+1

At the beginning of summer, Meghan and I made the decision to try and start a family. We have read about people having issues trying to conceive as they get up there in their 30’s, luckily we didn’t seem to have that issue. On July 11th, we got confirmation of the good news…

I was staying home sick that day, so Meghan came in to show me while I was still half asleep and extremely groggy. I was excited despite what Meghan thought in my sleepy haze.

Not much changed over the next several weeks…other than Meghan modified her diet accordingly. I drank a few hard ciders just to rub it in her face that she couldn’t have any for a while (she wasn’t a fan).

At the end of August, prior to our trip to Mackinaw, we had a doctors appointment for the first ultrasound. Meghan got her game face on…

With the lights off, it was time to look at what was in there. Yup, it was a baby alright, it even had a cool horn (which we were told was just the hand up in the air). As the technician kept moving the wand around, the baby kept spinning around inside, at one point putting it’s back towards us. After the small dance number by the baby, the technician informed us that everything looked good.

After the ultrasound, we waited to talk to the doctor about a genetics test to ensure that everything was OK with the baby from that standpoint. After a weird voicemail on Friday the 7th from the doctors office that sort of confirmed the results of the test, indicating that everything was good, we had to wait the entire weekend to confirm 100%.  Meghan made a  follow-up call on Monday the 10th, and confirmed everything looked good.

Anticipating that everything was good from the cryptic voicemail, we planned to shoot a baby announcement photo. I had the idea of using pumpkins, and thankfully Kroger already had pumpkins out for sale. We grabbed two large pumpkins from there, and a smaller pie pumpkin from Meijer. We nabbed some “fall leaves” from JOANN Fabrics (would have preferred the real thing, but it was still too early for real fall leaves), and got everything all setup.

And this was the final result. I took the photo on my phone and edited the coloring there. I then did some Photoshop work on my iMac to add the text (I needed a specific font), and we were all set to send them

On Monday evening, September 10th, we sent the announcement to our family. Meghan’s family responded right away, while we waited to hear back from my parents. Finally we did, and then we pushed it out on our respective Instagram accounts to let friends know.

So now we wait…till March. The “official” due date is March 20th, so we shall see how close we come to that. In the meantime, we have started thinking about stuff we will need, and how we want to decorate (going to have to move things around between the 2 extra bedrooms). Let the fun begin!

P.S. – The genetics test we did also happened to reveal the sex (up to 99% accuracy) sooner than an ultrasound would have…but we aren’t sharing that information yet. 😁