ten thoughts on a wednesday |24| {second pregnancy edition!}

happy thanksgiving eve! while i have embraced pre-thanksgiving christmas festivity here in london, i am still making good efforts to preserve the hearty celebration of thanksgiving in our little family. sorry, ian, no christmas music can be played until you’ve written down five things you are thankful for on paper leaves and added them to the thankful tree :) six of my eight siblings are together in arizona enjoying turkey day together, which makes me happy and makes me sad. i wish, wish, wish we were there … but i’m extra grateful this year for facetime!

today i wanted to share some thoughts and info about our pregnancy! thanks for all the kind congratulations here and on instagram. this thanksgiving, we are tremendously thankful for the tiny bebe in my belly - what a miracle and what a blessing.

one.
baby is due to arrive sometime around 21 april (i am just over eighteen weeks along). we are particularly excited about this due date because my brother eli and his wife are due to have a baby just a few days prior - i.e. we could totally have a baby on the same day! eli and julie told us they were pregnant when they were here visiting us in london in august, and we found out we were pregnant (and then told them!) just a couple of days after they shared that happy news! we schemed up a fun way to announce both of our pregnancies to our parents and siblings (eli put together a video of drone footage that he got on our trip together to the faroe islands and slipped in some clips of us in london and his family in new york city holding ultrasound pictures :) ). i’m also super pumped that a couple of my friends here in london are having babies around the same time as us.

two.
this pregnancy has been very different than my pregnancy with moses. i had a tough first trimester, which i didn’t expect after my first few months with moses were mostly a breeze. i still have it soooo much easier than so many women, but i remember telling ian at about eight weeks in, “i really, really just want to just sleep for the next month or so…” i luckily wasn’t vomiting, but i had awful tension headaches (it felt like someone was constantly squeezing my head as hard as they could!) and pretty intense food aversions (everything sounded pretty revolting to eat, even though i was so hungry especially because i have continued to breastfeed moses). luckily all of this, along with the extreme fatigue, faded around thirteen weeks and i am feeling pretty great now :) in my first pregnancy, i completely lost my sweet tooth, but in this pregnancy my sweet tooth has intensified! and this time around is also very different just because it’s not my first time! it’s fun to experience this all again … and i feel so so lucky to experience this all again.

three.
we are planning and preparing for a home birth, which we are both super psyched about. we decided to hire private midwives and we have already grown to love both of the wonderful ladies that will be caring for us throughout pregnancy, childbirth and the few weeks after baby comes. sarah and natalie are part of an awesome team of super-experienced midwives that work throughout the south of england. all of our prenatal appointments/check-ups happen with one of them, here in our home - except for scans and blood work, which we go to the nearby hospital for. we are so glad to have a little birthing team of people that will all be on the same page around our hopes and preferences in welcoming our new baby into the world! of course we are prepared that anything could happen and that a hospital transfer may be necessary, but we are looking forward to a happy home birth. i am a fierce believer that every woman should (as far as possible!) give birth in the circumstances that make her feel the most safe - and having the baby in our home is what makes me feel the most safe.

four.
we are so excited to see moses as a big brother!! he’s mo the bro! i’m positive he has basically no idea what is going on, but we have been talking to him a lot about his brother/sister … and every time we ask him “where’s the baby?” he points at my belly (well, for a few weeks he was pointing at his own belly, but he’s got it now :) ). he likes to wave at and kiss my belly, and repeat the word “baby” when we mention that in our prayers (which we do every prayer!). moses and the this little babe will be just over twenty-one months apart.

five.
speaking of two little ones not quite two years apart, i’m admittedly pretty nervous about it! basically everywhere i go and everything i do these days, i think about how i will go there/do that with two tiny humans with me to take care of! it will just be an entirely new life for me, i think - just like it was when i had my first baby, but a little more intense in a lot of ways! of course both ian and i are so thrilled and grateful to be having another baby, but it’s also a little overwhelming! i’m sure we will find our way and the challenges will only make the joys more rich :)

six.
we find out if we are having a boy or a girl in just a couple of weeks, and we are so excited! we are both amazed (and kind of confused, haha!) by people who choose to not find out the gender of their baby. we want as much information as we can get! ian is pretty convinced it is a girl, and i just think it’s such a win-win either way - two boys in a row and close together in age would be so fun, and it would also be great to have one of each (plus, both ian and i are pretty attached to a girl’s name that we can’t wait to use…). we will see!

seven.
i am generally a pretty emotional person (i bet you’d never guess! ;) ), but i have to say it has been nice over the past few months to blame some irrationality/mood swings/lack of control over emotions on pregnancy hormones. dang, that stuff is real! let’s just say i’ve been crying a lot, for lots of different reasons. but many of those tears have been happy tears! i also felt quite overworried at the beginning of pregnancy and was pretty much convinced that we were either having twins or i was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy (since i was experiencing a lot of one-sided cramping). man, it sure feels good to have an ultrasound technician tell you that everything looks good (and there’s only one baby in there!).

eight.
i started feeling the baby move a few weeks earlier than i did with moses, and i love it so so much. there’s been lots of discernible dancing around in there since about sixteen weeks. there is just nothing like that feeling! i am, again, totally in awe of my body and how it is creating another human. it’s such an incredible miracle that i am so passionate about.

nine.
having discovered my insatiable appetite for learning when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth when i was last pregnant, i've continued my study in this pregnancy. i recently started reading the positive birth book by milli hill and i am really loving it. it was recommended by one of our midwives and now that i've dug into it i highly recommend it to anyone. lots of great information about all types of births.

ten.
(to bring this full circle back to thanksgiving, i guess!) we are just so so grateful to be pregnant. we are extremely lucky that it didn’t take long to conceive and that both baby and i are very healthy. i am really fortunate to have a tremendously supportive husband (and extended family and friends), to not have to worry too much about the extra financial cost of growing our family, and to be able to chose the circumstances around the birth of my baby. i recognize that i am very, very privileged, and i am so, so, so thankful.

happy wednesday! life is beautiful!
and happy thanksgiving!

{artwork by my friend and absolute favourite artist, caitlin connolly}