19 weeks 5 days

Emily jumping in on the picture taking action, tickling and kisses included.

I love Emily’s laugh, blurry and all.

Despite some pretty long days, I am shocked we have hit the halfway point to meeting our little baby. This pregnancy has been completely unique, for the good and bad. A lot sicker, but no sciatic nerve pain from six weeks on. I began to feel a little movement around 16 weeks and by 17 weeks even Andrew was feeling punches, and last time is was well past 22 weeks before we felt much if anything. I don’t look up how big and how many days this baby is every day. I spend a lot of time not thinking about being pregnant.

But I love the quiet moments when Emily is napping or in bed for the night and this baby and I have some solid one on one time. That is when I think about the sweet child that in only a few short months will be a huge part of our daily happenings. I wonder about this child’s personality and if they will look like Emily. I try to come up with battle plans for getting two kids out of the house and back again. I think about the day I will get to hold this baby in my arms for the first time, because now I know how amazing that moment is thanks to Miss Emily. And every once in awhile I let myself really hope that labor will be shorter than 26 hours but still complication free.

All three of us piled into the car at 8:15am to head to the ultrasound. The power had gone out the night before so it took a long time for the machine to be up and running succesfully. We all watched our little baby on a tiny screen as they found ten fingers, ten toes, a heartbeat, lots of organs, measured the size of the head, and showed us a profile as well as a 3D ultrasound (which we decided wasn’t our favorite, to be honest) of this baby.

After meeting with the doctor we drove Andrew to campus, calling my family members one at a time to tell them the news. We prefaced the details and then asked Emily the important questions, “Boy or Girl?”

She exclaimed without hesitation every time, “Boy!”.