Marzen Player 4

Life has been a bit crazy keeping up with Ilyana so I haven't had a chance to write this blog post until now, but Jake and I are excited to announce that we are expecting! We had been hoping to get pregnant again rather quickly after having Ilyana. Having siblings so close in age just sounds like so much fun! Our bold prayer had been that we would be pregnant again by mid-July. By the end of June I was starting to get discouraged about becoming pregnant again, I hadn't even got my period back so we had next to nothing to work with, timing-wise. I can remember on the night of June 30th lamenting to Jake about how discouraged I was feeling and praying together that something would happen soon. The next morning I woke up feeling nauseous and tired, I didn't even think about the possibility of being pregnant and just accounted it to fighting off some sort of bug. By mid-morning I was starting to feel better and that's when it started to dawn on me that maybe I was pregnant. I decided to take a test that afternoon. I knew how unlikely it was that we had gotten pregnant before my cycle had even returned. Most of the time the first few times a woman ovulates after pregnancy she's not actually fertile. Before testing I prayed for God to protect my heart and give me peace no matter what the results were. As it turns out, the test immediately turned positive! I couldn't believe my eyes! I ran downstairs and had little happy freak out with Ilyana and immediately called a close friend, I had to tell somebody! After celebrating the good news with a friend, I used a plain white onsie of Ilyana's and painted on "Big Sis". I texted Jake and told him that Ilyana and I had made a craft and asked if he would like to see it. He said "of course" and I sent him a picture, he was ecstatic and couldn't believe that it was true! To announce to family, we used the "Big Sis" onsie as well. Everyone was so excited! It was fun to watch the realization of what it meant wash over everyone's faces. On 7/13 I had a dating ultrasound and found out that Player4's due date is March 4th 2016. We were even able to see a little heartbeat on the ultrasound. We are so excited to meet our newest little family member!
So far, this pregnancy has been a bit of a roller coaster. I had about a week of miserable, unable to function, morning sickness. Since then, most days have been pretty manageable as long as I don't think too much about food. However there are still the occasional days that I feel horribly sick again. With Ilyana I definitely felt sick more consistently but didn't feel as horrible. Some other differences this pregnancy have been having a lot more heartburn and feeling a lot more exhausted (I was even taking care of 3 kids when I was pregnant with Ilyana!). Jake has been so wonderful with helping me out. I'm excited to continue to keep everyone updated on Player4!