needless to say, we are thrilled. allow me to proceed with the crucial info…
due date we are due june 24th, 2014. (side note: our babies have the annoying habit of arriving within a week of other family members' birthdays. sophie was born exactly one week after my brother vince's birthday, which is also within the same month as both my parents', my uncle's, bryan's uncle's, and two of my cousin's birthdays. this one is due the day before my brother thomas' birthday.)
boy or girl? keeping it a surprise!
sibling age gap sophie and the baby will be exactly 20 months apart. it's a wider age gap than we'd hoped for (we were shooting for 18 months), but i think we'll live. to put it into perspective, thomas and i are 16 months apart.
sophie has been so cute. not sure yet how much she can actually comprehend, but if you ask her where the baby is, she knows where to point, and she likes to give it kisses and wave to it and say, "haaaa, baa-baa!" ("hi, baby!") she gets very excited when i ask her if she wants to see pictures of the baby.
how's it going? so far, so good. i was unbelievably ill for a while there though (even prior to the crazy flu outbreak). i couldn't leave the couch or keep anything down but gingerale and gatorade most days, which made taking care of sophie a huge challenge. thankfully, between bryan, my mom, and a few others, i made it through and now i seem to be out of the woods! i am still extremely fatigued though. i developed anemia when i was pregnant with sophie, and i'm pretty sure that's the case again, so you can keep that in your prayers.
hospital i will be delivering at loudon county hospital. last time i was at fair oaks because that's where tepeyac family center, a pro-life OBGYN clinic, works out of. but for various reasons, the main one being time/distance, i've decided to go with a provider in leesburg (fair oaks would be about a 45 minute drive). i found some amazing midwives out here who assist with both natural and medicated births, and i love them! i'll tell you more about them in another post.
how we found out this is actually a fun story. we'd been hoping to get pregnant for a few months, so of course it was our constant obsession. over the weekend of october 13th, we went on a getaway at the marriott in old town alexandria because my folks had a free night that was about to expire and they weren't going to use it. so we went for a belated anniversary celebration. we went to a sushi restaurant for dinner and then next door to bilbo baggins' for a night cap. i had no scruples about drinking because i was sure that i wasn't pregnant that month since i'd had zero symptoms. we even talked that night about how disappointed we were that we weren't expecting yet, since bryan's entire family was going to be in town at the end of the month for sophie's birthday, and it would have been the perfect time to tell everyone together.
the next morning, bryan went downstairs to get breakfast and texted to tell me the line was really long so he'd be a while. bored, i again started thinking about having another baby and the fact that we hadn't succeeded yet. i thought again about what a shame it was that we'd have to waste a perfect opportunity to tell everyone at sophie's birthday. then i thought about this nice intimate getaway we were having, and what a perfect time it would have been to tell bryan if i was pregnant. shame, shame.
then i remembered i had a pregnancy test in my purse. i had bought a pack of 2 because i had thought the previous month that i might be pregnant, but the results came back negative. i thought, "i might as well go ahead and use up that single test, because if i actually thought i was pregnant, i would want to take 2 tests in a row to be sure, so i'm going to have to buy another pack anyway. besides, if there's even a smidgen of a chance i am, i would hate to have wasted this chance to tell bryan."
i retrieved the test from my purse and marched off to the bathroom to take it. i wasn't nervous at all and didn't even wait 2 seconds, let alone 3 minutes, to look at it, because i was so sure it would be negative. as i sat there, watching one blue line slowly turn into 2, my stomach dropped. not in a good way, not in a bad way, but in a purely out-of-my-mind-shocked way. i just kept saying, "holy s**t, holy s**t…!"
in true rosenthal fashion, my immediate next step was to take a picture. i don't know what i was planning to do with it, it's just instinct. in true theresee fashion, i felt the instant need to tell someone right away. but bryan was still getting breakfast, and i couldn't tell anyone until i'd told him. so i was just going to have to wait.
forty-five minutes. that's how long i waited for him to come back up with breakfast. i think those were the longest 45 minutes of my life. when he finally came in, i told him that before we ate, i had an anniversary present for him. he gave me a look and i said, "i know, i know we said we wouldn't get each other anything, but it's really small. i didn't even bother to wrap it, so you need to close your eyes and hold out your hands." he did, and i placed the test in his hand.
when he opened his eyes, i gave him a second and then said, "we're having a baby!!!" because i knew that hearing it on top of seeing it would intensify the effect. he whipped around to face me and spat out, "no we're not."
"yes, we are!"
"shut up, no we're not."
"yes, we are!"
i had caught him completely off guard, and he started tearing up. so then i started tearing up, and, well, you know, then we were both just really happy and excited. and shocked. still very much in shock.
in some ways, i'm still in shock. maybe it's because we were trying for a while and i can't believe it's actually happening. but it IS and it's AWESOME! please keep us in your prayers, since i still have a lot of bad days physically (today was one of them). in the meantime, we'll be sure to keep you posted!
i will leave you with this awesome video bryan got of us announcing to the family at sophie's birthday. she opened a 2-part gift from us, which consisted of a book called "waiting for baby" and the above-pictured "big sister" onesie: sophie's surprise
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