I thought I had him convinced, until he came home for lunch the day of our ultrasound. We spent his entire lunch break discussing what we wanted to do. Joe suggested that he could just find out and tell, who made our pinata, and keep it a secret from me and everyone else for the week. I told him there was no way that I'd let him find out without me, so we made a deal instead and both found out that day. For the rest of the week, we let our families think that we'd be finding out our baby's gender on the same day as them. It would have been a fun surprise, but I didn't mind finding out just Joe and I!
When we were expecting Bensen, Joe and I decided to find out gender at our anatomy ultrasound and purchase an outfit to reveal that to our families a few days later. This time around, I thought it would be fun to have a little gender reveal party and find out at the same time as our family and friends. Some of our family was going to be out of town the weekend of our ultrasound, so we planned on waiting a week for our party. Joe thought we should find out at the ultrasound and just wait a week to tell the rest of our family, like we’d done with Bensen, but I REALLY wanted to have a fun surprise.
I thought I had him convinced, until he came home for lunch the day of our ultrasound. We spent his entire lunch break discussing what we wanted to do. Joe suggested that he could just find out and tell Aubrey, who made our pinata, and keep it a secret from me and everyone else for the week. I told him there was no way that I’d let him find out without me, so we made a deal instead and both found out that day. For the rest of the week, we let our families think that we’d be finding out our baby’s gender on the same day as them. It would have been a fun surprise, but I didn’t mind finding out just Joe and I!
Throughout this entire pregnancy, Joe and I have had very strong, but different opinions on what this baby would be.
I thought this baby was a girl, mostly because this pregnancy was a lot different than my pregnancy with Bensen. I wasn’t as exhausted, but I was a lot more sick. During my first trimester, I had to go to Instacare twice for fluids because I’d been so sick that I was getting dehydrated. With Bensen, I was able to find a good routine that kept my nausea mostly at bay. Every time I thought I found a good routine with this pregnancy, my body would decide that it didn’t like that one anymore. I was finally able to keep things mostly at bay by drinking these for protein without having to eat something heavy, sucking on these when the nausea got too bad (I had to stick to blue raspberry and grape, the other flavors made my stomach worse), and wearing these for four weeks straight (I felt like a teenage boy with sports sweatbands on, luckily it was still long sleeves season). My last deciding factor was when someone asked what kind of hormonal I was. I realized that with Bensen, I got angry and upset more but with this pregnancy, I’m a sentimental and emotional sap. I just knew that this baby was going to be a girl.
In the beginning, Joe joked that it was two boys and that’s why I was so sick. We quickly squashed that idea when my first ultrasound revealed only one baby. In the morning when he was leaving to take Bensen to grandma’s house, he would always tell him, “Say buh-bye mommy, buh-bye baby brothers/brother!” Joe wants to “build his empire” for lawn care and is sure that because I’ve always wanted at least one girl, I jinx myself and would only have boys. Joe knew that this baby was going to be a boy.
We invited our families and a few close friends over on Saturday night for a fun little party. It wasn’t anything elaborate. I blew up a picture of our ultrasound and put it on a poster with stickers so people could cast their vote on whether we were having a girl or a boy. I couldn’t find pink and blue stickers (I did this very last minute so I didn’t have time to look more than one place), so we used green and pinkish purple stickers instead. We let all of the kids hit the pinata a couple of times, starting with Bensen, until it broke open and the candy/confetti fell out.
We’re so excited to have a girl joining our family and I’m excited to start buying all sorts of cute room decor, clothes and accessories for her! Now we can start making our official list of names and put her room together. Because Bensen came two and a half weeks early, I’m shooting to have everything baby related done by the beginning of September so that I don’t sit down to order our crib mattress, carseat and stroller and realize that I’m in labor! I guess the nice thing about the second kid is that you have most of that stuff already so there’s less preparation.
We just have to make decisions like, when to transition Bensen to a toddler bed/mattress on the floor because the baby can sleep in the bassinet and pack and play for a while, but we don’t want to buy a second crib. Or, do we buy a second chair so that each of the kids’ rooms has a chair Joe and I can sit in, or do we move the one from Bensen’s room into the baby’s room and sit elsewhere with him for his bedtime stories and snuggles? All the random little things that I think about…
What are your favorite baby girl tips and shop suggestions?