Baby 3!

Baby on the way! Baby on the way!

Cisneros child nombre three will be heading to town this October! 18 weeks have already come and gone - how can that be? I still feel like the whole thing is so new. Almost half way there - what?! No. That can't be right! But yes, we're breaching the 5 month mark here soon and I just can't believe it. "Thankful" doesn't even begin to describe the emotions of the last few months - after the stress of the first trimester (following last year's sad event of our other third baby reaching angel status - so this is actually Cisneros child nombre four, but for earthly purposes, we shall chalk him/her up to tres, if only when talking to other people about it), and then the unexpected anxiousness that moved with me into the second trimester, the whole thing just accentuates all adjectives "thankful" related to a fine point.

We are all so thrilled - what a miracle it is to grow a baby. With Carter and Kota's pregnancies, that fact was taken for granted big time. This time around, with having miscarried and witnessing heartache in the realm of "baby" over the span of many friends and acquaintances, no little flutter of movement is felt without extreme gratitude. It's just so wonderful!

So how did bebe tres go down! Well, after the sad March news of last year, our doctor told us to wait 3 months (at the time I thought that was an eternity). Once three months passed us by, neither Chad or I felt like we were overly excited to start trying again, so we just didn't. Then, out of no where, I thought, WOAH IT'S BEEN SIX MONTHS, IF WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS, WE BETTER GET ON IT. THERE AIN'T NO WAY MAMA'S GOING TO HAVE A LARGER GAP THAN WE ALREADY WILL BETWEEN OUR OLDER TWO AND THIS POSSIBLE THIRD CHILD. NO WAY JOSE! So in September, we got to goin'.

Month after month went by... and no bambino, but I was so relaxed about the whole thing (for some insane reason. Who was I?). I was so chill! Then in January, Chad and I were standing in the kitchen making enchiladas enjoying glasses of wine and I said, "Hey man. If this trying business takes much longer, let's just call it quits. We've got two great kids. If we don't get pregnant by next month, let's go to Hawaii this summer and just commit to traveling once a year to cool places. I think that's a good plan." He agreed and we drank more wine. Then, two weeks later, I didn't get my period on February 4th, so a Target trip was made, pregnancy test secured.

AND IT WAS POSITIVE! The faintest little line, just like Carter and Kota's tests, showed up! I was like NO WAY.

So at this point, I was obviously "4 weeks" (2 weeks), and the anxiousness settled in. How did I know that this baby was okay in there? ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD could be going on in that uterus of mine. I called my doctor immediately and was told I wouldn't be seen until 8 weeks - 4 WHOLE WEEKS AWAY! My brain would surely go crazy in that time. But anyway, what could I do? I just booked the appointment and tried to be a calm human, not someone living in utter fear. So around 5 weeks, I said to myself, "Hey Nicole, chill out and be excited. Why dontchya go onto babycenter.com and take a look at how the baby is doing in there?"

BIG MISTAKE. Well of course, at that point, the baby was a (sweet) bundle of cells. CELLS! There are no baby features, obviously! The image of the group of baby cells sent me into extreme anxiety. I mean, ANYTHING could happen to any ONE of those cells and things could go catastrophically wrong. To make it worse, the description underneath the picture of the 5 week baby said, "If your pregnancy test was faint, and you take another one which comes out negative, then you may have had a miscarriage." WHAT. That could be determined via a few home pregnancy tests?!!!!!! AND MY TEST WAS VERY FAINT!

So I threw Kota in the car, bolted down to Target with the excuse that I needed to pick something else up while there, and then sped home to take the second test I had hurriedly purchased. The test came back with a stronger line, but I was still very shaken by my babycenter experience. I decided that I wouldn't allow myself to look at the darn website until out of the first trimester in order to avoid that level of stress. Oh! And the stress that it all caused, caused me MORE stress! I knew stress wasn't good for baby, but I couldn't stop stressing! MY GOSH!

So anyhoo, all is well now, after one horrific experience where the doctor couldn't find baby's heart beat on the doppler (but was able to find it on the ultrasound). We waited sooooooo long to tell people about this little one - that's why I think the whole thing feels so new still. It's such a gosh dang blessing! Woooooooo bebe 3, kicking away in there!!!!!