Baby #3!!!!!!

We found out Friday morning, July 29th, that we were expecting our third child!!  We had tried for two months unsuccessfully and had several negative test results on the days prior, so it was just such a shock to see those two lines!  We were absolutely giddy and couldn't wipe the smiles off our faces.  After having gone through this twice before, it's even more meaningful and surreal!  We were leaving for vacation that very day, so we tricked my mom into coming over on her way to work so I could explain our alarm system.  We then showed her the positive test, and she was shocked as well!  We then made several phone calls to family and happily shared our news!

I started to get nauseous about 5 weeks along, was really nauseous during weeks 6 and 7 (all day), and then noticed during week 8 that it was subsiding.  It slowly got better each week, and by 12 weeks, it was completely gone.  Even with the nauseation, I was sooo happy to be pregnant and felt like I was on cloud nine.  I was very happy that the tiredness that I usually experience during early pregnancy was much less than normal.  A big contributor to that was the fact that I had given up caffeine 6 months before getting pregnant for a different reason.  I had no caffeine weaning to do, so I felt like I had a lot more energy (for early pregnancy)!

I started feeling my lower back pain that I had a lot of trouble with in my pregnancy with Jack around 7 weeks along.  After it getting worse each week for a while, I made an appointment with a physical therapist.  He figured out that it's my SI joint (it connects my pelvis to my sacrum/spine) that's messed up, which coincides with what a chiropractor found when doing x-rays a couple of years ago.  This is a birth defect that I have that I would have never known about if it weren't for pregnancy.  That was interesting to me, because that was what cause my distastes pubis at the very end of my pregnancy with Jack (abnormal separation of the pubic bone), which caused extreme pain to where I was unable to walk and had to be induced.  SO, I'm just praying that this doesn't mean that I'll have the same thing happen again towards the end of this one, or worse, before the end.  I have found that the less I do, the better it is, which is hard when you have two little boys!

We had our first appointment on Tuesday, August 30, and they told us we were 8 weeks to the day!  We had a great ultrasound, and our baby looked healthy.  Josh half-jokingly said that it looked like a boy.  I asked him why he thought that, and he said, "because that's what our other two boys looked like!":)

8 week ultrasound pic

We decided to have the 12 week ultrasound that checks for chromosomal abnormalities, because we knew there'd be a good chance we'd find out the sex of our baby!  I had felt God preparing me that we were going to have another boy, so even though every single person thought we were going to have a girl, I kept thinking boy!  The ultrasound technician proved me right and was convinced we had another perfectly healthy little boy in there!  Josh and I absolutely love having boys, and are very excited about having three now!  We started thinking about all of the fun things we will do with our boys, including camping, fishing, extending our driveway to make a bigger basketball court, etc.

12 weeks

Two other big milestones we've had are feeling him move around 15 weeks, and then our big 20 week ultrasound.  This was the best of all of my 20-week ultrasounds!  It was absolutely amazing to see him in 4-D, moving around, and we thought he was absolutely adorable!!  I could already see resemblances of the boys and us in him, which was so neat.  I just fell in love with him after seeing this ultrasound, and have been giddy ever since!  It has given me a great surge to get me through the rest of this pregnancy, and we can hardly wait to meet him!  We feel so blessed to have such a perfectly healthy little life inside, just growing, and waiting to join our family in April!

The boys are so into this pregnancy, and talk about him a lot.  They also talk to him, now that he can hear.  James was very interested in when he was going to get his hearing, but he kept thinking that when he got his hearing, he was going to get his ears then too. :)  He kept telling his teacher how many more weeks or days until his baby brother got his ears.  Jack just keeps wanting to "go get baby brother".  It's so hard to wait so long!  Jack spontaneously gives my belly hugs and kisses frequently.  James also will occasionally come up and talk to him and give him a kiss.

20 weeks

Here is our latest picture of our precious baby boy!