Thank you everyone for being so excited with us about our pregnancy! Sergi and I are completely overwhelmed by such an astounding flood of congratulations and warm comments. We did read ALL your comments and are so thankful to everyone who took the time to write and share in our happiness.

Announcing the Pregnancy to Our Families

The perfect opportunities to share our exciting news with our families came just a few weeks after our first visit to the doctor, when we finally confirmed that yes, indeed, we WERE pregnant.

The last two weekends of August, we celebrated the weddings of both our baby sisters. August 23rd, my baby sister, Karina, got married and on August 30th, Sergi's baby sister, Angie had her wedding day. Of course, all our family members came from near and far to celebrate such wonderful occasions.

The very first people to hear our very happy news were my parents. It had been so hard not to tell them up until that point, but I really wanted to tell them in person, not on the phone. In the days leading up to the wedding, we had different groups of family members arriving at different times, and my parents were going to be staying with my brother and his wife. I was just about to leave for work one evening, when my parents arrived from New York, and they decided to stop by our place for a few minutes. This was our chance! Our other guests weren't there at the time, so it was perfect timing. We told my parents to sit down and then I placed the ultrasound pictures in front of them. There they were, sitting at our dinning room table, staring at something that had for so many years seemed impossible, a picture of our baby. My Dad got a huge smile on his face and Mom immediately started to cry. I can safely say that they were completely shocked by the news. We asked them to keep it a secret for a few days until we told the others. There was a lot of crying and hugging in a short five minutes, because I had to run out the door quickly so as not to be late for work.

Since we had just moved into our new home, we invited my family for a "housewarming party" to our house. Little did they know that this was just a ruse to spring our surprise news on them. After eating our dinner, Sergi stood up and gave a beautiful speech about how blessed we were to have such an amazing family, thanked them all for their hard work helping us move and remodel (which we couldn't have done without them; they were incredible!), and finished it off saying that we were so thankful for the beautiful home God had blessed us with and a NEW BABY that was coming this spring.

I was expecting everyone to be excited, but at that point, the entire room erupted with emotions. Everyone jumped up from the table and started crying, hugging, laughing and shouting. It was a beautiful moment that will always be ingrained in my memory. My two nieces were literally sobbing from fear. They couldn't understand why all the grownups were weeping, hugging, making so much noise and had completely gone crazy. My Dad patiently calmed their fears and explained that we were all very happy that Aunt Olga and Uncle Sergi were going to have a little baby. Sergi and I had ordered a cake from a local bakery to go with the announcement. It turned out so cute and was really delicious too, a Cannoli cake, which is a favorite in our family. It was a long time before we all settled down.

We had wanted to do the same type of pregnancy reveal for Sergi's family the next weekend, since all of his family was in the area for Angie's wedding. Their family is twice bigger in size than my family, so it was very challenging to get them all together at the same time, and the schedule never worked out for us to get together with everyone. Of course, we were really disappointed, but we knew we needed to tell them all at the same time, because if you tell one, it will quickly spread, you know how it goes:).  We sent them all a group message with our news and some pictures, of course. This time, the phone exploded with everyone's excitement:). They were definitely shocked, but everyone was thrilled.

My Health, Food Cravings/Aversions

As I already mentioned in the first post, the sight, smell and even thought of meat turns my stomach upside down. You might have noticed that recently my blog posts have all been meatless:). My poor meat loving husband. I do try to still make something with meat for him sometimes, in that case I can't even look at it when he's eating it, LOL. For the most part, though, we've become almost vegetarians.

When I can tolerate food and feel somewhat hungry, I've been craving all kinds of pickled foods and veggies in any way, shape or form. I want them grilled, roasted, steamed, you name it. The only other foods that I can tolerate are really bland types of food, like bread, toast, sushki, applesauce, apples, bananas and soup.

Pregnancy aside, I have to deal with a lot of GI issues on a regular basis. (If you're new here and don't know about why I have GI problems, you can read more about it here, and here.) When I became pregnant, not only did I have morning sickness, but the pregnancy heightened all my other issues as well. Lately, it's been really hard to keep down any food at all and instead of gaining weight, I lost weight and was extremely dehydrated. Because of this, I've spend the last few weeks in bed or on our living room couch, since I am too weak to do much else. I just had a PICC line placed yesterday and have been getting IV fluids at home. A PICC line is a peripherally inserted central catheter, that is a more permanent type of IV, so now I don't have to be poked every time I need a new IV. The doctors are vigorously checking up on my lab work and adding whatever I am lacking to the IV fluids. I am so thankful for modern medicine and for my amazing doctors, who are taking really great care of me and the baby.

The most important thing is that the baby is the perfect size and is growing right on target. The doctors assured me that in my case, since my only issue is malnutrition and dehydration due to my short bowel syndrome, and I don't have any other medical conditions, that they baby should be just fine. Babies will take everything that they need to grow from the mom, but the mother might suffer because of it. I think it's so amazing how God engineered it all and I am really thankful that the baby is growing and thriving. The baby will be delivered by c-section when I am about 39 weeks pregnant, unless I go into labor sooner. Hopefully, I will be feeling better soon, but for now, I just think about my precious little one, nestled within me and thank God for sending us this miracle.