Dress (Non-Maternity – Order Size Down, Same Size if Pregnant). Baby Girl Crochet Booties. Flowers from Bloom by Anuschka.

IT’S A GIRL!

We are so happy to announce we will be welcoming a baby girl this August! We are both looking forward to a sweet little girl to love and protect, hours spent playing dress-up and having tea, and watching her grow up into a woman. Today John and I even talked about how blessed we would feel to become grandparents someday and make memories with her children. We just feel so grateful to be bringing this sweet little life into the world and cannot wait to meet her!

I did NIPT (Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing) at my doctor’s office at my twelve-week appointment. The blood test scans for fetal abnormalities but also reveals the baby’s gender… The only downside is the results don’t come back for a few weeks. And those days seemed to pass by so slowly! So I decided to visit the SneakPeek clinic here in Denver, which promises gender results as early as nine weeks and within 24-72 hours. You can order the test and take it at home to send in as well, but I don’t really trust myself to draw my own blood so I took the test at their clinic and opted for the expedited delivery. But… The weather in Denver had other plans. A sudden snow prevented the mail planes from leaving the airport (the genetic lab is located in California) so it meant even more waiting for us!

Around this time, a girl I went to school with posted about her baby’s gender blood test being false. She just had her twenty-week ultrasound appointment (where the doctor looks for all the baby’s physical features to be developing properly) and they discovered the previous blood test had been wrong. Naturally, this made me really nervous about the accuracy of the blood tests and I didn’t know what to think! I wondered if we should even announce the gender once we got the blood tests. So we decided to find out together and then tell only family until we confirmed the results with the twenty-week ultrasound.

I purchased two cakes – one with blue frosting inside and one with pink frosting inside – and waited for the emailed results. The cake boxes were labeled on the outside and I planned on surprising John with the proper cake when I received the email. John insisted he wanted to be the one to deliver the surprise, so I waited with the unopened email in my inbox until he came home from work and opened it! He brought out the cake for me to cut into and find out our little one is a GIRL! I was shocked and beyond happy. I had been certain the baby was a boy and I even thought I saw a telltale mark in the cake’s frosting that was present on the ‘boy’ cake. So it was quite a surprise.

Once we knew, we went out and celebrated at dinner and picked up a few things for our little girl at Janie and Jack. Then I sent cute little duck bath bombs to our families. The rubber duckies change a container of warm water to either pink or blue and they were so cute I knew we had to share our news that way! It was a fun way to tell our families. And now that our twenty-week ultrasound has confirmed our good news, I can finally share with you! It was nice to have a little secret the past few weeks. I have been dancing around and singing to my bump, just wondering what she will look like and how her little personality will develop! I will always cherish these sweet moments of her still in my belly.

My grandmother, my mother, and I were all very close; my mother and I are best friends and continue to talk multiple times a day just as she and her mother used to do. And it fills my heart with joy to think I might be lucky enough to experience that kind of bond with my own little girl. And I also know how strong the father-daughter bond can be. My father and I are alike in many ways and I have always put him on a pedestal of sorts; there’s just nobody else that will ever make me feel as safe and secure as my father does. Nobody as intelligent, as handy with a tool kit, or as strong. No matter what, at the end of the day, he is in my corner and I can’t wait for my little girl to have that relationship with her daddy. John is going to be an incredible father; the way he’s loved me has proven it over and over to me. He’s kind, caring, loving, gentle, patient, and understanding.

So many parents say they don’t care about gender and just want the baby to be healthy and I can promise you that cliché is 100% true. While there’s always a part of each person that hopes to share some of their favorite things with a child of the same gender, the concern for that unborn baby’s wellbeing and health is overwhelming. The process of pregnancy and childbirth used to scare me, but when I became pregnant I stopped thinking about myself first. I just want my baby to be safe, to feel loved, and to be healthy.

I hope someday we might also get to experience raising a little boy of our own, but right now I am so overjoyed to welcome this little girl into our lives. I’m certainly happy I decided to clear out my closets in preparation for her arrival because my mom has already been filling the nursery closet – I have a feeling this will be one well-dressed little girl! (And I might be down yet another closet!) So far, we’ve been loving things from Feltman Brothers, Pepa & Co., and Rachel Riley. I’ve linked a few pieces my mom and I have added to her closet down below.

Red Midi Dress. Fuzzy Baby Booties. Nude Pumps.

Photos by Miranda L. Sober Photography

My Story

Before you get married, well-meaning people in your life will ask you some terrifying questions, such as, “Are you sure you’re ready to get married?” and “Are you sure this person is the one you can spend forever with?” These questions are ridiculous, of course, because no first-time bride or groom can possibly know the answer… In fact, they are impossible questions no matter how many times you’ve been married! We have feelings so sure we would bet almost anything on them. I knew I wanted to spend all my life moments with John. I couldn’t imagine life without him and I knew I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone else.

But that truly certain, confident, assured feeling in marriage comes later after you’ve been there for one another over and over again and have begun to understand one another as only those in a marriage can. When you’re up at 3 AM with food poisoning. When you’re doubting yourself or your decisions. When you’re staring at what seems like an insurmountable challenge and you feel that person’s hand reach for your own. And sometimes that feeling shows up in the simplest of ways.

Last summer, John and I rolled up our Midwest-raised sleeves and launched into a landscaping renovation. We spent quite a few weekends under the unrelenting Colorado sun, covered in dirt, finishing this project together. Together we pulled up and removed a dumpster’s worth of mulch and landscaping fabric, spread over 8 tons of river rock by hand, installed a sprinkler system, laid sod, and planted too many flowers and trees to count. I remember being drenched in sweat, my muscles aching, but looking over at John and thinking I could do – would do – anything with him by my side. Knee-deep churning fresh soil as it started to rain, I realized we were quite literally in the trenches together. And that’s the kind of partners we try to be for each other every day.

When I think about the journey that led me to becoming a mother I can’t help but feel emotional. My parents have always told me that things in life happen for a reason and I believe it. My husband moved in just a few doors down from me, we officially met one another in law school, were placed in the same law school section and were in most of the same classes, began dating as we finished our law school experience together, I eventually moved to Denver for John, and we decided to begin our lives together as husband and wife. I had always known I wanted to be a mother… And John had mentioned wanting to start a family soon. But above all, we wanted it to happen when we were truly ready. We finished some projects, went on a few adventures, and were blessed very quickly with a baby.

How I Found Out

As I mentioned above, no one truly knows when they are ready for life’s major moments and the same is true for starting a family. I prayed for guidance and asked God to send me a sign to let me know when we were ready for this big step in our lives. That sign showed up in the form of ‘PREGNANT’ on a pregnancy test about a month later. We conceived our baby in the place where my ancestors lived. My great grandmother left Wales in the 1900’s and after the dishes were done each night, would look up at the stars and cry thinking of her home. I remember watching the sun set over the wild, romantic Bracelet Bay in Swansea where she lived, holding onto John, and understanding why Wales meant so much to her. I didn’t know it yet, but I was sharing that moment with my little babe.

We came home from our trip to England and Wales in December and I noticed some odd symptoms, like feeling queasy and suddenly possessing a near-superhuman sense of smell. I couldn’t stand restaurants or crowded areas because of the various food scents and even the scent of strangers’ perfumes and the laundry detergent on their clothes would make me sick. I took a test and discovered I was pregnant! We told our family members very early because we were so excited we just couldn’t wait.

I didn’t know how long it would take me to get pregnant or if I even could, so I feel grateful to become pregnant easily because I know just how many women struggle with infertility. And this is the reason I chose to stay off social media while I was dealing with 24/7 nausea, morning sickness, migraines, and fatigue in December and January. I’ll be honest, it was overwhelming and after a few weeks I began to feel a bit down and sad from the constant sickness. But at the same time, I know how incredibly blessed I am to carry this baby and I didn’t want to get on social media and complain about those special early days of my pregnancy. Instead, I tried to allow myself rest and comfort. I stayed in bed, drank my ginger tea, lived on toast and English muffins, and watched all the Downton Abbey seasons over again.

Things That Helped Me

I have received questions about my pregnancy journey and I know so many women get stressed about their own process to become pregnant, so I wanted to share the things that helped me in the hopes that it may help some of you.

First off, I highly recommend taking a Natural Family Planning (NFP) class or reading an NFP book to learn more about your body and your natural fertility cycle. We took one of these courses prior to our marriage and it has really helped us. In fact, we used NFP for 2.5 years before we were ready to have children and once we switched the “timing” we were pregnant within that very month. Obviously many other factors affect fertility, but I wanted to share this in case it helps any of you. I personally don’t like the way artificial hormones affect my mood and I believe this 100% natural form of birth control helped us conceive when we wanted.

There are lots of ways to track your cycle and symptoms via NFP, but I simply began with cycle tracking and found it worked for us. The tracking app I like best is called Flo because of its accuracy and ease of use. You can even use this app through your pregnancy!

I also wanted to share the optional Counsyl Family Prep Genetic Carrier Screen I took toward the beginning of our marriage. I wanted to be certain we were being responsible in conceiving our own children and this genetic screening scans to see if you are a carrier for over five hundred diseases and disorders. Only if you are a carrier for one of the diseases or disorders does your partner also need to take the test. It really gave me peace of mind, especially considering the amount of tests we have to undergo during pregnancy!

The Family Prep screening is different from the Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) you can take during your first trimester. The NIPT is also done via blood but tests the fetus’s risk of developing abnormalities versus your risk of passing them on to the baby. If you decide to do the NIPT, you can also find out your baby’s gender at around twelve weeks, which is a bonus! Once we got those results back and I knew our baby was doing alright I felt so much better.

The question of what helped me during the first trimester is a bit more difficult to answer. I was really sick and found that while ginger tea and ginger candies helped slightly, there was really nothing that prevented my sickness. I recommend drinking plenty of water and eating often – I ate about every 2-3 hours to keep dry heaves at bay (sorry for the TMI) and enjoyed cold fruit, icy smoothies, and breakfast foods like toast, oatmeal, waffles, and cereal. I found that allowing myself caffeine (okayed by my doctor) in the form of morning coffee and a hot herbal tea at night helped as well. I lived in these soft pajamas and cozy slippers and slept as often as I could since my nights were usually disrupted. I would watch soothing shows like Downton Abbey and Gilmore Girls while I rested. And my sister-in-law saved my life by recommending these prenatal vitamins that have been the only ones that don’t make me sick! Because I was living off carbs my first trimester and am prone to stretch marks, I knew I needed to start using something to hydrate my skin ASAP. I’ve found this stretch mark cream is a nice one and moisturizes without feeling greasy. My mom recently treated me to a huge pregnancy body pillow and I swear it’s the best thing ever; I feel completely cradled when I sleep and it helps to support my back.

John was such a great support over the first few months when I was really sick and continues to be today. I truly could not have done this with anyone else by my side. My mom flew in at the end of my first trimester for my twelve-week ultrasound and to help me begin to prepare the house for our little one’s arrival; she kept me calm through the first trimester roller coaster! She just came for another visit this week, including my twenty-week ultrasound. I love being able to share this journey with her, listen to her advice, and have her help preparing for our little one’s arrival!