We are excited to announce that we will be welcoming baby Sidwell #4 to our family at the end of July! My official due date is July 28th, I am now 12 weeks along. Since we found out about Olivia's anencephaly at the 12 week ultrasound, we were waiting until that same ultrasound to make our newest blessing public news. It has been a struggle to keep this semi-private (and I do use that term loosely!) but now I am ready to tell the world!
Today we were able to see a nice round head and have lots of great pictures of our baby. I am already guessing this is another girl for a couple of reasons. 1) When the odds are 3 out of 3 girls, why would I expect anything else and 2) The heart rate was 161 and while I know this is not a deciding factor, it is a high heart rate just like all of our girlies! With that being said, we will welcome any healthy little baby into our arms, even if it could have capabilities of peeing in his own face (sorry, I am a little terrified of baby boys)!
In the baby loss community, the pregnancy following a loss is a rainbow baby. The following was taken from another blog :
"Rainbow Babies" is the understanding that the beauty of a rainbow does not negate the ravages of the storm. When a rainbow appears, it doesn't mean the storm never happened or that the family is not still dealing with its aftermath. What it means is that something beautiful and full of light has appeared in the midst of the darkness and clouds. Storm clouds may still hover but the rainbow provides a counterbalance of color, energy and hope."
This was another planned pregnancy and although I have learned through the loss of our 3rd daughter that our timeline is not God's timeline, that can be a hard thing to accept for a control freak like me. If it were up to me, I would have become pregnant much sooner than I did but I continued to pray that when it was God's time, we would be blessed with another child. Thankfully we did not have that long of a wiat. The last 9 weeks have been full of joy and anxiety and I cannot wait to hold this new sweet little bundle of joy!
"You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.—Psalm 16:11"
I debated on whether I should post this on Olivia's blog or our family one that has not had much use lately. Since this is a new chapter in our life, I will continue updating pregnancy news on this blog.
