Our Little Secret

Abigail Joyce Photography |  Third anniversary photos at Montrose Harbor, Chicago

Toward the end of summer I started to lose my motivation and focus. I felt lost and uninspired, and I wasn’t sure what to do next. I shifted my priorities, gave myself a break and now I can happily say that I’m starting to gain some of that drive back, in large part because of some upcoming, exciting changes heading our way.

First, my family will have more time together now that the craziness of baseball season is behind us. (If you’re new here, my husband Graham works in the industry, so March-November can be busy.) Now we will have the time to prepare for our next big adventure: Pregnancy!

We’re having a baby!

Graham, Victoria and I are thrilled to share the news now that I’m starting my second trimester. We all attended my most recent ultrasound together, and V was excited to hear the heartbeat and see the baby in my belly.

We’ve slowly been spreading the news to our family and friends, which was a little tricky since they are out of state. We would have loved to share the news in person, but we just couldn’t wait any longer, and we weren’t sure when we’d be able to travel to see them. (Also, keeping this secret was extremely difficult. Graham’s coworkers found out immediately!)

Questions I’ve already been asked:

• Do you know the gender? Not yet.
• When are you due? April 30.
• Do you have names picked out? We have discussed possible names in the past, but we haven’t made a decision since we don’t know the gender yet. Also, we won’t be sharing the name until the baby is born.

Questions you didn’t ask:

• How will this affect your blog? I already blog about our toddler sometimes, so I am sure I will also blog about our new addition. I don’t foresee this becoming a blog solely about parenting, since I am interesting in so many things, including running, yoga, gardening, travel, etc.
• How did you tell Graham? We kind of knew I was pregnant. When I finally took the test to confirm, I texted him a photo of the results. I wanted him to know immediately since we had this feeling and he was always at work. I don’t think he minds that I did it that way.
• Is this why you didn’t run your half-marathon? Maybe no one noticed, but I had trained for a half-marathon all summer only to not run it at the last minute. The last long run I completed was 12 miles when I was about six and a half weeks pregnant. I didn’t know for sure that I was pregnant at the time because I put off taking a test. The following week I was scheduled to run another long run of about 10 miles. I had our babysitter scheduled and was about to get dressed for my run when I had a little fainting incident. When I realized what had happened, I saw (and felt) that I had bitten into my lip so hard that my mouth was full of blood. I had also hit my head and bruised my hip. After this episode, my doctor advised me not to run the half-marathon because it was going to be 90 degrees that day (and because of what happened). After that week I didn’t run for about two weeks because I wasn’t feeling well, but lately I’ve been trying to get back into the gym. My goal is to exercise or practice yoga as much as I can.

Winter Vacation Update:

Winter is the only time we can travel for longer than a weekend. This year we had originally discussed Belize as our vacation destination, but we later changed that to Puerto Rico because a passport is not necessary to travel there. (We still need V’s passport with her new name.) After Hurricane Maria and the pregnancy confirmation, we knew we had to change our destination, though we still plan to visit the island at some point in the next few years. So where are we going now? We don’t know yet! Where should we go? Leave your recommendations in the comments!