Baby Girl update

So I thought I would make it official on my blog that we are going to have a baby. We have been married for 5 1/2 years and have been very busy going to school and furthering our education that we haven't even thought about having children. Although we have loved our time together without children we are excited to start a new phase our lives together. I can't wait to be a little family and experience the joys of parenthood with Brett.

I thought I would tell the "announcement story" in a little more detail on the blog. 

On June 6, 2013 we headed to Utah to bid farewell  to Brett's parents before they made their big move to China. Craig was asked to go to Nanjing to start a new plant over there so they will be there for the next 2 - 3 years. Sue says she is going to be splitting her time 50/50 between Utah and Nanjing for those years. But I guess we will just have to wait and she what she falls in love with over there. Anyway, the Petersen's were all together for one last hoorah before they left. That Monday before they left, June 3, 2013 we found out that we were finally 'in the clear' and there was only a 3%chance of miscarriage from that point forward, at this point we were 11 weeks along. 

To back up a little bit - we unfortunately had to go through the experience of 2 miscarriages in the past. The last one was at Christmas, which we had plan to surprise the family with the news on Christmas. However, that didn't happen as I lost the baby on December 16. The second one wasn't quite at traumatic for us, as we had not been seen by a physician yet confirming the pregnancy, but there was one more between the first miscarriage and the current pregnancy. Needless to say we were not letting anyone know until we were 'in the clear'. 

We found out on April 14 that we were pregnant but didn't want to genius hopes too high. We got a dr appointment scheduled ASAP so that we could make sure everything was healthy. I then had an ultrasound on may 7 to check the heartbeat and begin to monitor things a little closer due to past miscarriages. Everything looked great at that appointment, and we were given a due date of Jan 1' 2014. We had a 2nd ultrasound on May 21 to check the heartbeat again and everything still looked good. The due date was moved to December 30, 2013. Everything seemed to be working out and growing as normally expected. We were very happy but it was difficult to get really excited about things just yet as we knew the risk of miscarriage was still high for us. So when we got that confirmation from the dr on june 3, we couldn't wait to tell. 

My mom did not know that we were making a trip to Utah, so we surprised her at work on Friday afternoon. Just seeing us we didn't think would be surprise enough so we showed up with a Dr. Pepper (her favorite thing in the world). We had a picture of the announcement wrapped around the Dr. Pepper. Mom was so excited to see us that she didn't even notice the announcement until she was walking back to her desk. Then she shouted for her entire office to hear, "and we are having a baby!!!" Dillon and dad knew that we were coming home to Utah but didn't know about the other surprise. So they got a little surprise too. We visited my grandpa Gale that afternoon and also gave him the news. 

The next day we headed to the Petersen's cabin at Bear Lake to spend some quality time with the family. We had "done up the day" with go-karting, a dog run, visiting a Blackhawk helicopter, the beach/swimming, and finally ended it with dinner. We were all hanging out back at the cabin that night when Brett handed Garrett an announcement and told him to take it to grandma. Sue said "what's this?" Then read it out loud to everyone.

I didn't want go leave out my sister in Alaska and I knew the mail would take a while to get to her so I sent an announcement to her in the mail following our dr appointment on Monday. She received the card on Saturday so we she didn't miss out on all the news.

The Thursday after we returned home from Utah I was at Young Women's when I decided to tell Stacy Mitchell, who is the Young Women's President in our ward. For a long time it has been just her and I serving the Young Women's together and she is has been a huge support to me through the previous miscarriages. We were writing Thank you notes to people who has participated and supported the young women in the attaining their fundraising goals for girl's camp this summer. Stacy stepped out of the room for a minute and while she was gone I put the picture in the middle of the stack of card. When she came back, I asked her to look through the cards to be sure that we had made one for everyone. When she came across the card she started screaming and jumping up and down. It didn't take long before everyone in the building knew. When I got home that evening we decided that word was going to spread and that we better let people know. So we placed the announcement on Facebook and sent a text to close friends. 

On June 24, we had a scheduled appointment to screen for genetic defects and any birth defects with the baby. It was going to take like 2 hours so I told Brett it probably wouldn't be anything special and not to worry trying to get the day off from his clinical. I went by myself and while they were doing the ultrasound they said "we can tell the sex, would you like to know what it is." I said I didn't want to know since my husband wasn't with me. The cute little lady said they could write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope for us. I said I would love that and she did. We opened it together that night and found out that we are having a sweet baby girl. 

This was the way that we announced that we were having a little girl: 

With the votes tallied.... 

 The Dr note says....

 It's a GIRL!

Dr. Note is the sticky note

I have to be honest and say I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a boy because I always wanted an older brother but as I have thought about it and watched the little families in our ward that have boys and girls I am so grateful for the opportunity to be entrusted of the Lord to raise a righteous woman in the Gospel. As I sat in 3rd hour meeting today I had the thought that I feel so blessed to be able to raise a little girl who will invite the spirit of the Lord and challenge us to rise up to our potentials and help us to be stronger in the gospel. As many of the prophets and apostles have said, if it wasn't for their wives they wouldn't be where they are. Oh the responsibility of parenthood and raising a righteous woman! Bring on the PINK!

Latest photo - 3.4 in, 1.5 oz, size of a lemon

Baby's first gift from Sis Stacy Mitchell. 

Next blog entry will be more about how I have felt during pregnancy, cravings, etc.