Our Springtime Surprise -- Baby #5!

I was in New York on April Fools Day, and there I announced our springtime surprise -- Baby #5! I was 11 weeks pregnant at the time, and only a few people commented with a "yeah right." Some friends and family already knew and officially congratulated us, so a couple of days later when I posted a sonogram picture, it was funny to me how many people admitted they thought our announcement was a joke.

It's not a joke -- I'm pregnant. Of all the months to conceive, we conceived right before we adopted a newborn. Of course, we didn't know things would happen as they did. I had a positive urine test (or nine) the weekend before our adoption homestudy on Valentine's Day. We felt concerned about having a homestudy while pregnant, but we decided to move forward since I am so prone to miscarriage. If I stayed pregnant, we planned to announce our news to the agency at the end of the my first trimester, the weekend we attended our first adoption support group meeting. We thought we were on a two- or three-year track for adoption, so even if we went to term and we were blessed with an adoption match, our two littlest would still be a couple of years apart in age. Little did we know we'd be matched with a new little baby just thirty days after our homestudy!

When the agency called about our match, I was eight weeks pregnant at the time. We shared our surprising news and asked if they had any concerns. The social worker said they didn't as long as we didn't. We didn't! We felt having two little ones seven months apart would be no different than having twins. Irish twins! What we didn't really think through was adapting to an up-every-three-hours newborn schedule while tired from pregnancy, or having another sleepless newborn while the elder Irish twin is newly sleeping through the night and beginning to crawl about. It's been interesting to parent a newborn while growing another baby. Needless to say, I could sure use a nap!

As for baby, so far, so good. I've already been rotated between my OB/GYN and my MFM specialist. With supplementation, my progesterone level was fairly stable early on, despite some daily spotting that lasted several weeks. At this point, my cervix looks good and the placenta appears to be developing nicely. I had the nuchal translucency scan to test for Down's Syndrome, and baby seems to be growing well with no disorders. I'll continue seeing each doctor every two weeks until later in the pregnancy when the appointments become more frequent. I'll begin taking the 17P hydroxyprogesterone injections again sometime between 15-17 weeks.

With all of our struggles to either get or stay pregnant, it blows my mind that if all continues going well, James and I will be the parents of FIVE CHILDREN. Insane! We feel so, so blessed. Though life feels very out of control right now with everything else going on, it's been hard to obsess over this pregnancy, and time seems to be flying by -- not that I'm complaining! I'm sure I'll have a "list," but I don't have time for it to be insane. We'll need an even bigger car, so that's at the top of the list. As for home projects, we just need to work on some routine maintenance stuff. At this point, we'd still like to sell this house and move closer to church and friends sometime next year, so I hate to invest a lot of time or money to add a new baby suite upstairs. We'll see -- lots of decisions to make. I need that nap first.

Pregnant me at 11 weeks
(Tired from traipsing about NYC)

Baby #5 at 11 weeks + 3 days