*UPDATE: after talking it over some more with jesse, i think we need some more time to be sure about the name before we tell the earth. this is a really important step for us and we want to make sure we have prayed about it and both feel totally at peace about little girl's name before we broadcast so that we don't end up having to do it twice. so it's not jesse procrastinating anymore about writing the post, it's us deliberating and making sure in our hearts of what we want this little baby to be named. it will just be regular scheduled blogness until we are ready, no tricks or stalling tactics. thanks for understanding!*
.
let's check in with ye olde pregnancy. fast facts:
.
saturday was 20 weeks. aka the "halfway point." however, judah came exactly one week early; and while that doesn't mean this little girl couldn't still be 2 weeks late, it does make me hope that she may be more than halfway home
.
she is moving like crazy. i remember having very faint little bubble type movements with judah that took me awhile to identify as baby kicks, but with her it was nothing for about 16 weeks and then, whammo, swoops and dips and bumps that cannot be mistaken for anything but a baby boogieing in my uterus. the kicks are highly palpable from the outside, but every time i yell for jesse to come feel she gets bashful or startled and goes stealth mode.
.
at my ultrasound i asked the doctor to tell me how much weight i had gained this pregnancy. i very specifically said "i don't need to know how much i actually weigh right now, just the total gain." i was pleased that at the halfway point i have only gained 8 lbs. of course that's because a lot of generic pregnancy fluff was already on my well before conception...the groundwork was already laid.
.
mentally, i am dealing with typical pregnant-with-second-baby stuff. any time we talk about her or shop for her i feel like i am betraying judah. no matter what, he will be the only kid we ever have who was our only child. our entire parenting experience has been 100% for him, so channelling some of that attention and love elsewhere feels a little strange and almost like we are neglecting him. my mom said when my little brother was born i had been potty trained for over a year but started peeing my pants again because it was just too traumatic having that little bundle of tripp come in and rock my keight-centric world. luckily i was 3 at the time and judah will be only 17 months so hopefully he won't have as strong or deliberate of a reaction to our newly divided attentions.
how will we ever love another human this much!?!?!.in the same vein, my mind is still entirely blown by the fact that we are having a girl. again, my entire career as a mom has been for a boy. every single thing i have ever done as a parent has been as a parent to a son. so the whole vagina thing is really taking me for a ride. what if i am jealous of her because jesse love another girl so deeply? what if i try to live vicariously through her and mess her up? also, this has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for if we have future kids. i could end up with more girls than boys! duh, right? well, that seemed close to impossible when all we had was a boy, but now it's all tied up at one apiece. your move, future sperm.
.
speaking of 3rd babies (let me assure you that speaking is allllll that we'll be doing concerning a 3rd for a long time), i have mourned a little bit the fact that judah will never have a one degree of separation brother. jesse and his older brother are the 2nd and 3rd children in their family and about 26 months apart and they are very best buddies. since judah is the oldest, his only chance was that the 2nd baby be a boy. well, that's not happening. so what to hope for the 3rd one (if that ever happens)? if i hope for a boy for judah then i have to mourn that she'll never have a sister one step up or down from her. and then we get into having 18 babies so that everyone is happy. and then we rein in our imaginations which have run wild and focus on giving the 2 babies that we actually have the best that we can.
.
praise god from whom all blessings flow, i found some bottoms to wear that are not my jeans!!! i was so frustrated with the hideosity of the maternity shorts i had been encountering that i went to the non-impregnated section of old navy and attempted to shop there for some shorts and skirts to get me through the armageddon that is summer in the deep south. i figured my existing plan for tops of buying normal stuff, just in larger sizes, might work with bottoms too even though it wouldn't be as fun mentally. so i braced myself for sizes of larger proportions than i have ever worn before for the sake of my sanity, crotchal ventilation, and preservation of my poor overworked normal jeans and dove in. and yea, though i walked through the valley of the shadow of the shorts that are on the waaaaaaaaay back of the rack, i feared no evil or embarrassment of sizes with 2 digits-whose second digit was NOT a zero-for i know that feeling good in clothes is way more important than a number that only i see on the tag of my pants. amen. i got 2 flowy skirts, 3 pairs of shorts and a pair of cargo capris all for $4 thanks to cashing in our $80 discover rewards for $100 in old navy cards. once again, doxology.
.
19 weeks saw the baby reaching the size of a large heirloom tomato. well, kroger didn't have any of those at 10 pm last friday (the last day of 19 weeks...deadline!) and i hate tomatoes anyway, so i got the biggest grapefruit i could find even though it was still a bit small.
ahhhh, the elastic of the skirt, the wind beneath between my wings thighs. glory, glory!okay, i am a little nervous about saying this...but we have a name for the little girl. just like with judah, it was a name i liked first but jesse had never been sold on until he got some serious and crazy confirmation from the lord. and just like with judah, he is now like 5 times more sure of the name than i am (i am a consummate second-guesser). since i felt the wrath of making y'all wait for the gender, let me just go ahead and say that the name revelation timeline is NOT my decision, but his, since he is writing that post and he is notoriously bad at timely blogging (see: the birth story that took a year to complete).
i HATED the experience of telling people judah's name before he was born. i got SO much random backlash. people tended to think, "oh he's still in utero, maybe that means i can talk her out of that name before it's too late." whereas if we waited until he was born and said, "this baby here in my arms is judah," no one would have dared say a word. it just wasn't fun to get a bunch of, "really? that's very unusual. sounds like judy or judas. what about noah? or jonah? those are cool, hippie names that aren't so weird." arrrrrg. just shut up and pretend to love it. p.s. can you imagine the bug being anything other than a judah? no WAY! he is SO judah. so suck it, random critics in target who made me feel like crap for naming my son something other than jackson liam jacob dukes (not that there is anything wrong with normal or popular names!).
now, if i had gotten my real wish for a girl name and gone with lukas (one of her godfather's names AND a boy name i think would be wonderful on a little girl), i would expect a close friend (likely lena) to point out to me that our daughter was named lukas dukes and would likely get called lukas dukas her entire life. so that dream has to die. *note: lena did inform me at 20 weeks with judah that, "you know he's going to be JUdah DUkes, right? that's a lot of oooooh." this is where being lena, a bff and godparent, has privileges. greater public: if you do not have at least 25 blog posts about you, please refrain from negative name feedback. thank you *
so if you're just dying to know the name, take it up with jesse and tell him to get on his bloggy horse.
well we all know that I am dying to know! I promise I will just get things monogrammed and such and make nothing but positive comments! and for the record I could not imagine JUDAH with any other name! come on jesseeeeeeeee
ReplyDeleteI feel you on the name thing... there's no easy way around it: people think that naming a baby is a team sport. Even with waiting to reveal levi's name, we still got one comment from my older brother, "hmmm, Levi Franck?? Sounds kinda Jewish...". Can't win them all...
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to find out the name! (I guess that's a little unfair since I made everyone wait...haha). I loved the name Lukas by the way- but understand about having to scratch a great name off. We loved Austin David Darling- unfortunately that would have made his initials be ADD- oh well :-)
ReplyDeletei'm FB-ing jesse right after i tell you that i LOVE the new family pics. you totally don't ruin the pic in front of my house. it's my fave. except now i WANT that house. tell me that is not your house b/c if you are moving out of it, i'd have to de-friend you on FB for sure....and now...FB time!
ReplyDeleteEasy people! I'm halfway done, and for the record, me reading this is what informed me that it was "all up to me". Also, that's my parent's house, where we're moving TO. We'll be building in the front yard, not a bad place to grow up though.
ReplyDeleteOh I'm dying to hear the name and I'll be really really nice! I know it's beautiful anyways. I've always loved that yall picked Judah. Joanna is a lovely lovely name... is it Joanna?? Hey, can you have some kinda blog giveaway where we get to pick the baby girl's middle name?! HA!!! Totally j/k.
ReplyDeleteCome on Jesse...I am DYING here!!!
ReplyDeleteKeight, I am right there with you on all the having difficulty wrapping your brain around the sex of the baby ...but mine is opposite!
ReplyDelete