Baby #2 is on the way!
After 2 early losses prior to getting pregnant with sweet baby, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a nervous wreck in the beginning of this pregnancy. We chose to do genetic testing at 10 weeks with this pregnancy which also allowed us to find out the gender at that early point too, if we wanted.
Well, we got to that point, and I decided I still wasn’t ready to know the gender quite yet. To be honest, I had a hard time even accepting that I was pregnant in the first trimester and even after, so I wanted to have more time to process the pregnancy itself before processing a gender as well.
When we were pregnant with Ansley, we had a full on gender reveal party around 20 weeks (we didn’t do genetic testing with her, so we waited til 20 weeks to find out). It was THE BEST thing! We had so much fun, and the whole day was filled with so much excitement!
So, this time around, I knew I wanted to do at least something, some sort of reveal, to celebrate this new baby! We looked at the calendar and realized I would be 19 going on 20 weeks during our family trip to St. Thomas in February. I told my sisters, if we can pull this off, I think this would be the best time for a reveal. I wanted to have a small intimate family celebration, and the timing was just too perfect.
Well, if you followed along on my instagram stories, you already know the craziness that went into prepping this reveal from so far away, LOL!
Since we were staying at a Private Resort, we figured we needed to get permission to do something like this on property. I knew I wanted it to be on the beach, but after confirming with the concierge and just using our own knowledge, we knew that any sort of confetti poppers were not going to work. Who wants to pick up hundreds of confetti pieces in the sand? They did, however, say any powder canons would be totally fine, since it disappears into the air.
So, my sister ordered powder canons on Amazon over a month before the reveal, and they came right away! I immediately wrapped them back up, went to the post office and mailed them. They gave me a 3 day or 12 day option for shipping to St. Thomas. The 12 day would have still put the package there a full week before we arrived, so I figured that would be totally fine. Well about a week and a half before we were set to leave, the package said it was going to arrive the next day. A few days later, it said it was delayed. It came time to pack and leave for our trip and still, we had no updates after calling USPS many times. Needless to say, I was slightly on edge, feeling super disappointed, and starting to think we needed a back up plan.
We originally had planned on doing the reveal early on in the trip to have the whole trip to enjoy and celebrate, but the packages still weren’t there. I wanted to wait until the last day to see if they would show up, but in the meantime, we had been working with the concierge team to have a back up plan. Although things weren’t going the way I had hoped, I was reminded in that moment what this was really about and that we can still make this super special. Going with the flow is not my strong suit, but I knew this was out of my control and we could still make the best of the situation.
We were set to leave Friday, so we decided that Thursday night would be the reveal. We finally handed over the results envelop to the staff (no one had opened them yet, so my family would all be surprised with us). The whole staff was INCREDIBLE and decorated a beautiful gender reveal box for us with the correct color balloons inside, so we could open the box on the beach to find out! They also were able to order a balloon filled with the correct color powder, so we could also pop that on the beach.
We all dressed in our pink and blue before dinner and headed down to the beach to get ready for the surprise! Austin and Ansley were set to open the box, and I decided I would pop the balloon (in the intense wind, HA!). The whole family counted down…3, 2, 1…
IT'S A BOY!!
I actually waited a split second to make sure Austin and Ansley could get the box open, and I saw the balloons before I could even see the powder in the air. As you can see, the wind blew the powder so fast! Haha! The only powder I saw was on my hand afterwards! Thank goodness for family taking lots of photos and videos!
I screamed, of course, and then cried, lol. Ansley wasn’t too thrilled at first either, Haha! But she came around!
The whole time leading up to this reveal, even with our 2 losses before this pregnancy, I just had a feeling, I was having a boy next. Ya know, that mama gut feeling? So, I wasn’t totally surprised, but I will say I was in a bit of a shock for a while after. All I know is girl world, so this will be a whole new world for Austin and me! Send all the boy tips! LOL
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We are so excited and thrilled to bring this precious baby boy and gift from God into the world in a few short months. Our biggest prayer is that he will know Jesus, and that he will be healthy!
After experiencing loss, I have a whole new perspective on this whole journey. If you are also in the midst of experiencing loss, longing for a baby, or in a tough season of parenting, I see you and am praying for you! You are not alone, my friend! God is for you and has a great plan for your life!
Thank you for walking through this journey with us! It means more than you know.
