Upcoming Additions
I’ve been trying to find the right time to say this. So this post has been a long time coming. But I’ve been busy and I haven’t taken the time nor made the time to sit down and actually write about this. Lots of reasons really…
I’m expecting my 3rd child.
Yep, seven years after Ethan and I’m having another one.
This was not planned.
So May of 2014 I knew I was gonna get pregnant when it happened. Because. Yeah. Birds and Bees and all that. We’ve been actively trying NOT to have another child. I mean, I’ve not been on birth control since Ethan. I hated the side effects. I hated how it made me feel, I hated everything about it. And I said no more. So we had switched to other more natural methods that I’m not gonna go into detail about. (The good thing about this is my body naturally went back to its predictable rhythm after all the drugs worked out of it. And research helped to understand just where I was at that point with my biological clock.) But the final point is as a husband and wife we had decided that we were gonna wait for a little while. And then a little while turned into a few years. And then it just seemed right to say that we were done after Alex’s MD diagnosis and Ethan’s issues this last Spring.
We’d talked about adoption though. Because I’d always wanted a little girl. I just didn’t want another pregnancy and another bout of post partum depression. Nor did I want all the pregnancy things again, despite the end results. And we seriously do not want to have another child with MD either. (Because it’s highly likely that it could happen again and it’s also highly likely if we had a little girl the genetics of that problem would get passed on as well because it is an X-linked genetic disease.) And why consciously do that? Knowing what we know? (I mean we love Alex, and we feel pretty lucky that his situation isn’t worse. Because his genetics despite having MD still put him in a good position, we are very fortunate its not worse. But nothing can predict that the right circumstances for a 2nd MD child would place them in the same fortunate circumstance. It’s unpredictable. That’s genetics.
Even after knowing all this, two weeks later when I ran my pregnancy test, I knew this was gonna change everything again. And I was hoping we’d dodged a bullet. But it didn’t work that way. (And no, no one can say the Lord works in mysterious ways, because it’s more like my husband works in mysterious ways. This is all on us. I’m not gonna blame it on some higher power stepping in here because it wasn’t. We are married consenting adults. You play with fire, you will get burned at some point. That’s just how it goes. I’m not blaming this on someone else, I’m owning it for what it is.)
So it happened in May 2014.
Fast forward to today. 31 weeks tomorrow. It’s mostly been a positive pregnancy. I went through about the same stuff as other pregnancies. Same weeks of nausea. Felt the baby start moving a bit sooner…
But the difference is because I’ve not been pregnant for over 7 years I decided pretty early on that no matter what happened I wanted to be happy about this pregnancy. I didn’t want to dwell on all the reasons why I should be upset about it. Because that list was pretty long and I didn’t even want to entertain it. It is a VERY long list. And I’ve contemplated it several times before setting it aside and saying to myself, “I can’t change what has already been put in motion. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have another child.” I mean besides the worries of another MD child. I just wanted to say to myself, look myself in the mirror years later and say there are no regrets to this surprise pregnancy. I want this child. And this child has a right to be wanted.
And because I only wanted to remember the good things and not all the other things, I held off talking about or journaling or expressing on a day to day basis. Just stayed in the now the whole time, stayed busy, trying to abandon the “what if” and the “I hope” and the “this is what I want” this is “what I expect.” Until now.
Sure I had those knee jerk reactions. And I just stayed silent about them. I knew I would have them and I just didn’t want them spoiling this elaborately crafted attempt to consciously chose this whole experience to be uplifting and wanted. Maybe it’s one huge lie that will catch up with me? But I feel really healthy about it. It’s not like I’m a first time mom that has no idea what she is getting herself into. I’ve raised two babies already. Not completely into adulthood but I think I have the first 5 years covered. I’ve tossed out all the stuff that just doesn’t work for me. I could care less what other women think about the way I do things. Or the way we, my husband and I, parent our children. Or the way we live our lives. We are being realistic about this new addition. We are being responsible.
And we are having another boy.
We were all hoping for a girl. Even the boys. But this makes sense to be honest. I have all boy things. (Which surprisingly I haven’t gotten rid of, so all set, ready to go!) As much as I think it would have benefited the boys to have a girl in the house, another boy makes sense.
I was disappointed. Not gonna deny that. But again it came down to this whole choice thing. I chose after the first shock to not let it bring down what I feel about this new child coming into our lives means. And how I will treat him. He’s at this point a valid individual to our family and I want him.
So there it is. We are having another kiddo, it’s a boy, and in 2 months he’ll be here. And I think at my age, I don’t want another pregnancy like this again. Because although it’s been mostly a normal pregnancy, a few differences but nothing major. I don’t really want to spend another year being pregnant again. I know I don’t look that old, but I am just ready to put this part of my life behind me. It’s time. The good thing is that I can say that it’s been a good experience. Not a nightmare experience. Just not a cake walk either. And I think for me mental health wise, that’s a good place to be.
I know it’s time to just move on after this. At least pregnancy wise. We’ll have to make a decision on the adoption thing next year some time. I just want to be past the baby stage as close to 40 as possible. (Oh yeah, I did put that number down didn’t I? It’s still a few years off, but that time is quickly closing… )
Yes, there is the chance we could have another MD child. Especially since it’s a baby boy. So we are gonna test him pretty early. Because I just don’t want to be surprised later. I want to know outright. Put all worries to rest. I mean I suspect he’s gonna be fine for all the moving he does in the womb, more than the other two put together did, I think he’s fine and happy and healthy. (And that’s not a measurable test, because it doesn’t matter if he moves more in the womb.) But just to have a fact, a measurable, he is free. We want to have him tested. I mean if it was a girl… we’d still be up in the air about it. Because then we just set those worries aside for our grandchildren. And it feels pretty great to know that’s not happening either.
But there it is. Now I can start documenting all the fun little things that have happened for whatever time I have left. Because I have had them. Just last week he started jumping at noises. Like he suddenly started to hear the world around him and take notice. And I want to remember those moments. I mean I have them in my head but 3 years from now if I don’t write them down, they will be gone. A seven year gap has reminded me of that. I might want to go back and remember all of this. I’ve done it for other pregnancies so I don’t want this pregnancy to be the one that I dropped the ball on. Even if I can justify it’s necessity for the place I was in when I had the experience. I just want something to remember the passing of this experience too. Boys grow up. Moms remember the little bits of things that happen between the scraped knees and the tooth loss. We remember tickling the baby feet when they were just below our ribs and the funny way you wrinkled your nose when you tasted a lemon for the first time. We remember the time that kick hit your ribs and the time we had to flick your nose because you bit down while breast feeding and it hurt like a son of a gun. But you never did it again. *wink*
Those are all good moments, not to be forgotten. At least not by me.
I’m expecting my 3rd child.
Yep, seven years after Ethan and I’m having another one.
This was not planned.
So May of 2014 I knew I was gonna get pregnant when it happened. Because. Yeah. Birds and Bees and all that. We’ve been actively trying NOT to have another child. I mean, I’ve not been on birth control since Ethan. I hated the side effects. I hated how it made me feel, I hated everything about it. And I said no more. So we had switched to other more natural methods that I’m not gonna go into detail about. (The good thing about this is my body naturally went back to its predictable rhythm after all the drugs worked out of it. And research helped to understand just where I was at that point with my biological clock.) But the final point is as a husband and wife we had decided that we were gonna wait for a little while. And then a little while turned into a few years. And then it just seemed right to say that we were done after Alex’s MD diagnosis and Ethan’s issues this last Spring.
We’d talked about adoption though. Because I’d always wanted a little girl. I just didn’t want another pregnancy and another bout of post partum depression. Nor did I want all the pregnancy things again, despite the end results. And we seriously do not want to have another child with MD either. (Because it’s highly likely that it could happen again and it’s also highly likely if we had a little girl the genetics of that problem would get passed on as well because it is an X-linked genetic disease.) And why consciously do that? Knowing what we know? (I mean we love Alex, and we feel pretty lucky that his situation isn’t worse. Because his genetics despite having MD still put him in a good position, we are very fortunate its not worse. But nothing can predict that the right circumstances for a 2nd MD child would place them in the same fortunate circumstance. It’s unpredictable. That’s genetics.
Even after knowing all this, two weeks later when I ran my pregnancy test, I knew this was gonna change everything again. And I was hoping we’d dodged a bullet. But it didn’t work that way. (And no, no one can say the Lord works in mysterious ways, because it’s more like my husband works in mysterious ways. This is all on us. I’m not gonna blame it on some higher power stepping in here because it wasn’t. We are married consenting adults. You play with fire, you will get burned at some point. That’s just how it goes. I’m not blaming this on someone else, I’m owning it for what it is.)
So it happened in May 2014.
Fast forward to today. 31 weeks tomorrow. It’s mostly been a positive pregnancy. I went through about the same stuff as other pregnancies. Same weeks of nausea. Felt the baby start moving a bit sooner…
But the difference is because I’ve not been pregnant for over 7 years I decided pretty early on that no matter what happened I wanted to be happy about this pregnancy. I didn’t want to dwell on all the reasons why I should be upset about it. Because that list was pretty long and I didn’t even want to entertain it. It is a VERY long list. And I’ve contemplated it several times before setting it aside and saying to myself, “I can’t change what has already been put in motion. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have another child.” I mean besides the worries of another MD child. I just wanted to say to myself, look myself in the mirror years later and say there are no regrets to this surprise pregnancy. I want this child. And this child has a right to be wanted.
And because I only wanted to remember the good things and not all the other things, I held off talking about or journaling or expressing on a day to day basis. Just stayed in the now the whole time, stayed busy, trying to abandon the “what if” and the “I hope” and the “this is what I want” this is “what I expect.” Until now.
Sure I had those knee jerk reactions. And I just stayed silent about them. I knew I would have them and I just didn’t want them spoiling this elaborately crafted attempt to consciously chose this whole experience to be uplifting and wanted. Maybe it’s one huge lie that will catch up with me? But I feel really healthy about it. It’s not like I’m a first time mom that has no idea what she is getting herself into. I’ve raised two babies already. Not completely into adulthood but I think I have the first 5 years covered. I’ve tossed out all the stuff that just doesn’t work for me. I could care less what other women think about the way I do things. Or the way we, my husband and I, parent our children. Or the way we live our lives. We are being realistic about this new addition. We are being responsible.
And we are having another boy.
We were all hoping for a girl. Even the boys. But this makes sense to be honest. I have all boy things. (Which surprisingly I haven’t gotten rid of, so all set, ready to go!) As much as I think it would have benefited the boys to have a girl in the house, another boy makes sense.
I was disappointed. Not gonna deny that. But again it came down to this whole choice thing. I chose after the first shock to not let it bring down what I feel about this new child coming into our lives means. And how I will treat him. He’s at this point a valid individual to our family and I want him.
So there it is. We are having another kiddo, it’s a boy, and in 2 months he’ll be here. And I think at my age, I don’t want another pregnancy like this again. Because although it’s been mostly a normal pregnancy, a few differences but nothing major. I don’t really want to spend another year being pregnant again. I know I don’t look that old, but I am just ready to put this part of my life behind me. It’s time. The good thing is that I can say that it’s been a good experience. Not a nightmare experience. Just not a cake walk either. And I think for me mental health wise, that’s a good place to be.
I know it’s time to just move on after this. At least pregnancy wise. We’ll have to make a decision on the adoption thing next year some time. I just want to be past the baby stage as close to 40 as possible. (Oh yeah, I did put that number down didn’t I? It’s still a few years off, but that time is quickly closing… )
Yes, there is the chance we could have another MD child. Especially since it’s a baby boy. So we are gonna test him pretty early. Because I just don’t want to be surprised later. I want to know outright. Put all worries to rest. I mean I suspect he’s gonna be fine for all the moving he does in the womb, more than the other two put together did, I think he’s fine and happy and healthy. (And that’s not a measurable test, because it doesn’t matter if he moves more in the womb.) But just to have a fact, a measurable, he is free. We want to have him tested. I mean if it was a girl… we’d still be up in the air about it. Because then we just set those worries aside for our grandchildren. And it feels pretty great to know that’s not happening either.
But there it is. Now I can start documenting all the fun little things that have happened for whatever time I have left. Because I have had them. Just last week he started jumping at noises. Like he suddenly started to hear the world around him and take notice. And I want to remember those moments. I mean I have them in my head but 3 years from now if I don’t write them down, they will be gone. A seven year gap has reminded me of that. I might want to go back and remember all of this. I’ve done it for other pregnancies so I don’t want this pregnancy to be the one that I dropped the ball on. Even if I can justify it’s necessity for the place I was in when I had the experience. I just want something to remember the passing of this experience too. Boys grow up. Moms remember the little bits of things that happen between the scraped knees and the tooth loss. We remember tickling the baby feet when they were just below our ribs and the funny way you wrinkled your nose when you tasted a lemon for the first time. We remember the time that kick hit your ribs and the time we had to flick your nose because you bit down while breast feeding and it hurt like a son of a gun. But you never did it again. *wink*
Those are all good moments, not to be forgotten. At least not by me.