Pregnant with Baby #4!!!!!!!!!

We are excited to our very bones

to add BABY 4 to our little clones!!!!!

Yes, we're having another baby!  Yes, it was on purpose.  Yes, we're excited!  Yes, it's just one baby this time.  No, we're not "trying for boy" we're just hoping for a healthy baby!!!

Now for the details......

We've known that there was a fourth child in our future since I was prego with the twirls... but it's just taken a long time for Jake and me to come to terms with the idea.  Then one evening in August I was refilling my pill container for the week.  I had the thought: if I'm going to get pregnant I should wean myself off this medication (most of mine are safe while pregnant except for one).  It was weird cause the thought was totally out of the blue.  Like 2 seconds after I had that thought Jake turned to me and asked: "So what is holding us back from having another baby?  I think it's just the twirls' speech so what do we need to do with that?"  I told him the thought I had right before that and we both got a little speechless.  It was like a light switch.  It was time to think about having another baby.

It took over a year to get pregnant with Scarlett.  My next pregnancy was 4 months then a miscarriage then I got pregnant with the twirls.  So always a process.  Imagine our surprise when I took a pregnancy test at the end of August and it said I was PREGNANT!!!

I have been in such a good place all summer that I was blindsided by this pregnancy.  I can't believe how exhausted and sick I have been the past three months.  My girls have watched more TV than I'd like to admit and eaten mostly junk food.  I have had to sleep while the twirls nap almost every day.  I was so nauseous I couldn't move and my food aversions made it hard to find things to eat.  Yay for babies!  Thankfully I had a bunch of Zofran left over from the twirls and my doctor gave me more, so after it kicked in I was able to function.  The girls were so patient with me and spent many hours cuddling with me on the couch.  Their favorite places were: mom laying on my side, Siena snuggled as a little spoon, Scarlett sitting in my knee nest, and Jaide sitting on top of my hip bone.  It really was nice to just sit still and hold them... too bad my super smelling power combined with my queasy tummy made their sweet baby breath seem sour to me.

I started feeling better around 10 weeks - I even started eating vegetables!  So I decided to skip the Zofran and see how I could do without it.  Yesterday (12 weeks along) and 2 days without Zofran I ran to the kitchen sink and reversed my food into the garbage disposal.  I was throwing up so loudly that my girls all came and grabbed my legs while crying cause they didn't know what was going on.  I noticed afterward that I popped a blood vessel in my eye.  So ya, I'm going to keep taking the Zofran for a little longer.

I've had two ultrasounds.  The first one was at 7 weeks and the other at 10 weeks.  Jake went with me to the first ultrasound.  I had sooooo many nightmares leading up to that visit - all of them were about having more than two babies... 3, 4, 5, etc.  We were so relieved to see just one flickering heartbeat in there (I LOVE the twirls and I'm so grateful for them - it just was a LOT of extra work).  The chances of having another set of twins was really low (since mine are identical and not fraternal), but the fear was there!  The next visit I was surprised to see a baby and not just a little tad pole!  I'm always so amazed at how fast they grow.  No wonder I've been so tired!!!!  I love how you can already see my pointy chin on the second image and a little hand right by their face.  I love my OBGYN!  When I had the twirls she was pregnant with her first.  And now she's pregnant with her second!  We had lots of fun chatting about our kids and stuff.  My baby is measuring for a due date of May 8th.  Which puts my 39 week scheduled c-section at May 1st.  Ya, if you're keeping track at home the twirls turn 3 on May 2nd.  So it's going to be a busy time of year for us!!!!  I'm hoping that I go into labor at 37 weeks and give me a two week birthday buffer.

We decided to keep the pregnancy a secret from the girls for two reasons: 1, I didn't want to explain a miscarriage if that happened again and 2, a four year old can keep a secret for like 2.7 seconds.  Well the magical 12 week mark finally arrived.  Jami had a great idea to announce the baby to the girls: using skeleton costumes with different items in the tummies - it would put the pregnancy in visual terms that they could understand.  Since I love Halloween I was totally on bored.  I found candy corn skeleton jammies for the girls at Walmart (fitting cause they LOVE candy corn) and I found shirts for Jake and me on Etsy.  For that night all my siblings wanted to watch the girls - thank goodness for technology!!!

Here's our video showing the girls:

"You're just pretending!?!"  Scarlett didn't believe that we were telling the truth for a full day.  But the next day I was walking into the house and she yelled "It's mommy.... with a baby in her tummy!"  This girl loves watching all the Daniel Tiger episodes with baby Margaret.  So I knew she would be totally excited to have a new baby in our family.  She told me "I want to name the baby Uranus.  It's my favorite planet cause it spins on its side."  We probably won't let her name this child......  Since telling her that I'm growing a baby she's had lots of questions for me like "How did you get the baby in there?  How do you get it out?"  I showed her my c-section scar then she asked "How big was the knife they used?" (should I be worried?)

The next Sunday my mom was in my YW class with me (I'm the Laurel adviser).  They asked her how long she would be here and she said "I'm only here for another week, but I'll stay longer when the baby comes."  haha!  Guess what, I'm having a baby!  I was going to tell them that day but it was funny that she and Scarlett just couldn't keep it in!!!  I wore my skeleton shirt to mutual on Tuesday so it's no longer a secret!

I have been surprised at how quickly I started showing!  My ab muscles aren't even trying anymore.  I was in denial but Jake told me "get out of dat river!"  (Jake joke)  I remember with Scarlett I didn't wear maternity clothes for the first half of my pregnancy.  Well I'm already wearing full panel sweats!  They're so comfy and they don't make me nauseous!  During my baby shower for Scarlett that we took a picture of all the pregnant cousins together.  I remember my cousin Emily wasn't very far along with her 4th (after having a singleton and twins) and she told me that her belly didn't have a chance this time.  Four years later and I literally understand what she was talking about!