Pregnancy (Take 5)

I'm pregnant with our 5th baby! My heart is overflowing with joy and expectation! My husband is incredibly excited too, as usual, and joined me in informing anyone who would listen about our latest little miracle! We called, Facebooked, tweeted, and told everyone else we could in person, even whipping out my freshly peed on pregnancy test to show baby girl's Godmother when we found out as we were going out that evening.

I know at one point I thought to myself that maybe 4 was enough kids, but at some point my heart began to grow, to make room for another little soul to join our family. Once the post-natal fog lifted and life was getting back into order, it was so obvious to me that our family had room to grow. For the first time in the 6 years of our marriage, it took us about a year to conceive. Usually I was finding myself in possession of a positive pregnancy test between 6 and 9 months post-partum. That my youngest is 13 months might seem close to many people, but that is a huge gap in my mind! She's already walking (although crawls sometimes too), eats everything and anything, is incredibly social, sleeps like a champ, and has self-weaned. Her extended breastfeeding is the reason we didn't conceive sooner, and it was an incredible gift to both she and I. I had more recovery time for one. I also had more time to settle into a routine in our new house. I even managed to start getting more involved at our Church, which has meant a lot to me! I also found the energy to get myself started on homeschooling our eldest. With a June due date, we'll have the whole summer to recover before hitting the books again! For her, it meant longer bonding, better nutrition when she was under the weather, and lots of cuddles with Mommy.

So here we are, 5th positive pregnancy test in hand, excited beyond all belief and dedicated to enjoying every minute of it. One of the first things we did was upgrade our baby carrier to an Ergo because our Snugli had really worn out over the past three babies. We also picked up another pack of newborns Bummis diapers so we can exclusively cloth diaper from birth. I hit the grocery store and picked up 300 pre-natal vitamins (as I had run out and wanted closer to a year's supply) and have started to take them daily. With only very mild nausea I'm finding life is going on as normal, though I've been exhausted once naptime hits! The upside of my energy level staying basically the same is that my incredibly strong sense of smell which only happens when I'm pregnant is forcing me to start working on house work to keep the stinkies at bay.

The other big news pregnancy wise is that I got in touch with the Midwives at our local hospital. For most people who might read this outside of my province this may seem like not a big deal, but here in my province we've had to work hard to get Midwives with privileges at our hospital. They weren't available for my first three pregnancies, and they were on hiatus due to political issues during my fourth pregnancies. Today, with two full time midwives and one part-time midwife, I was able to make myself only second on their waiting list for June! Unless I risk out this basically guarantees me a spot! I have wanted to try for midwife care since I first heard of how midwives work, but this is the first time I've been able to sign up. I'll be sad that our regular baby-catching family doctor won't be our regular care provider as we have a beautiful relationship, but I'd do just about anything to have more personalised, natural birth focused care that won't have me alone with a nurse for hours on end. I find the nurses at our hospital range from incredible to absolutely awful. The nurse from my last birth would wait until my husband was out of the room and say all sorts of crazy things, like how I should stop being so noisy as it wasn't helping me labour. The upside about all of this is that's there actually a pretty good chance my family Doc will be in the hospital when I deliver as she is works in the Peri-Natal clinic and does regular rotations on the birth unit. I'll be praying that I get both a Midwife and my own well loved Doctor.

That's all so far. Get ready for belly pics, folks. I'm going to start taking them weekly so you can see how ridiculously fast my belly POPS!