32WK5D - Gender announcement

So we finally got to have our baby shower over the weekend, which means I'm finally allowed to announce baby's gender to the general world. ;) We decided to do the announcement simply through appropriate party decorations:

In case you can't see the banner across the windows very well - it's a BOY! <3

We were also able to share his name with everybody. Yes, we're going to end up *those* parents, the ones who name their kid something that's pretty off-the-beaten-path: Searc D'Artagnan. The first name is Irish Gaelic, means "love", and sounds like "shark". (Our alternate for a girl was "Saoirse", which means "freedom", and sounds like "Seersha".) And his middle name is a character from The Three Musketeers, which makes it both literary and related to swordfighting. ;) He'll either love it or hate it, I guess, but we've decided that if he doesn't like it we'll help him legally change it when he gets old enough to choose something different for himself. Still, I'm pretty convinced that few little boys would not love the name SHARK. And I'm kind of thinking many grown men would secretly love it too, LOL. 

So anyway, we had a wonderful party with many wonderful friends, and a few of their little ones too <3 We had the "It's A Small World" castle put on the cake, which turned out pretty nice, and got the chance to show off our halfway-finished nursery, and all in all really enjoyed ourselves. 

Of course, we were both really exhausted afterward, because we've spent weeks cleaning and doing nursery work to prep for the party. 

So Sunday, which was Valentine's Day, turned into a day for resting. I went shopping at a bunch of baby consignment and thrift stores for more nursery stuff, and we took our 32-week belly pic (gender announcement edition!):

I really do have a belly that shows up now, though it's still small enough that we scheduled our maternity photos for the 35 week mark, which is later than the photographer usually does them, in the hopes that the bump will be closer to the impressive ones she usually photographs. Of course, we also have to seriously hope that baby boy doesn't decide he's in a hurry and arrives before we get the chance to take pictures!

Things at work are still pressurized, though not as bad as they were in January. Right now I'm focused mostly on building a solid coverage plan while I'm out. I presented my maternity leave plan to my boss, and got the impression she's not thrilled I'm taking all 12 weeks of FMLA - but since I have the leave to cover it in full and I'm entitled to it by law, I guess the end result is that the plan is approved, even if she never directly said so. Anyway, the plan involves 8 weeks off, then working from home for 8 hours in week 9 and 16 hours in week 10, then four weeks working on-site 20 hours/week, then three weeks working 4-day weeks, before I'm completely back to full time. It really is a win-win, since I come back to work earlier, get to ease back into a work schedule instead of leaping back in, and get to use all 12 weeks of my leave. Oh, and by the time I'm back to a regular schedule I'll also have another 5 1/2 days worth of leave saved back up again. At no time will I actually be without leave hours entirely.

I'm looking forward to it maybe more than I should. For better or worse, I'll have eight weeks to refocus my life around my son instead of my job. Right now the round the clock feedings and diaper changes and so on still sound like a welcome vacation compared to the pressure cooker at work. :P One of the many reasons I wanted to be a parent so badly is so that I wouldn't grow old and look back on my life and realize I lived most of it defined by my job. A child lets me redefine my life around things that matter more than what I do for a paycheck.

So anyway, feeling pretty good this past week. Nausea is more under control since I increased the Diclegis, and congestion is mostly under control with Afrin. Had some sleeping difficulties in the last few days, but slept well last night (really didn't want to wake up this morning!) Baby boy is moving and grooving all the time. He's found one spot on my left side that I think he's jabbing an elbow into, and that randomly hurts, but otherwise it's the usual weird slooshing and sliming from one side to the other, or from top to bottom, or little kicks to my ribcage just under my lungs. He also gets the hiccups pretty regularly too. It took me a while to realize that's what they are, because it feels like a rhythmic kicking against my cervix from the inside. It's a bizarre sensation, but now that I know what it is it's kind of funny.

No Braxton-Hicks contractions that I've noticed. I have, however, graduated to the swollen ankles and feet stage, not enjoyng that so much. :P

A nursery post will be coming soon, promise! In the meantime, my lunch break's about over so time to get back to work ;)

FOURTEEN WEEKS

Well, if we weren't in the second trimester last week we definitely are now. :P My morning sickness was well behaved yesterday - didn't show up until almost 9 PM! Unfortunately today it returned at around noon (boo) but I'm hoping that means it's really going to back off soon.

Turns out, we got the call from the OBGYN yesterday afternoon with the Harmony test results - super happy to hear that all baby's chromosomes came back completely normal. No signs of trisomies of any sort, which is excellent. We also got to find out baby's gender, which I'm not allowed to share for a while. :P

It's interesting, how finally knowing the gender has had a much more profound impact than I had imagined. Because this is our only child, I knew that there would be a sense of loss no matter which gender our kiddo turns out to be - because I will only ever be the mom of a __________, and will never be the mom of the opposite gender. So having the field narrowed down to one automatically means that everything I would have looked forward to about the other gender is no longer really on the table. One of the names we chose is no longer relevant. One section of the toy aisle is probably a lot less likely to be as popular with our little one, same with one section of the kids' clothing aisles. (Though you can bet that we're going to encourage kiddo to play with and wear what appeals to them, boy/girl labels be damned.)

There's a long list of things that are awesome and somewhat unique to parenting a child of each gender, and one half of that list gets crossed off (mostly) once the gender's known. No matter what a lot of politically-correct folks out there like to say about nature vs. nurture, I worked in a daycare center for seven years and can tell you there is a distinct difference (generally) in the way little boys and little girls play, interact, and respond. There is also a distinct and noticeable difference (most of the time) in parents of all-one-gender children. Moms and dads of all girls have a unique presence, a different sort of aura to them. And the same can be said of moms and dads of all boys. In my experience, parents of all boys tend to be louder, more direct, more physical. Parents of all girls tend to be gentler, more subtle, and place higher emphasis on aesthetics. We plan on incorporating a healthy dose of all of the above with our kiddo regardless of gender - but I can't help wondering if/how kiddo's going to end up changing and affecting both of us.

What I hadn't anticipated, I guess, was how finding out my child's gender would suddenly impact my perspective on who I was myself, and who I am going to become. I'm going to be the mom of a _________. Forever and ever, for the rest of my life (unless, of course, I'm lucky enough to have a kiddo who is unlucky enough to receive the wrong body at birth. While that's not something I would wish on anybody, especially not my child, I'm totally ready to roll with it if that's what the universe has in store!)

In spite of my sleeping meds I got stuck in a rut of insomnia last night, because my brain wouldn't rest, thinking about it. It's not that I'm not super excited to be having a _________ - I AM!!! I can't wait, and I'm already in love with this little one. I just know this is the kiddo I was always meant to have (I actually suspected, since I was a teenager, that this is the gender kiddo I'd end up with) and I know we're going to have an amazing relationship. There are one heck of a lot of things I'm really looking forward to about being the mom of a ________, that I would have missed out on if kiddo was the other gender. 

But I guess my brain still needs a few days to really process that this is the direction my life, Kaitlin's life, and our little one's life is going to go. It's really nice, after years of uncertainty, to finally see the picture of the future getting a little clearer. But zeroing in on that future does mean closing the doors on other possible futures at the same time, if that makes sense. 

So yeah.

The other thing that I think both Kaitlin and I are experiencing is a sense of HOLY CRAP THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING. Our baby now has a name. (In fact, we just settled on the middle name today.) I can now go shopping for non-unisex baby clothes - my AliExpress wish list is already overflowing with adorableness. We can now picture our kiddo a little more clearly when we think about traveling, and sending them off to school, and taking family photos, and going to the museum and aquarium and theme parks and family holidays. And even though we'd be doing all those things with our kiddo regardless of gender, we now know we'll be doing them with a _______. And it somehow makes the whole thing a hundred times more REAL. 

Anyway, I'll talk more about baby naming in general in another post, because that topic is worth an entire blog all on its own. We have our for-fun ultrasound tomorrow, and we don't plan on telling the ultrasound tech that we already know gender - we want to see what they see on the screen first. ;) We'll take a belly pic when I get home tonight, too, so I'll have that up in a day or two.

In the meantime, here's the BabyCenter imagining of kiddo at 14 weeks: