it really didn’t worry us.  It just required me to see a neo-natal specialist every 4 weeks until 36 weeks for an ultrasound to make sure he is still growing well, and that his kidneys and liver are doing well.  It has allowed us to see his little profile more often and have more ultrasound pictures of him.  Thankfully he is doing fine and the two-vessel cord thing isn’t slowing down his growth.  He has been measuring 95% on the growth charts and two weeks larger than he should be.

We were able to take a short family vacation in early April and meet some of my family in Washington, DC for a few days so that we could visit the National Zoo and the Smithsonian.  It was an incredibly hot for April but they had fun. 

I started getting into the swing of things again.  In mid-March I was in charge of reception honoring a missionary couple from our church who served in Europe for 40 years.  My mom, sister, and I started to plan a bridal shower for my brother’s fiancé for late May (they got married in early July).  I was in charge of a ladies luncheon at our church the Saturday before Mother’s Day.  I started to think about and plan out how we wanted to celebrate Megan’s second birthday.  Steve had a business trip to the UK and we talked about it and talked with my doctor and made plans for me to join him there for part of the trip.

During all of this Steve and I realized that one of the things that we needed to do was start to do was to look at our priorities again.  We had several commitments and things that we were involved with at our church.  The transition from Ukrop’s to MARTIN’S was taking place and we knew that that would affect my work schedule.  We talked and prayed about it and realized that we need to take a temporary leave of absence from our duties with the college students at our church.  We realized that with soon to be three children 4&1/2 and under that we wouldn’t be able to invest the time that we had in the past.  We talked to the youth pastor at our church about it and agreed that it would be best for us to step down in early May before the majority of our students who go to school outside of Richmond came home.  That way we wouldn’t have to get caught up with summer activities and then leave in the middle of the summer.  We decided that we would talk about going back to that ministry in January.  We figure that it is going to take us a few months to figure out what our “new normal” is going to be with three kids.

I will talk more about my third trimester and the list of things I have or want to get done before our little guy arrives in another post.