Samantha and Amelia have been so excited all summer about their new baby sister about to rock their world on or around February 11!

Between the pregnancy, home renovations, visitors, and normal toddler summer fare, June through August has been a complete blur. Although I feel light years (LIGHT YEARS) better than I did with the twin pregnancy, I did experience some nausea and queasiness June through August, mostly in the afternoon/evening hours, which meant I was pretty much useless after about 5 p.m.

Let’s be real– I’m still pretty much useless after 5 p.m., but at 18 weeks, the nausea has subsided completely, so that’s something.

Like I said, I really can’t complain at all considering this has been an absolute CAKE WALK compared to how I felt when pregnant with the twins. I’m still completely traumatized from that pregnancy.

At this point (second tri) with the twins, I was on modified bedrest and was still constantly nauseated well into month 8. During the first trimester with the twins, I threw up multiple times a day, felt horrible in general 24/7, and had really intense round ligament/stomach pain the entire pregnancy due to my body stretching so rapidly to capacity.

This time around, I’ve maybe thrown up a handful of times total sporadically, and have had absolutely no pain besides a little back pain when I sleep. Total piece of cake, for which I am extremely grateful.

Although I really can’t complain about this pregnancy at all, I would like this baby to know that this pregnancy has not been without issues, however minor. During the summer, all my monthly meal plans went out the window real fast. I didn’t want to smell food, hated looking at pictures of food, loathed thinking about food, and had to really get myself pumped up to attempt to cook food.

If I tried planning anything even a day in advance, I would usually have to scratch it about an hour prior to dinner because I was either A. Too tired to cook it or B. It sounded absolutely disgusting. So, meals around here have really suffered. I don’t think the girls are complaining about eggs and toast for dinner too often, though.

I can’t stand to be around chicken, all veggies except salad, and although we’ve been surviving on easy stir fries all summer, I threw one up last week and now can’t stomach that either. Sad face!

I’ve been subsisting on Lara Bars, coconut milk yogurt, meatballs, salmon, salad with hard boiled egg, and non-citrus fruits. My saving grace during the hot months has been coconut milk ice cream, which I usually eat in secret in my room so that the twins don’t see me eating it and beg for some. I feel like I have a secret food addiction!

Most disgusting craving: Del Taco hard shell tacos. Oh my goodness, even typing that sounds so awful. The first time I asked Jake to bring home some Del Taco for dinner, Jake just stared like I had gone completely nuts. “Really? Not even marginally-healthier Chipotle?”

“NO. IT HAS TO BE DEL TACO.”

The girls, of course, never complained. So strange, but I have a few other friends who also claim they had a Del Taco craving addiction during pregnancy. They should really start marketing more to pregnant people! Mercifully, I haven’t craved any Del Taco fix for a while now, but am still pondering if hell truly has frozen over because that would be the only reasonable explanation for me putting that in my mouth.

With the twins, I was constantly starving, always wanting to eat, and throwing up a good portion of anything that made it down. This time around, I was hungry throughout the summer, but nothing ever sounded good. To be sure, the former was much worse, but it was still not fun feeling hungry and not being able to come up with anything palatable, even with Jake and the girls helping me brainstorm.

My only other minor complaint this time would be pregnancy insomnia. Just like I was when pregnant with the girls, I’ve been waking up several times during the night, usually to go to the bathroom, except that I often can’t get back to sleep after 2:30 a.m. I’m too tired to read or go on the computer, so I just sit there for hours until my two very talkative alarm clocks announce they are up for the day.  I’ve been taking full advantage of nap time, have been crashing super early at night and haven’t been able to wake up as early as I used to. Hence, the lack of blogging this summer!

Also, when I was feeling queasy, the thought of doing anything remotely requiring brain cells (reading, getting on the computer), was not appealing, so I’ve spent a great deal of time just enduring by doing nothing. I’m worried the girls are going to have all these memories of mommy just sitting on the bed staring into space while they are out swimming and at the park with daddy!

The other casualty of the summer trimester was getting my new food blog up and running, which was disappointing for me. In the spring, I had worked on and photographed 50+ recipes that were all ready to go on my food blog. All that came to a screeching halt once food became my enemy during the queasy first few months.Fortunately, things have been on the upswing energy-wise and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to restart that project again.

Bottom line: not without issues, but night and day from the twin pregnancy. So thankful.

The girls were so silly taking these pics. 

Biggest difference between this pregnancy and twin pregnancy:

I am no longer treated like a celebrity! I got so used to going in every one to two weeks for an incredibly detailed ultrasound with the twins, flexible scheduling with my perinatologist who only saw patients with multiples, and being able to waltz into L&D any time I had the slightest notion that something was wrong and having nurses drop everything to assist me, that this time around feels really unexciting!

No special treatment here. I’m just with my regular OB and mostly go in for routine blood work, a few ultrasounds here and there, and dopplers to listen to the heartbeat, which I never had with the twins, since every appointment was an hour-long ultrasound.

There’s also been a noticeable lack of personal questions from complete strangers this go around. No more, “Were they conceived naturally?” (Eye roll. “Not that it matters, but yes”).

No more cumbersome explanations about how yes, twins do run in the family as Jake has one sister with one set of twins and another sister with two sets, although none of this matters in our case since A. Twins run on the maternal side and B. Only fraternal twins have a genetic link in families and ours are identical.

Not even any detailed accounts of how their sister-in-law’s second cousin’s childhood neighbor had twins too. I don’t really mind the questions, but it is nice to be incognito this time! #singletonlife

Our most memorable appointment thus far:

Having the ultrasound tech proclaim at our 13 week appointment that this baby had the longest legs she’d ever seen! She took about 15 pictures for us of the limbs because she thought they were awesome. Another tall girl? We shall see.

Despite Jake referring to the baby as “he” ever since we found out I was pregnant, we found out that we’d be having a girl at our 13 week appointment in early August. There’s a gender blood test (blows my mind that this is possible!) that they offer through our insurance. It wasn’t available when I had the twins, but now you can have it done as early as seven weeks.

I opted to do the blood test later, at 12 weeks, and we were planning on finding out the results when I went in at 13 weeks. However, the ultrasound tech, after discovering we didn’t yet have the results of the gender blood test, really wanted to be the one to tell us since she, “Never gets to give anyone exciting news anymore!” She had apparently never been wrong in 35 years, either.

After she told us it was a girl, she went to the back to grab the blood test results to confirm, and lo and behold, she was right! Despite his future suddenly becoming a lot more expensive, Jake was excited. I was overjoyed as I love having girls and feel that it’s easier territory for me at this point. This little one will have no shortage of clothes as I still have items with price tags on them that were never worn due to the twins growing out of everything so fast. Not having to buy any clothing this go around is a huge plus!

The girls’ reactions:

I wasn’t sure if Samantha and Amelia would really get what was going on, but ever since we told them earlier this summer, they have been noticeably ecstatic about the prospect of a baby sister. After finding out it was a girl, we let the twins pick out some outfits for the baby. I have never encouraged shopping with the girls and rarely go with them, but it’s apparently in their genes, because they adored looking at all the mini clothes and accessories.

The girls find my growing bump fascinating, and after teaching them that hitting the belly was not ok, they have been super good about stroking it and rubbing it nicely. Their favorite thing to do now is to point to my bump and say, “Baby in tummy! Can’t see it yet! Will come out soon!” They especially love to announce this at the top of their lungs to complete strangers at Costco.

So excited!

The sillies. 

You mess with our baby sister, you mess with us. 

Samantha and Amelia have always enjoyed playing with dolls, but even more so now that a real one is on the way. I will often catch them “swaddling” their dolls with blankets, even though I have no idea how they know how to do this, unless they have residual memories of me swaddling them. They love pushing dollies in their stroller, feeding their dollies, and reading to dollies. I think they will be great big sisters! At least before they figure out they have one more cute human being to compete with their toys and my attention. A constant argument at our house these days goes along the lines of:

Samantha: “MY baby sister!”

Amelia: “No, MY baby sister!”

Samantha: “No MY baby sister! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

They really do fight over everything, unborn sister included.

I have anxiety attacks thinking about digging up the 10+ bins of vacuum-packed baby clothes stowed away in the attic. I’m sure the girls will have a blast going through all their old baby clothes, especially the shoes. Shoe obsessed does not even begin to describe these girls.

Such sweetness all around!

Lots of love,