and . . . one more thing

One more tidbit of excitement in the Mitchell household. Brady is going to be a BIG brother!!! He's excited . . . as long as he has a little brother and not a little sister :)

We found out just after Thanksgiving and are thrilled!! It was difficult to not share our news until Jan 9th, but we wanted to have that first appointment under our belts to be sure everything looked good! And it does!

Check out the halo . . . ok, it's really a yolk sac - but how funny that it's right on top of his/her head!

To tell the truth - we did have a scary time through the week of Christmas. I began having some problems that led me to believe we were going to experience another miscarriage. My doctor ordered a blood test called HCG which detects the pregnancy hormone and the number correlates with how far along I am. That turned out well, so he had me come into the office the following day to see if we could find the source of the problem.

The ultrasound turned up an explanation - and a bit of a shocker. Baby had a heartbeat and looked good, however upon further investigation - it appears this pregnancy had started as twins. There was an extra "sac" of fluid that couldn't be 100% explained. There's 2 theories - a subchorionic bleed (which just means, some blood pooled outside the placenta) or more likely, that we were losing the twin.

I truly believe that God will give us what we can handle, good and bad. The thought of twins overwhelms me, but I know had we been so blessed, we would have figured it out. However, it is sad to have lost one and to be somewhat relieved that there was an explanation for the problems and that we still had a healthy baby.

Anyhoo - baby Mitchell #2 is due on August 11th. Big brother Brady will have just celebrated his 3rd birthday. It's been hard to explain to him that there's a baby in Mom's belly when he can't see it with his own 2 eyes.

That's our exciting news for 2009!!