of party crashing and announcements

A week ago today I went out to dinner with some girlfriends from church. I was actually a party-crasher since I was unexpected by all but one of the other ladies in attendance. As you can see by the picture below, all of these ladies share a common thread... Our church is experiencing a baby boom this year, that is set to begin in October and wrap up in December. There are a total of six pregnant women at our church (one of them was not present with us last week). As most of you know by now, I am one of them. Attending the preggo ladies dinner was my first step in going public with this pregnancy. Up till that day only our immediate family and two other friends knew about it. I heartily enjoyed the shocked and joyful reactions I received when I showed up. We followed that up with an announcement at church on Sunday morning, and of course, the following facebook announcement:

We must ask you all to FOURgive us our lack of FOURTHrightness when it comes to sharing FOURtunate news in our family. From this day on we will FOURward any pertinent information concerning the FOURcast of December 12th. I FOURsee that some of you may have already reached a FOURgone conclusion, but we will confirm anyhow, that this is our FOURmal announcement.

Jessie and I enjoy keeping our special little secrets to ourselves for awhile, we've been keeping this one since we found out on Easter Sunday. But I am definitely happy to be out of hiding. I had a relatively easy first trimester and am fast approaching 16 weeks (on Sunday). I am rather long-waisted, so my babies don't really make themselves obvious till around 20 weeks, but still, I was getting tired of sucking it in! We had our first prenatal on Wednesday, where we heard the heartbeat and filled out about a bezillion medical history forms and such. Everything looks just peachy thus far.

I am going to a midwife here in Florida for our prenatals, but for various reasons, we are planning a trip back to Michigan to deliver with midwives there while staying with family.

We would covet your prayers as we prepare to become a family of six! I have been so blessed with healthy babies and uneventful pregnancies, but it is a blessing not to be taken for granted. We hope that my past pattern of delivering within 24 hours of my due date will hold true one more time so we will be able to keep our plans to deliver in Michigan. We mean to arrive at least a week before my due date. If I do happen to begin labor earlier, I would probably deliver with my midwife in Florida.

The girls are super-excited, and ask me every day if I still have a baby in my belly (Well, Theia and Eliza do. I don't think the news has really made it to Ingrid's radar). They are all campaigning for another girl. Theia insists that she's sure she wouldn't like a boy. I hope she'll change her mind if it actually comes down to that.