The Final Countdown

Well here I am again, very pregnant with another baby girl! I used to think I wanted four kids... but now that I'm 33 years old and 36 weeks pregnant with baby #3... well I'm thinking 3 is a good number. I already feel too old to be here mucking through another third trimester, and I can't imagine how difficult it would be to do it again when I'm a few years older! We're not tying any tubes yet, but it's looking like this will be our final countdown to a due date.

My body was very eager to get pregnant with our first two, I think each time only took a couple months to conceive. But baby #3 held out for a solid six months before gracing us with her presence in my womb. That week I sent Bryan a text that said, "I had a little nausea this morning and I just bought five breakfast burritos from Braums. I think I may be pregnant." We waited a few days later to take the pregnancy test on Bryan's birthday, and sure enough it was positive. At the time we were living with my parents while our house was being built, but life was good with James and Sally at really great ages--so good that I had decided maybe our family was already complete and we didn't need a third child. I was ready to get back on birth control the following month, but God had other plans for us. Thankfully His ways are better than ours! We are so excited to have another strand twisted into our family cord. Life is all about relationships, and I am so happy that I'll get to share my home and future with not just 3, but 4 of my favorite people!

The first few months of this pregnancy were similar to what I had with Sally, so I was already thinking this may be another girl. I had some nausea (but nothing as debilitating as I had with Sally), my face was breaking out, and I was craving sweets. All signs pointing to another daughter since I didn't have any of those symptoms with James. At 18 weeks I was feeling the first little flutters of movement. At 19 weeks we had the big ultrasound. We wanted to do something different for the gender reveal this time around, so Bryan and I decided that we would discover the sex at the ultrasound and then have an announcement party later. So it was really exciting for us going to that appointment! And we found out we had another girl. We were both kind of hoping for that! But then we also found out she had a transient arrhythmia, or "a hitch in her giddy-up" as the tech described it.  Her heart would just skip a beat every once in a while. It wasn't regular or predictable, but we had to go to a level 2 ultrasound two weeks later so a specialist could give it a closer look. He didn't seem too concerned with what he saw, and said these things usually work themselves out before the baby is born. We had prayed about it, and we weren't overly concerned with it either. God gave us a peace to accept that her heartbeat may soon self-regulate or the arrhythmia may be something she just learns to live with. It was in His hands and He would take care of her either way. All the subsequent ultrasounds and doppler-checks since then have not shown any heartbeat irregularity, so it seems to have gone away.

We had a gender reveal party with a large group of extended family. Only Bryan and I knew the gender. I made two dozen cupcakes and hid pink frosting inside just one of them. When it was time for the reveal, everybody got a cupcake and nobody knew who had the one filled with the gender color. They all bit into the cupcakes at the same time. My brother-in-law Chris then threw his arms up in victory as he realized his cupcake had the frosting inside. Then he turned it to show my sister and asked, "What color is it?" Ha! Chris is color blind and he couldn't tell if the light-colored filling was pink or blue!

I know I said I craved sweets when I was pregnant with Sally, but now I question if I ever had cravings at all before this pregnancy. I basically only want to eat sweets and nothing else. And if I try to be good and deprive myself, the cravings just intensify. But despite not doing any jogging or Centergy at all, I'm still in the average weight gain range. Although you wouldn't know that by looking at me. My belly is just growing straight out with this one--prompting my grandma to ask me not once, but TWICE if I'm sure it's not twins in there. Currently at 36 weeks pregnant, I feel uncomfortable ALL the time and I'm ready to be put on bedrest just to shirk all responsibilities for the next few weeks.

We didn't have names already picked out for this one. When we knew it was a girl, I prayed about what her name should be. I asked God to make it obvious to me. He soon answered my prayer by repeatedly drawing me to the name Rose. Bryan was on board with that, but he was adamant whatever her first name, her middle name should be Jane so that she had a namesake like the other two. (Jane is a middle name for women in both of our families.) But "Rose Jane" just didn't sound right. It needed another syllable or two. We began brainstorming longer names that could be shortened to Rose, and Bryan proved to be very frustratingly opinionated about those options, until he came upon Rosemary. He really liked how "Rosemary Jane" sounded like an homage to his sister, Mary Jane. I admit I wasn't sold on "Rosemary", but at that point there was no changing his mind. It will grow on me, and she will always be my little Rose.