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We're expecting!

Baby is due June 16th.

This is our ultrasound from Thursday.  Baby is about the size of a grape, and kind of the shape of a gummy bear. The right part of the blob is its head, and the left part of the blob is its body.  My midwife was able to point out all of the arms and legs, the spinal cord, and the jaw.  It has a strong heartbeat, and it was moving its little limbs around as we watched it.

I have been sick, sick, sick for about a month now.  I get nauseous soon after I wake up, and usually I just stay nauseous all day long.  Nothing really makes it better, except for chocolate, which really doesn't sound good to me in the morning.  Now, Jeff makes me hot chocolate every morning, and that makes my days about 80% better.  I still have a lot of days where I just spend most of the day sleeping and feeling awful, though.  We've had my assistant come over much more often to help me keep up with property management stuff and household stuff.  That helps somewhat.  And right now I'm on the "Things That Sound Like They Will Not Make Me More Sick" diet.  Hopefully I'll start feeling better soon.

We picked an excellent midwife.  She's very experienced, and she's always booked about 8 months out, with a waiting list.  We called her as soon as we knew I was pregnant, and we're excited to be working with her.  Jeff and I both want to have an out-of-hospital birth, for a variety of reasons.  We have excellent insurance, so a hospital birth would pretty much be free, but it's an easy decision for us: we want the very best for our child, and we won't get the best at a hospital.  For Jeff, it's all about statistics: out-of-hospital births statistically have better outcomes (for example, much lower rate of c-sections, lower rates of postpartum depression, etc).  For me, it's about the experience that I want to have (I attended four of my mom's home births).  At this point we're leaning toward having a planned home birth, but my midwife also has a very nice birth center, so we're still considering that option.

We've only [tentatively] picked a girl name: Renesme.  We could also combine my mom's name (Karen) and Jeff's mom's name (June) to make something really special, like Juren, or Karune.  We could use the same naming convention if it's a boy--my dad's name is Robert and Jeff's dad's name is Thomas, so we could call him Tombob or Botom, but I'm just not as sure about those.   Just kidding.