We're having a baby girl!!!
Reflecting on the first two trimesters & preparing for Orli to arrive this summer <3
I’ve been saving up seven months’ worth of ramblings, and I think I’m finally out of the nauseous woods. At this point, if I waited any longer to write this, I’d have a one-year-old attached to my hip.
We’re expecting baby number two this summer, and it’s a girl!
When we started trying, I’d hoped to have a two-grade age gap with my kids. Once we realized this likely wasn’t going to happen, I tried to trust that it would happen in God’s timing. Of course, just as I’d finally given up this obsession, He surprised me with a positive test in the last month that would firmly make the school cutoff.
I wish there were a magic formula where when you finally surrendered something, you automatically got it, like a vending machine. God isn’t mechanically manipulated like that (thankfully!!), but it sure is nice when His plan aligns with our silly surface desires.
During my first pregnancy, I managed a full-time client roster while also keeping up my Instagram side hustle, and I had no idea how to turn off or slow down. It’s been so nice this time around being pretty unplugged and accustomed to the cozy monotony of toddler life — parks and playdates with a manic breakdown (from each of us) thrown in every once in a while.
Being pregnant with a toddler isn’t easy, but it is somehow more aligned than being pregnant as a workaholic.
We found out that we were expecting just before I turned 33, which was the loveliest birthday present. Then we spent the Christmas season surprising friends and family: “We can’t come to your party because — SURPRISE — Chloe is glued to the bathroom floor!”
Early on, I experienced some bleeding, which was so incredibly scary, and my mom rushed in to take care of Oliver while I rested and prayed and received the miracle of a steady heartbeat a few days later.
Once I recovered, I started processing what it meant to go from being Oliver’s everything to an absolute useless lump that couldn’t even heat up chicken nuggets before I eventually emerged with just a mild case of narcolepsy. We watched so much Little Bear in those early days, and I relied on a steady stream of Zofran and Diclegis to get through the day.
The (only) perk of those awful months was that my condition seemed to completely eliminate my final remaining impulse to partake online. My old way of compulsively “creating content” died its final death, paving the way for me to be just another irrelevant mom (which is surprisingly pretty wonderful).
Just as I started feeling better, our entire family spent a month passing around the same bug before finally emerging into some version of normal life. These last few weeks contained all of our travel and fun stockpiled from the previous six months, and now I’m home and in full blown nesting mode.
With Oliver, we moved from an apartment to a house in my third trimester. It was stressful, but thankfully, I had my Instagram to bankroll his nursery. This time around it’s actually been a lot more enjoyable doing my own searching and sourcing — including the most gorgeous felt banner by my extremely talented friend Natalie, mid-century butterfly wall decor from my favorite antique shop, and a $100 Restoration Hardware dresser that was apparently used to stage Tom Brady’s house??
Turns out my scarcity mindset of what will happen when I shut off the social media lights actually opened the door to much more personal freedom and creativity.
To close, I’ll share a snippet of what I did at the lovely baby sprinkle my dear friends threw for me this weekend: I might sound flippant about my freakish excitement to decorate a girl nursery with drawers bursting with pink and purple, but it has been the forever dream of my heart to have a daughter, and I can’t even touch how I feel preparing to welcome Orli into our little family without bursting into tears.
She has the best father and big brother in the world, and I’m looking forward to entering this newborn season with much more wisdom, experience, and most of all, reliance on the Lord and His goodness than I even knew I needed before becoming a mother!
Orli Alysse, we love you so much already!
xx