The Linda Family

Dear little one,

As we are mere hours from your arrival the flood of emotions is undescribable.  With your big sister we had a date, there was a plan, and all was set.  You get to arrive on your own, and you decided being early was a good idea.  I don’t blame you, punctuality is a good trait.  It will take you far in life.  We weren’t expecting you to come this early, but to say we’re excited to meet you would be an understatement.

We’ve spent the past 8 months dreaming of the day we get to meet you.  We don’t know what you look like, or what type of personality you have,or what your gender is but soon we will know.  Your big sister beams when she talks about you.  She can’t wait to get to hold you in her arms and give you lots of kisses.  She has spent months giving you kisses through my belly and talking to you every chance she gets.  Your Daddy and I love to feel you moving around and kicking inside my belly.  That is the biggest part of pregnancy I will miss.  It seems so surreal that when we go to bed tonight you will be with us.

Your water broke at 10:30 last night as we were heading home from church then dinner, then hanging out with friends.  I really didn’t believe it, but it is real!  We came home and got as much prepping done as we could before your Daddy and I decided that we needed to try to sleep.  We managed to get a few hours of rest before the contractions started to pick up.

I pray that you will arrive in our arms safely today and that you will always know the love that we have for you and your big sister.  I’m sure your Daddy and I will make mistakes as you grow up, but I hope that you will always know how much we love you and how special you are to us.  We will do our best to show you how we feel and how grateful we are to be your parents.

I can’t wait to see you grow up and discover the world around you.  We have cherished these moments with your big sister, and now it’s time to see you explore the world around you.  As you grow you will see just what amazing things lie ahead for you, and Daddy and I will be there with you each step of the way.

I love you and can’t wait to meet you!

Love,

Mommy

The baby! How is our little one doing? Great. We went into to get a peek today. We got to see our perfect little baby today on the ultrasound machine. The first thing we saw was a perfectly formed skull and brain. YAY! Then we got to see the hart. The machine was so high tech that we could see all 4 chambers and both valves beating away at once. With Ashleigh they showed us chamber by chamber. We also got to see that the spine looked perfect! We saw 2 hands and 2 feet and teeny tiny toes. Wes counted fingers on the left hand. He saw 4, the sonographer showed us the 5th. It was so wonderful to see all the bones and little parts moving around and looking great. When the doc came in he switched over to 4D for a minute and printed a few of those for us too. The baby had his/her hand up by their face as if to say, “PLEASE STOP!” by that point we had been poking around at the poor baby for 20 minutes. I asked how the baby was measuring. The baby’s head is measuring 5 days ahead (lucky me!) and the rest of the body is about 3 days ahead. No one seemed concerned at all, as ultrasounds become less accurate to measure by date the further along you are. So, the first ultrasound 10 weeks ago is the more accurate date. Also, Ashleigh’s head was 95th percentile and higher for the first 3 years of her life. It wasn’t until she hit 3 that it started to come down towards where the rest of her is! So, all is well, and the little one weighs 8 oz at this point.

We headed off to the midwife after we visited with the Peri. I’ve lost another pound, so one pound between each visit so far. Really, this morning I weighed the same at home that I have been. I haven;t really lost a pound, I just didn’t gain anything. So, I got a “talk” about how I need to eat more protein and even though I am not at an ideal weight I still need to gain 10 – 15 lbs. I guess she forgot that I’m only 18 weeks pregnant! I have 22 weeks go to. I’m sure that is PLENTY of time to gain 10 lbs. Wes of course found it funny that the overweight woman was giving me health tips to make sure I’m getting enough protein and gaining weight properly. We got to hear the baby’s hearbeat (after seeing it hours before), and it was a good strong beat in the 150s. Perfect. Sometime between now and my next visit in 4 weeks I have to fill out their 3 day food consumption chart where I keep track of everything I eat and drink for 3 days. What a pain, but without it I can’t birth at the birth center. I certainly don’t want to end up at the hospital, so I’ll suck it up and deal

I think that’s about it. So, enjoy the pictures!

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Yesterday was visit #2 to the midwife. It is hard to believe that I’m 13 weeks pregnant as of today! 1/3 of the way through this pregnancy. Wow. Wes couldn’t make it to the appointment, as he had a lot of pressing stuff that needed to be done for work, so Ashleigh and I headed to the visit ourselves. She took a lovely nap while I drove. The problem came when I needed to take my “bag o-tricks”, my purse, her stuffed animal, and her out of the car, walk to the elevator, go down 4 floors, walk across to the next building and all the way down the hall. I was unsuccessful in keeping her asleep. I guess that is good, since the first thing I have to do when I get there is weigh myself…I can’t imagine the midwives would be happy with a 30lb weight gain! I’m actually down 1 lb from my last visit, though I am down a total of 4lbs for the pregnancy. I like how this is working. Belly is growing, baby is growing, I’m loosing. I can only hope and pray this continues. My goal is to have a pregnancy just like our friend Jen. She was 6lbs under her pre-pregnancy weight by 4 weeks post-pardum. What? A girl can dream!

So, back to the midwife. When we got into the room I warned her that Ashleigh would pretend that she didn’t exist. She mthought I was crazy, but I proved to be right. She asked the “normal” questions, how are you feeling? Any movement yet? Contractions? Then it was time for the heartbeat. She assumed this would get Ashleigh talking. I looked over and Ashleigh had a HUGE grin on her face, but she still didn’t say a word. Once she was done there was a call for the midwife from their sponsoring OB practice. She had to take the call and excused herself for a moment. Once the door closed jabber jaws started. She went on and on about the baby and how she was hungry and anything else she had been holding in for the last 10 minutes. When we got home she told Wes all about the baby. How we got to hear the heart and it was LOUD and it was FAST. She was very excited. She must have told Wes about it 3 or 4 times last night.

I have some photos from the past few days, but I need to get them organized and off the camera. I’ll post those later…

I guess I never did tell you the Ashleigh story behind the baby. When we decided it was time for a new baby I started discussing the thought of a new baby with Ashleigh. She was less than thrilled. That honestly surprised me because she loves her friend’s younger siblings so much. We talked about how Owen has a little brother, Blake, and Mia has a little sister Simone, and they both love their siblings. She then realized that she loved their siblings too. It was then that she decided that she wanted a brother and a sister.

While we never hid the pregnancy from her, we waited a few weeks before we outright told her. Her reaction was very cute. We sat her down and told her that she is going to be a big sister, and that there is a baby growing in Mommy’s belly. Her eyes got very big and she had a huge smile on her face. She then turned and gave me the biggest hug. She really was excited. It was so precious.

Since then she will tell you that she wants a brother and a sister. If you ask her which she wants, her response is always “BOTH!”. It never varies. This made me slightly nervous, since kids seem to have a second sense about such things, and my blood levels were higher than the average for twins for my first two blood draws. I didn’t check where #3 fell, because by the time I had gotten those results we had already been to the doctor and they had searched all over for a second baby. There really is only one.

About 5 – 10 times a day, depending on the day, Ashleigh comes over to me to ask if she can say hi to the baby. She lifts up my shirt and talks to my belly. She usually says something along the lines of, ‘Hi baby! I love you! Oh Mommy! Baby says she loves me too!’ and then she kisses my stomach and goes back to playing. It is the cutest thing.

Ashleigh is also very much into her imaginary friends right now. She has 4 “kids” who are all 4 (this week, this does change). She and her kids have purchased many rattles for the baby, and she tells us all the time how she is going to help take good care of the baby. She is apparently excited for diaper duty. Only time will tell what will actually happen, but I think that she is on the right page. We keep telling her how excited we all are, and she tells me how much she loves being a big sister. There’s no doubt in my mind that she will be a great big sister. Hopefully she’ll find the patience to wait until January! Tonight she told us she wanted the baby to come out now! Yikes….

Ok, I know I’m behind…There’s a reason I’m behind. I swear I have a valid excuse

Today we headed down to Annapolis to visit with The Center for Maternal and Fetal Medicine. We were thrilled to see a perfect baby who is measuring perfectly with a strong heartbeat of 177! There was only one, which I think upset Ashleigh a bit, as she was hoping to get a brother AND a sister. We have the print outs from the ultrasounds, but we’re visiting with friends this evening, so I can’t scan them quite yet. After our visit with Dr. Sweeney we headed over to Bay Area Midwifery Center where we met with Jennifer, the head midwife and toured the facility. We came home with tons of info on the birth center and are thrilled to be signed up for the personal type of birth that we want. Thrilled doesn’t begin to express my excitement actually . Wes is a little less concerned.

There have been tons of other things going on the past month, I’ve just been too tired to write about them. This pregnancy seems to be hitting me a bit harder than Ashleigh’s did. I’ve been exhausted, sleeping every second I can. I’ve also been sicker than I was with Ashleigh. I’m hoping this will come to an end soon. Only 7 more weeks left in the first trimester. Oh yeah, we’re due in January. Technically the 14th, but really the whole month is fair game.

As for other news. We purchased a new car about a month ago, I will post photos of that later too. The Jetta needed more work, and we needed more space with a new baby on the way. It just made more sense to ditch the repair bills and increase our car payments a bit. We bought a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe. It was a leftover, so it only had 15 miles on it. It even has a 3rd row, so there is plenty of space for baby #2 and Laci to join us on trips. We are thrilled to have the new car and are busy racking up the miles on it!

We’ve been having lots of fun with friends and visiting new places over the past few weeks. I have tons of fun pictures. I started to post some last night so that I could update on some of those events, but I was not feeling well, so I went to bed instead. I’ll get to those in the next few days. I hope….

I guess that’s enough info for tonight. Hope you all are doing well! I’ll get more photos up soon!!