Pregnancy series: Part 2 -- Enter the second trimester and the gender reveal!
**Please don't be alarmed! The corgi will make sense later...**
Here we are again, and after discussing the first trimester and morning sickness in "part one" of this series, I am moving on to much pleasanter things and introducing you to my favorite season of pregnancy so far: the second trimester!
Although the transition between these trimesters seemed gradual, I am very glad to be on this side of my pregnancy.
Around week 14, I began to experience marked improvement with my nausea and vomiting symptoms. We attended a family wedding in California at the tail end of the first trimester, and despite my fears of flying while still battling some morning sickness, everything went well! I only had one difficult day during the trip, and my husband Kris and I were thankful to truly enjoy our time together.
Since most of the first trimester consisted in battling morning sickness, I was far more aware of the changes in my body and my general emotional experience during the second trimester. Due to this difference, I actually have WAY more to say about this trimester and may need to break these posts up into a few installments, including discovering if you are having a boy or girl, feeling him or her kick for the first time, and dealing with body image as your pregnancy progresses.
But as far as this post goes, I want to share our experience with one of the (potentially) most exciting events in a pregnancy: discovering the baby's gender.
Now, some families prefer to wait and be surprised, but many couples choose to find out during this time. Usually, they wait until the 20-week ultrasound to discover if they will be having a boy or a girl. With the frankly amazing advances in modern medicine, however, we were able to know several weeks early due to blood testing.
On the day the nurse called, Kris was still at work, so I waited until he had come home briefly for lunch to call back. Unfortunately, the nurse was not available, and we didn't receive a return call with the news while he was home, so we devised a system.
This is the point at which corgis come in, so I will offer a brief explanation. Kris and I are self-confessed nerds and animal lovers. He absolutely ADORES corgis -- the dogs with endearingly short legs, huge ears, and fluffy hindquarters -- and it is one of his highest aspirations to own a corgi someday. He had purchased some ridiculously adorable corgi socks for me a couple days before we received the call, so we decided that when he got home, I would be wearing either the corgi socks or a pair of striped socks, depending on the gender.
A couple hours after he had returned to work, I finally received the call.
The nurse told me we would be having *drumroll, please*... a BOY!
In that moment, after hearing the news, something inside me shifted. I had known in my head that we were pregnant and would eventually have a baby, but I don't think the reality had hit me yet. Knowing the gender of our sweet child just blew me away. I paced aimlessly around the house, crying tons of happy tears, just thinking about how real it all was. In just a few short months, I would have a son!
And sure enough, when Kris walked through the door, there I was at the top of the stairs, sporting the corgi socks. We both freaked out, cried, hugged, and just expressed our crazy excitement as we anticipated being the parents of a little baby boy!
After celebrating the news together, we wasted no time in contacting our family and friends to let them know we would be having a boy. I think the joy of sharing increased our delight even more, if that was even possible in the moment, and as I write this, we are still highly anticipating our little dude's entrance into the world.
Thanks, again, for reading, and I hope you can join me for the next part in the series, in which I will discuss the miracle of feeling baby move for the first time! Hint: for us, it was in an unlikely setting, and gravity had a lot to do with it... But I will fill you in with more of the details next week.
Until then, I would love to hear your comments and stories about your own experience! Did you choose to do a big gender reveal (complete with balloons and confetti, a cake, or a colored water fight), or did you keep it a secret and just enjoy the surprise? Feel free to reply in the comments section below or on the Facebook page for Mama Smith Writes.
Thank you again for visiting!
Soli Deo Gloria
- Mama Smith
Stock image from Pexels.com
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