The Begining of our Journey

On December 5, 2007 we were blessed with our positive pregnancy test! When I told Kevin we both began laughing. 4 children! Were we crazy? Even though we were thrilled by the thought of our 4th "planned" child we were also a little nervous. Right now we have a 6 year old (Austin), almost 3 year old (Emma), and 1 year old (Kadin). WOW!

Since I am a nurse and work in an OB/GYN office I had the opportunity to do several ultrasounds to confirm dates and check growth. Everything looked great and we began planning on our new arrival around August 2, 2008.

On Christmas day we announced to our family by giving an ultrasound picture to my Mother as a gift. It was a wonderful Christmas fill with many presents and tons of joy.

The days and weeks went by. I had mild first trimester nausea, which was a little unusual for me. We felt blessed because in the in the past I have had a lot of nausea and vomiting with my pregnancies.

We started telling our close friends when we were 10 weeks. We had made the decision not to tell our children for a while because 9 months is a long time for them to wait. We hoped to tell them when I started showing so they could enjoy the fun with us. However, one friend was very excited for us and Austin overheard her talking about it (Thanks Tani!). He came right up to me with eyes the size of silver dollars..."Mom, are WE going to have another BABY!?". It was a wonderful way for him to find out! He was so excited that he couldn't even talk for a couple of minutes. Then he spilled the beans to his sister. It was all over. They told everyone!

I went to my first OB appointment with Dr. Shope on Feburary 19th. I was 16 weeks pregnant. I wasn't feeling fetal movement yet (again a little unusual) but we heard the heart on Doppler and felt that everything was going well. While at that visit, they did all the prenatal blood work, including the prenatal risk screen.