We’re having another baby.
I know that came from way out in left field on Monday. Believe me. I know. I’m living it. I apologize for the abrupt announcement. We aren’t ones to go out yelling, “We’re prego!” from the mountaintops – even when our babies are planned. Not that we aren’t excited. It’s quite the opposite actually. We enjoy relishing in our little secret for a while before we spread the news to family, friends, co-workers and the world wide web. Although this time our relishing included a bit of ‘let’s let this settle in a while before we spill the beans.’
So now that everyone knows, let’s get to all those questions you have.
1 – When is your due date and far along are you? I’m due April 7th which is Everett’s birthday. {Layne will be seven by then and Everett will be turning/have just turned four.} Hey, what can I say? At least we’re consistent! And, no, contrary to popular belief there is no special holiday or celebration in early July {April 7 – 40 weeks = early July} that we christen annually. I think we’re just extra fertile that time of year or something. That puts me right at 14-15 weeks prego. I look further along than that, don’t I? {I’m blaming it on a big meal at my Dad’s last weekend when the pictures were taken.} So goes the third pregnancy. Or so I’ve heard. I guess everything has lost its elasticity and is giving way earlier than my first two pregnancies. I swear I didn’t look this bumpy until about 5 months along with the boys!
If you’ll remember from this post, I purposefully faced my backside to the camera to hide my slight baby bump at ~9 weeks.
2 – Will you find out the baby’s gender before he/she is born? We didn’t know our babies’ gender before birth with the boys. {Although I would have bet money they were both boys.} So, in keeping with tradition, we won’t be finding out this baby’s sex until he/she is born. I am a planner but a flexible one. Handy Hubby and I enjoy the suspense and feel that there are only so many true surprises left in this advanced high tech world anymore. You know, along with unplanned pregnancies, of course. We have nothing against those who choose to find out their infant’s gender beforehand. We just choose not to.
I know what you’re thinking. “OMG! How in the world do you design a nursery without knowing if the baby is a boy or girl?!” Easy. The nursery will have a gender neutral base and I’ll add in gender specific decor after the baby arrives.
3 – Do you have names picked out? As with our other pregnancies, HH and I will take an edited mental list of boy and girl names to the hospital. Once the baby is born and we discover the gender, we’ll make a single selection from our list. I’ll tell you right now that our list is pretty much nonexistent right now. We try to talk about it but HH doesn’t like the names I suggest, and I’m not too fond of the ones he throws out either. We’ll get there! As you can probably tell from our sons’ names {Layne and Everett}, we typically choose names not found on the Top 100 Baby Names list.
4 – How are you feeling? I’m feeling pretty good nowadays. It was kind of touch and go there for the first three months. I was nauseous on a daily basis from 4pm until bedtime although I never did toss my cookies. Dinner time was the worst. More than once, I slipped away from the dinner table because all the food and smells were making me cringe. I was exhausted too. But I don’t know whether to contribute that to the pregnancy or the fact that I had two other kiddos running circles around me OR the recent move. Probably a combination of all three.
5 – Do you have any weird cravings? I don’t know that these are ‘weird’ but I crave salads, tomatoes and water with lemons/lemon juice in it. The tomato craving prompted this recipe post a few weeks back. Maybe the tomato part is strange since I’m not a tomato fan when I’m unprego. Oh, and I can’t eat them by themselves but put a tomato on anything {salad, baked potato, pasta, grilled cheese, etc.} and I’m game. I also seem to have an aversion to red meat unless it’s a McDonald’s cheeseburger.
6 – How did you tell Handy Hubby and what was his reaction? I found out I was prego {by peeing on three, yes, three pee sticks because one or two couldn’t be right} the week before we were to close on our previous house. I was sooooo nervous to tell HH. I knew he wasn’t going to be angry or anything like that but, again, this was completely unexpected. Not in our downsizing plan at all. Not even on the radar.
In fact, a week prior I had purged and donated nearly every single thing {clothing, toys, books, toddler dishware, etc.} that our youngest had outgrown or didn’t use anymore. The only ‘baby stuff’ that had escaped my binge was an umbrella stroller {forgotten in the garage} and the crib {which I had promised to give my Dad when we moved so that he and my stepmom, Karen, could set up a nursery in their house for the impending arrival of my stepbrother’s first baby in January. Dad and Karen wanted to have a place for the baby to sleep when they babysat.} and that’s it. Not a bib or burp cloth in sight.
I told HH the very day I got positive readings on all three pee sticks. I had to wait hours for him to get home from work since I’d taken the pregnancy tests in the morning. Then I had to wait until the boys were in bed because I wasn’t prepared to tell them yet.
I was at a loss for a good way to tell HH. I realized then and there that men are never in the precarious position to have to tell the person they love that they are surprisingly expecting an unexpected baby. That’s a lot of pressure on us women! I did what I do best and wrote it out. Well, technically, I typed it out. I don’t think my handwriting would have been legible at that point.
As you can see, I’ve altered the original announcement. My due date prediction was off. Obviously, I hadn’t seen my OB at that point.
I found out pretty early on because I was prompted to take a test by a somewhat clairvoyant experience with Layne. A few days prior, I had been packing for the big move when Layne walked by me, paused for a moment, put a hand on either side of my belly and kissed it. I said, “What’s that for?” He simply replied, “For the baby in your belly.” The earth stopped turning for a minute. So, a few days later when I hadn’t started my you-know-what as expected, I immediately bought a triple pack of pregnancy tests. Turns out, Layne was right.
So back to HH’s reaction. I laid the pregnancy announcement on the kitchen island next to his lunchbox that evening so he would see it when he packed his lunch for work. {HH packs his lunch 99% of the time.} Then I hid on the couch under a blanket. Literally. I was sweating under that blanket. Seconds seemed like hours. The next thing I heard was, “Is this for real?” as HH walked over to the couch where I was cowering. I peeked up out of the blanket and managed to nod. HH had a look of total disbelief on his face. There was lots of silence after that. Shock, fear, WTH?!…we were both feeling all those things.
Then HH started laughing. It was one-third real laughing, one-third nervous laughing and one-third crazy person laughing. I started laughing too. My giggling quickly turned to crying though. I couldn’t stop it. That’s when HH said the most beautiful thing he could have said at that moment, “There’s no one else I’d rather have an accidental baby with.” Then I did that really ugly laughing-slash-crying thing, snotty and red-faced and all. Things were going to be okay.
A few weeks later, I did ask Layne about his premonition. “Layne, do you remember when you kissed my belly that one day and said it was for the baby?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“What made you say that?” I was curious.
“I don’t know. Your belly looked different,” was all he could come up with. I think he’s special. I may be biased.
7 – Did you have an IUD? Nope. Without getting too personal and crossing that TMI thin line, let’s just say I’m one of the lucky ‘less than 1 out of 100 women who get pregnant each year while taking birth control each day as directed.’ I’ve been a pharmacist for 9+ years and I’ve heard story after story of women getting prego on the pill. I’ve always subconsciously judged those women thinking they were irresponsible. Look who’s talkin’ now. Yep, this lady whose doctor says her unplanned conception while taking birth control correctly is rare but always possible.
Now that the initial shock has worn off, I realize how lucky we really are. We have been gifted another lil’ life without even asking while so many others out there dream of a baby and ask for one daily. Yep, we’re lucky alright.
8 – What did the boys say when you told them? HH and I told the boys at the Underdog one evening when I took them to visit HH while he was working. We dumbed it down and said something like, “There’s a baby in Mama’s belly.” To which Layne looked at me and exclaimed, “YOU’RE PREGNANT?!” We confirmed. “I’ll be right back,” he quickly announced and ran off to tell our new neighbors. All Everett had to say about the baby was, “Who is it?” Good question.
I’m trying not to make this new baby a huge deal with the boys because I don’t want to take away from them. If they ask questions or want to see my belly then we talk. A few times a week, Layne comes up and kisses my belly just like he did the time before I knew I was pregnant. It’s sweet. Everett likes to pretend he’s my doctor {he accompanies me to my monthly visits while Layne’s in school} and studies my belly with a magnifying glass. He takes his job very seriously.
9 – Does this mean the boys will be sharing a bedroom in the Underdog? Yes! The room assignments now are Layne and Everett in the larger non-master bedroom and the baby in the smaller non-master bedroom. I guess this whole sharing-a-bedroom-in-the-apartment thing is paying off. They should be used to sharing a room by the time we move into the house.
I’ve already thrown around the idea of making the larger of the two non-master bedrooms a bunk room for the kids if this one happens to be another boy. The smaller bedroom would become a playroom/guest room. That would be years down the road, of course. If this baby’s a girl, then she’ll just stay in the smaller bedroom and have her own bedroom.
10 – How does this pregnancy news affect your involvement in the Underdog undertakings? Not much. My primary role is to supervise the kiddos and give them as normal a life as possible right now. So far, many of the renovation projects have been accomplished by HH alone just because we don’t have anyone to watch the boys for me to get my hands dirty. Not that I’d be that much help. ;) When the time comes, pregnancy won’t keep me from helping to install new flooring, building kitchen cabinets or painting…things we can do a little more easily and safely with kids in tow…unlike demo’ing, running new electric, vaulting the ceiling, etc.
11 – How does this surprise baby change your design plans for the Underdog? Other than switching up sleeping arrangements {see #9}, none. We won’t be adding on to the house and we still have plans to live in it for 10+ years. I’ll just have to get clever and creative with my storage!
Many people who know we’re expecting say, “And here you just sold a 4 bedroom house to downsize!” But, honestly, downsizing is about the best thing we could have done to prepare for such a surprise. Well, if you could prepare for a surprise. Our house will be smaller but so will our mortgage which we still plan to pay off in 4-5 years.
I’m not worried about living in such tight quarters with three kids. I lived in a similarly sized barn {that’s a whole ‘nother post in itself} with ONE bathroom, THREE bedrooms, THREE siblings plus my parents. That’s six people under one little roof. We all shared a bedroom with someone else and we somehow scheduled our bathroom usage around each other. Looking back, I never felt like our house/barn was too small. We loved it!
12 – Will you be living in the Underdog before the baby arrives? I hope so! If not, we’ve got bigger problems.
13 – How will #3 affect your work plans? Honestly, we’re still up in the air over this one. We’d always planned on me working my 20 hours/week as a part-time pharmacist until the Underdog’s mortgage was paid off. But with this newest addition, HH and I are both thinking our family would benefit more from me being home full-time. Luckily, HH was offered a promotion this past summer which came with a raise that would offset some {definitely not all} of the income lost by me not working. We talk about me taking this blogging and designing stuff more seriously and seeing where it takes me, too. Maybe this turn of events is just the kick in the butt I need to motivate me to make a scary career change!
14 – How do you handle it all – work, kids, blog, renovation, etc? I don’t handle it all. Let me make that clear. I work 2-3 days per week so I have more time at home than most working moms. I have an awesome HH who is a huge help with the boys when I need him. I don’t cook dinner every night. And even when I do, we’re not above scrambled eggs and toast for dinner OR leftovers. I don’t blog or post as much as I’d like to. I say no a lot – mostly to things that I’m not truly passionate about or things that will cause our schedule to become jam packed. Because nothing is worse than an overtired toddler. Some days, I make to-do lists that don’t get completed. And, especially now with my current impregnated state, there are times when I simply have to let go and tell myself, “Okay, XXXX is not getting done today. I don’t have the time or energy for it.”
There was a time when I couldn’t say no. Back when I was much younger. I was a people pleaser. I did a lot of stuff and got a lot of recognition for that stuff. But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t doing any of that stuff for me.
Nowadays, I try to remind my sometimes insecure, guilty-mom self of all the things I do do. {Not doo-doo.} I take my kids to the library and gymnastics. I watch funny movies with my favorite man. I help Layne with his homework. I make up homework for Everett when he asks where his homework is. I write a blog that I’m passionate about. I put random notes in Layne’s school snack bag. I make sure my family has clean clothes to wear. I try to make our home an inspiring place to live. I keep the fridge stocked. I balance my checkbook to the penny. I get Layne on and off the bus on time. And, by george, I’m growing a baby!
Some days just keeping the kids fed/clothed/somewhat clean, washing dirty dishes, showering and brushing my teeth, making the bed, going grocery shopping, putting away a load of folded laundry, not burning a bag of popcorn, watching an old ‘Friends’ rerun, writing up a blog post, hugging my husband and remembering to take my prenatal vitamin is all I need to make me feel successful and happy.
All I have to do is figure out how to do all that with a baby on my hip. A baby who is very much wanted and loved even if he/she was unexpected.
images: 1-5 & 7) Dana Miller for House*Tweaking 6) Johnny Valiant and Mona Ross Berman for House Beautiful
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