Sleeping Beauty

The road to baby #2 has been a tough one for us. I won't go in to a lot of detail, because we are just so grateful for where we are now. Again, I had a perfectly crafted plan to run a marathon last summer, and still get pregnant just in time to have a baby this spring. As happens so often with my best plans, I hadn't taken into account all the factors.... like God, and His timing. We had two miscarriages that have forever changed my perspective on a lot of things-pregnancy, children, life plans etc. After the second miscarriage in March, I told Josh that I wasn't sure what to do because I didn't want to put off running all summer because we were trying to get pregnant, but I also didn't want to sign up for a race that I couldn't complete. However, I thought having a goal would take my mind off things. As luck would have it, a couple weeks later I got a call from a woman in my ward who said that they were looking for one more person for their Ragnar team. The timing was perfect, because even if we got pregnant immediately, I would only be about 10 weeks along when I ran Ragnar. Then I could have my ultrasound right before the race to make sure everything was still going well.

A couple weeks after I found out I was pregnant, I was SURE that I was headed for another miscarriage. I had been feeling all the symptoms for weeks, and then all of a sudden, they just... stopped. And I have been down this road A FEW times, so I thought I knew all the symptoms. 

I had a friend tell me to go in for my ultrasound just a few days early, just to put my mind at ease. When I got to the doctor's office and they asked me how many miscarriages I have had, I had to stop myself for a minute, because I almost added this pregnancy in without even knowing the outcome yet. But on June 6th, when I was almost 8 weeks along we still had a heartbeat. I don't know if I was excited or relieved, or just really flabbergasted. I guess I don't know anything. When I think there's a baby, there isn't, and when I'm POSITIVE there isn't, there is. So I ran Ragnar, and scheduled the official ultrasound for the week after, so that we could check on baby-post jarring.

 Josh has told me for a long time that he wanted to wait until I was 20 weeks, to announce that we were pregnant. That all sounds well and good in the middle of the winter, with your first pregnancy, when you can hide your bulging belly pretty well, but on the second pregnancy, in the middle of summer, when I can only wear shirts and t-shirts, it's harder to hide. Plus, keep in mind, that by the time I was 20 weeks along with this pregnancy, I would have been pregnant for 40+ weeks in the past year. And with each pregnancy, I gained some weight, and lost less of it. So I was already bigger than my normal weight. When I was almost 17 weeks, we couldn't hide it anymore, it was starting to get ridiculous and people were figuring it out on their own.

Josh's brother and sister-in-law announced their pregnancy by just leaving a picture of the ultrasound on his parent's fridge and making letting the family figure it out for themselves who the baby belonged to. Josh has said for awhile that that's how he wanted to announce our next baby, but when his other brother announced they were pregnant just a matter of weeks before us, it was a done deal. We had to leave an ultrasound on the fridge. On August 3rd, we took family pictures at his parents' house. Josh snuck the picture in the house-but "Mr. We're waiting until 20 weeks" couldn't wait 15 minutes for his family to find the picture themselves. He started mentioning it the first chance he got. I tried to convince people it wasn't me, but the possibilities in the family are slimming, so it was pretty obvious. However, we are excited that our little one will have a cousin about a month younger. (Who are we kidding, we all know that I will go longer than full term, and my sister in law will have her baby early-so they'll probably be even closer than that.)

The next day, my brother blessed his baby. So I got permission from his wife in advance to tell everyone at the lunch afterward.

 My mom had told me that she needed another picture of Meili because she had an empty frame. So I gave her this picture. She looked at it and passed it on to my sister without saying anything. (I know she was thinking "Why did Kaleena give me such a crappy picture? (Not crappy, just the lighting's a little weird, and Meili can look better.)) My sister looked at the picture and smiled. Then I pointed out that my mom hadn't noticed. So she looked again. As I said, at that point, it had gotten pretty obvious, so when we were talking about it after the fact, my mom said, "Yeah, Dad said earlier, "Why does Kaleena have a baby bump that she's not saying anything about?" No way we could have waited till 20 weeks. That day in our ward, people started asking Josh about it as well.

Our next surprise came on August 29th. In my family there are 9 grandchildren and 8 of them are girls. Plus, we already have a girl, so Josh was sure that we were having another girl. And I think he had kind of talked himself into wanting another girl. For some reason, I just really felt like this was a boy. I have no motherly intuition whatsoever, and I kind of thought Meili was a boy too. But, I don't know. I just felt like it was a boy. Plus, I've been way hungrier with this pregnancy. So I was hoping there was a reason for that. And at our 15 week ultrasound, the doctor said the heartbeat was a little bit slow. 

So the night before, Josh and I made a bet...

 And I won.

I wish we had a picture of the very first image the tech pulled up. Because there it was, clear as day... Boy parts. This baby, so far, is opposite of Meili. The tech had to search for her gender the entire appointment, but this baby is proud to be a boy. And whereas Meili moved the whole appointment, this baby was just kind of content to sit there. Therefore, we didn't get a ton of great pictures of him.

We asked Meili what we should name our baby, and she said "Cinderella." So we said, "What if the baby is a boy?" (Before we knew the gender) And she said, "Sleeping Beauty." So here is our Sleeping Beauty Anderson. We are so excited for you to be a part of our family!