Category: Baby #2

Her Name

When I started this blog after E was born I decided to use initials to refer to him and N instead of their names. I didn’t have a lot of super well thought-out reasons, just the vague goal of trying to preserve their privacy while allowing me to write about my family. I’m not worried about someone trying to stalk us or kidnap E or anything like that; I just wanted to make it a bit more difficult in ten years for E’s punky friends to find my blog archives and tease him about those sappy letters I wrote him.

With all that said, I still wanted to share the baby’s name with you. So here it is:


Since she has the same initials as N I needed another blog name for her so I’ll call her Mimi here.

Home Again



The baby and I came home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. I know some people don’t like hospital stays but I came home from mine with slightly mixed feelings. I was excited for our little family to be together again but at the same time staying in the hospital was actually pretty pleasant except for the pain from the surgery (which was pretty intense for the first few days).

The nurses were great, the food (which you ordered room service-style) was decent, I had some lovely visitors, and when I wasn’t napping or looking after the baby I used my phone to watch a few movies using Netflix which was fun.

But it’s great to be home and to be finding our new normal as a family.

She’s here!

…all 10 LBS AND 13 OZ of her!!! (Yeah, I’m pretty glad I decided against trying for a VBAC.). She is 20 inches long and has the most adorably chubby legs and cheeks.

The c-section went smoothly and except for having quite a bit of nausea after the surgery yesterday and some pain at my incision today I’m doing well. And when I bury my nose under her chin and inhale that delicious new baby smell I get high on hormones and even my incision doesn’t really hurt that badly.

E saw her for the first time last night and was very sweet with her. And she already has N wrapped around her little finger. We are all just head-over-heels in love with her.

Mark your calendars!

I know I’ve been AWOL lately but to tell you the truth I haven’t really been doing anything very blog-worthy. I want to get back to posting fun things about E, art, photos, music, etc…but I’ve just been so tired lately.

The energy I do have goes towards cleaning out the junk room/the baby’s new room and shuffling stuff downstairs to our guest room (aka “the new junk room”). Or if I’m not doing that I’m working on my big quarterly report for work which needs to be finished next week.

E was a c-section but I had been holding out hope for a VBAC with this baby. However, after talking to my doctor this last week we decided to schedule a c-section for the 27th. There are several reasons for it (E was almost 9 lbs, this baby’s measure big too, my cervix/hips don’t like to cooperate, etc…) but it should suffice to say that the people actually involved (me, N, my doctor) feel like it’s the best decision. Some people can get really judgmental when it comes to pregnancy/birth and frankly I just don’t want to deal with it right now. I’m aware that there are several disadvantages to having a c-section and I’m not looking forward to recovering from major surgery while looking after a newborn AND a three year-old but I’ve prayed about it and feel like we’re making the right decision for us.

So now we’re just looking forward to our little girl arriving on the 27th!

A bit too much

Thanks for the feedback on the room! It’s fun to share my progress. Over the weekend I worked on cleaning out what we call “the junk room” (a.k.a. what will eventually be the baby’s room) and think I might have overdone it a bit because I’m rather sore today. Bending over at the waist doesn’t really work well for me right now so I was doing a lot of squatting to pick things up off the floor and my hips are killing me today. N kept telling me to take it easy but the nesting instinct is a harsh task mistress!

I’m off to go run some errands and then work some more around the house. But first I wanted to share this. This Pulp album has been around for a long time but N just recently bought it and and I’ve been listening to it a lot lately. I have a soft spot for sexiness that’s a little bit silly and this video is spot on.

Week 36ish Ultrasound

Since E was a c-section my doctor wanted to do an ultrasound to measure how big baby #2 is looking. Granted, late-pregnancy ultrasounds are notoriously inaccurate but I went in for it today anyway.

Baby girl measured 8 lbs 6 oz which puts her due on the 12th of this month rather than the 31st. But the tech said that the weight was probably high by at least a pound. So…as expected the ultrasounds wasn’t that helpful.

However, it wasn’t a complete waste since the ultrasound showed that she already has quite a bit of hair and big chubby cheeks. It was really cute to see her little hand curled up by her face. I can’t believe she’s going to be here in a few weeks! I’ve been really tired with a cold these last few days but now I’m even more anxious to get a couple last minute things finished around the house.

28-Week Ultrasound


I spent most of the morning at my doctor’s office getting an ultrasound and then waiting around to meet with my doctor.

When I had an ultrasound at 20 weeks they saw that I had a marginal case of placenta previa and so my doctor wanted to check me again to see if the placenta moved up and out of the way. If it didn’t it would mean an automatic c-section.

Luckily, I don’t have placenta previa any more. And the ultrasound tech confirmed that yep, the baby is definitely a girl. Everything else looks great. She’s measured in at 3 and a half pounds which puts her in about the 68 percentile as these things go. And the results of my glucose test came back and I passed with flying colors so keep the Cozy Shack pudding coming!

We still haven’t decided on a name yet. For a while I really liked Rosalie but it didn’t sit well with N and then I also remembered that it’s the name of one of the vampires in Twilight which was both strikes 2 and 3 against it. We still have about three months left so we haven’t started panicking…yet.

Giggles

I was pretty zonked last night and decided to try and get to bed a little earlier than usual (i.e. before 11pm). But then I stayed up for forty minutes lying in bed with N talking about baby names.

After a while the serious suggestions (Beatrice, Ada, Alice, Faith Jr. {N’s idea}, etc…) dissolved into silliness. N’s most memorable suggestion? Faith Condoleezza Rice-a-Roni, JUNIOR.

Maybe you had to be there, but man I love that he makes me laugh everyday.

IT’S A…

…GIRL!

And we are thrilled.

Everything looked healthy and it was great to see her wiggle around and stretch. I’m not sure how they measure it but she’s supposedly 1 lb already and her arms, legs, spine, brain, heart, etc… all look great. It was fascinating to see the four chambers of her heart pump away; you could even see the valves opening and closing.

Beforehand I didn’t think that I had a feeling either way but I found myself still being surprised. We are really thrilled though–possibly even as much as my sister Jan. She has three boys (10, 8, and 9 months) and is so excited to have a little niece close by to dote on.

At the ultrasound they did notice that I have marginal placenta previa. The placenta’s lying low and partially covering my cervix so in 8 more weeks I need to have another ultrasound to look at it. My doctor said it might move up and out of way but if it doesn’t then I’ll need to have a c-section for sure. E was a c-section and his went really well so I’m okay with whatever needs to happen happening.

But names, man I’m stumped on names. We had two that we really like if she was a boy but the field for girl names is so wide open. I have a few that I like but I’m quite relieved that we still have four more months to decide.

So how about it, any name suggestions?

Ultrasound today!

My 20-week ultrasound is later today. I’m pretty excited. So excited in fact that when I woke up today at 6 am having to go to the bathroom I couldn’t get back to sleep and spent an hour tossing and turning and listening to N breathe.

I’ve been fairly nonchalant about this pregnancy in large part because after my miscarriage in December I thought I might lose it at any time. But for the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling the baby move around and it seems much more real. I’m excited to find out if we’re having a girl or boy.

I’d honestly be thrilled with either. It would be great to have another little boy close to E’s age so they’re pals (and I already have all the boy stuff I need) and. Plus we already have our favorite boy names narrowed down to two. I would like to have a little girl at some point but we’re planning on having a few more kids (including adopting) so it’s not like this is our last chance at that. And regarding girls’ names the field is wide open (and might require a few rounds of negotiations).

I don’t have a feeling either way, so it’s going to be a surprise. With E I was sure it was a boy before we went to the ultrasound. I had been wanting a girl but felt kind of wretched about it since we had been wanting a baby for so long. I felt guilty and selfish and didn’t want to bring any negative feelings to the situation when I had so much to feel thankful for. So I spent some time praying, expressing my gratitude and asking for maturity and peace. And a few weeks before my ultrasound with E I suddenly knew it was a boy. I was thinking on things and suddenly in my mind’s eye I saw a little boy (with E’s old mushroom haircut) wearing a striped shirt and jean shorts standing in our backyard. And very matter-of-factly I thought: “Hey, that’s our little boy. And he’s AWESOME.” So the ultrasound wasn’t a surprise and when I saw E’s face for the first time it seemed very familiar and it was simply like: “Oh, hello again.”

Besides hoping this baby is healthy I don’t have any reservations and I’m excited for the surprise. But I’ll always be thankful for a Heavenly Father who cared enough about a silly young me to reassure me that no matter what being a parent would be better than I could imagine.