Thank you all so much for the well wishes and excitement over our family growing.  We are beyond thrilled.  This has been such an amazing journey.  Much more complicated than most know.  Jason and I had decided that we were done at 3.  Fairly certain before Teagan was born.  Very certain after he was born.  And then as time went on and Teagan got older and the fuzzy newborn phase was gone, we both started feeling like we might want just one more.  We talked and prayed and sat on it and hemmed and hawed over it.  For awhile.  And then we decided to go for it.  Because I’d gotten pregnant 3 times on the first month trying to conceive (well, Ty was a surprise…) we planned on trying around my work schedule.  That first month, we were shocked with a negative test.  That may sound so naive to people who have had to try for a really long time, but our track record gave us confidence.  We were sad.  We quickly realized just how much we really did want one more little soul in our lives.  We tried, month after month after month after month.  And we kept getting negatives.  Something just wasn’t right.  We visited my OB and considered fertility treatments.  I had such a hard time with that, we really struggled and felt like maybe we should be happy with the 3 beautiful kids we have.  We hadn’t made up our minds yet what path to take.

And then Teagan was injured by vaccines.

His injury was like a tornado hitting our lives.  Everything stopped in an instant.  Everything we thought mattered, suddenly didn’t because we found ourselves fighting for his life and health.  Everything was put on hold, friendships, work, life, including trying to have another baby.  We spent over a year healing him.  We were so beyond overwhelmed.  In small ways, we’re still working on it.  Jason and I both, together and separately tried to make peace with our family of five.  Knowing how badly we both wanted another baby.  We got rid of all of our baby stuff, thinking it just wasn’t in the cards for us.  And healing our family and improving our health was always in the forefront of our priorities.  We’d detoxed, started chiropractic care, massively improved our diets, lost weight.

Whammo.

That’s the best word I can think of to describe where we are.  So happy.  So thrilled.  Just…..whammo.  This amazing journey of hurt and pain and health and blessings.  We’ll never know for sure, but I don’t think this new blessing would be on the way without Teagan’s journey.  So after being done, and then not being done, and then struggling to not be done, to being done again, unwillingly, to tremendously blessed…..we are exactly where we are supposed to be, when we are supposed to be.  Right here, right now, we are so happy!

I will say that my husband quite literally jumped out of his skin when I told him.  Surprised doesn’t even really cover it, ha!  So funny!  This pregnancy is so different already.  I was horribly sick with all of my previous pregnancies.  This time, I am treating morning sickness as a nutritional deficiency and it’s working like a charm.  As long as I keep up with my daily checklist, I feel great.  Really, really tired, but great otherwise.  Not sick a single time so far.  One day I slacked off and oh boy, did I feel the difference.  I’m so kicking myself for being so sick with my previous pregnancies, but, when you know better, you do better.

The biggest question I have been getting is if we will go for another T name?!  No, we won’t.  It always takes us awhile to figure out names and we’ll have to pick out several since we likely won’t be finding out what we are having this go around.  If we do find out, it will be for Taryn’s sake.  She’s very much on team pink.  I’m afraid she may pack up and move to live with the Gee if a boy shows up.  We’ll see as time goes by though.  But definitely no T names, that we already decided (even though I really love the name Tess….).  It has definitely been a different experience for Taryn this go around, she was so much younger when I got pregnant with Teagan.  She’s excited and interested and involved, I love it so much.  I love all the questions she asks and that when she saw the baby during the ultrasound, she declared she thinks I might be pregnant with a fish!  HA!  Teagan has been pretty funny too, he’s campaigning to name the baby guacamole (duder loves him some avacado….), he asked if when the baby comes out if I will “pop” or if the baby will arrive in an egg (he’s kind of in to dinosaurs right now).  I love how curious they are.  Ty, well, he’s an old pro.  He loves babies so much, it’s the toddler phase he could do without.  I reminded him that by the time this baby is a toddler he’ll have a car and more freedom at 17.  He finds comfort in that I think.  And with that I’ll just say, omg, I’m going to have a 15 year old and a newborn.  Craziness.

We are planning for our first homebirth and we’ve already got my favorite Austin birth photographer lined up.  Midwife is all set and I’m working on interviewing a doula.  I’m really thinking we will also hire a newborn photographer this go around.  I wish I had done that with Teagan just to take the pressure off of me doing it after just having had a baby.  Any Austin newborn photogs up for a session swap?  Newborn pics for a family session?

I’ll be back tomorrow to post about my schedule this year…..it’s going to be a little crazy with a new baby arriving just as busy season hits.  We’ve got it worked out, but if you have been thinking about booking a session this year, NOW is definitely the time to do it!  I have births open between now and July and then I won’t be taking any births at all for the foreseeable future depending on my nursing relationship with the new baby.  I’ll post scheduling details tomorrow though =)  Thanks again for all the congrats, we are beyond thrilled and blessed.