There’s a baby on the way!

A daughter.

I’m counting down the days until she’s there. Her birth is calculated for the end of November, so still about two weeks, but I hope so badly that she’ll be in my arms in the next half hour. I want to see, smell, and feel her on my skin. I want to cover her with tiny kisses.

And I’d also appreciate some liberty of movement, being able to turn in bed without waking up the whole town with my puffs, and putting on my shoes effortlessly.

Ups en downs

You’ll hear so often that those nine months go by so quickly and certain periods, as now, I do really have that feeling. In other moments, time really went by excessively slowly. Then I’m talking about the period in which there was a doubt of toxoplasmose infection.

In that time, we said I was growing a tiny kitten in my belly, as a way to deal with the stress with humor. In one of my bloodtests, it wasn’t clear if my antibodies for toxoplasmosis were recent or old, so it wasn’t certain if I had the infection during or right before pregnancy. The consequences of toxoplasmosis during pregnancy are quite large. It can be a miscarriage, major genetic anomalies, or blindness,…

So I had to go for a second blood test, but that didn’t give any definitive conclusions neither. Finally, we asked for amniocentesis. This showed that there was no contamination in the uterus. When we recieved that news, a huge load fell off our shoulders. I had never felt relief like that. The weeks and months before had been so stressful, filled with evenings of crying and not being able to concentrate. The contrast with the light-hearted time that followed was incredible. We finally were able to enjoy and look forward to the arrival of our daughter.

Classic symptoms, what a joy

In the end, everything went well. I never suffered excessively from pregnancy complaints and I am grateful for this. There were the classics of course. In the beginning, I was extremely tired and after a month, I also suffered from morning sickness. I had to concentrate a lot during teeth brushing and I couldn’t stand a tiny piece of filth around the sink or my breakfast returned. In the third trimester, I felt more tired again and I also started nesting. A lot! Sometimes there were some mood swings and recently I don’t sleep so well anymore. I’m most of all impatient for her arrival.

And the name?

We decided on her name long before I was pregnant, but I won’t tell you just yet!

Just wait a bit, and you can know it too. We are convinced it will go perfectly with her and she’ll wear her name with pride. She’ll also get a second and a third name, after her two godfathers. We transformed their names to the girl version and she’ll get those too.

Godfather-godmother

You’ve read it correctly, she’ll have two godfathers. The choice of two godfathers may sound for some people a bit strange, especially because it is for a girl. An argument against this could be that she wouldn’t have any “female” example in her life, but I think that is ridiculous. We don’t live in a time where we stubbornly have to clinch traditional man/female divisions. She’ll see enough at home, in our family that women can do “manly tasks” and men can do “womanly tasks”. We believe that you have to do what you’re good at. For “girl-problems”, she’ll also be able to go to her mother, her grandmothers, cousins, and aunts. There are enough women in her environment. The symbolic role of a godfather and godmother is the idea that she can go to a person in times of need. They’ll be her back-up in life.

Baptizing and religion

We’re also not baptizing our daughter, because we believe that everyone should be allowed to choose for themselves what their religious beliefs are. If she’d choose in her later life to get baptized, we’d support her in that. Even if we’d look up a bit confused in the first instance, as non-religious parents.

Coming soon

there is a lot to tell, and you can expect it in future posts. There will be more about the basic nursery items we collected, my freezer story and its contents, some nesting buys I couldn’t resist, and of course, when she’ll be in my arms, stories about my beautiful daughter.