my three sons

well, there are many possible posts from a third birth. how the parents are suddenly outnumbered, how the baby is now a "middle child," and how sleeping through the night is a thing of the past. i know there are more, and if i get back into the blogging habit, maybe those will come up. this is basically the background for the birth story of #3 which will follow shortly.

it begins a little differently than the other two. i mean we were quite comfortable with two, and were pretty content, but somehow, we decided that we needed another one. (yes, we decided that we wanted a girl, but that's another post...) once deciding to have another, things were back to normal. i.e. month after month of trying, and negative pregnancy tests. after many monthly disappointments, we realized that our next shot was a january birth. this is a bad thing since between my wife and my families, january is littered with birthdays. there was little chance of the baby having it's own birthday. of course, after trying to conceive for that many months, you don't really care about what month the baby is born in, just so it exists!

we decided to keep trying, figuring that since nobody wanted another january birthday, murphy's law may just help us achieve what we had missed for almost a year. (i know that anything under a year isn't considered a long time, and i'm not really complaining, but when you are surrounded by people who can get pregnant by thinking about sex, it gets frustrating!)

naturally it worked. if we could just avoid yet another miscarriage, we would be on track for the late january arrival of #3. everything went well, and that's when things started to be different again. everything from how my wife felt, to how the baby was positioned, to our feelings and impressions were very different than both of the previous pregnancies. naturally this assured us that this time we would get a girl. you wouldn't believe the charts, schedules, measurements etc. involved in not only getting pregnant, but in trying to influence the gender! (another post.)

we had ultrasounds with 1 and 2, but had never found out the gender before. this was another difference. our other boys were summer babies. this was winter. regardless of sex, we wouldn't have the appropriate clothing. combined with other pressures, we caved and decided to find out. that was so wierd! we had months to go, and we already knew we were going to be the parents of three boys. three! boys! i still think i like the surprise better, but i guess it was good that we had time to adjust our thinking.

well, months later, we were ready. really ready. especially my wife. as strong, and persistant as she is, she was tired, and ready carry him in her arms instead of her belly. so he didn't come early. that's ok. he did come, and he and mom are healthy and adjusting well. the birth story will be my next post, and i promise it won't wait for months!