We have a good excuse.

We have been slow posters recently. We are finally ready to admit that there has been a good reason. Our third child. Yes, Amelia is our first, Yoda is our second, and we will be meeting our third sometime around July 21. As you can see from the above photo, Amelia and Yoda have made this pregnancy a lot less relaxing than the first. I swear Amelia already knows something is different and all she wants to do is crawl all over me. About a month into this delightful pregnancy (sarcasm intended, more to follow on that...) she was literally jumping on me after school one day while I attempted to sleep on the couch. She jumped RIGHT on my belly and I was sure she'd killed her future brother or sister right there. The doctor reassured me that the baby was fine - and so far she hasn't caused any major harm (my body is taking care of that all by itself...)

So, onto me: the vessel, the carrier, the glutton for punishment who thought I'd love to be pregnant again. Tom and I are very lucky that we don't have to try too hard to get pregnant and we learned our exciting news at the beginning of November. I was feeling GREAT and thought maybe this one would be different. Muhahahahahaha! my body said. I started feeling incredibly nauseous and throwing up every morning by mid-November and was essentially useless by the time I made it home to the couch. There was one fantastic morning at school when I actually shut my classroom door during a non-teaching period and curled up on the floor under my desk. But, I knew this was normal and that we are lucky to be able to have another baby.

Some of you may recall that I developed gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with Amelia. Apparently it can return much earlier in subsequent pregnancies so the doctor ran the screening test after my first appointment. I failed that and knew that I was heading down the same path. It was depressing and I felt like my body was such a failure. I continued to harp on the fact that I have NO RISK FACTORS for developing this and apparently just have a lazy pancreas. Then at my 10 week appointment the doctor had to tell me how diabetes in the first trimester can cause birth defects (cardio and/or neural tube) and from there I was freaking out. He said there's really nothing they can do for testing until a 15 week blood test and then at 20 weeks they would do a high resolution ultrasound. So, this meant that we had to remain calm for 10 WEEKS. I went in for further testing, and was given a definitive diagnosis, but also some good news - that I had absolutely not had diabetes going into the pregnancy. This would have made the risk factor for birth defects even higher - so my risk was on the low end of the spectrum. The risk for this baby remains fairly low, but higher than a "normal" pregnancy.

Anywho, now we are just trying to remain optimistic. The baby is clearly growing and I try to remind myself that healthy babies do that. Also, at that same panic-inducing appointment, we heard a VERY loud heartbeat at 174 bpm, which the doctor reported he could hear ACROSS THE HALL. When Amelia was that same size, we could barely detect her heartbeat. So, we think that is a sign of a healthy heart, too. But if everyone could keep us and this baby in their thoughts and prayers that would help us, too!

For now, we are trying to enjoy this pregnancy. My energy is better; the nausea is better; my diabetic diet is going well (even though I'd love a huge plate of mac 'n cheese or fettucine alfredo) and for the most part, my blood sugar levels have been excellent, so I'm controlling things well. I meet with a nutritionist frequently and she has helped me a lot while also being amused at my descriptions of constant hunger. She's helped me find foods that fill me up and I am not as hungry as I was before...

Now that things are better we have 3 goals:
1. To mail our Christmas presents for our niece & nephew Katelyn & Matthew. Fortunately they are too young to know what slackers we are.
2. To mail Christmas presents to the rest of the family. We assume the adults will be forgiving.
3. To mail our holiday cards that I ordered in October to save money. Our friend Justin suggested we not wait too much longer because they might raise postage rates and thus ruin the savings we made in ordering earlier. ha.