Personal | Ethan Thomas Eric

I have known since I was a little girl that I wanted to have two children but I never imagined the overwhelming feeling of "completeness" that would happen almost instantly. It's pretty incredible.
Our daughter was our first and while I was pregnant we did the 16-week Fun Fetal Photo thing to find out the gender, kept it a secret for four weeks (hardest thing to do EVER) until our 20 week ultrasound where we had our parents be there for the reveal. We then had a gender reveal party shortly after to tell all of our friends that we were having a girl. We made a pretty big deal about it and it was so much fun.
However, this time I really wanted to experience pregnancy differently. We decided that we weren't going to find out the gender of our baby until he or she was born. It was pretty excruciating at times not knowing but as long as we held strong during the ultrasounds, it was pretty easy. Everyone had their guesses but I had no clue. Some days I would think boy, others I would think girl. Sophia was pretty adamant that it was a girl from the very beginning.
It was fun not knowing and if you think you are up for it, I would totally recommend it. It was definitely easier being that it was our second child since we had a fair amount of gender neutral things from when Sophia was little. We were very careful to get all the big things in a gender neutral (car seat, stroller, pack & play, swing, high-chair, etc) because we knew we were going to have another. It did get pretty difficult at the end because there are only so many gender neutral outfits out there that we could get in order to prepare for when our son or daughter was born and I am one that likes to be prepared!
Our due date for Baby2 was October 14 and we ended up scheduling an induction for that date, just in case our little one didn't come before then. So 6am we walked into Mary Immaculate and got started. This process was very familiar to us because of our first (I was induced 6 days after my due date because Sophia had no intention of coming on her own). However, this time I wasn't sure whether I wanted an epidural because of how I reacted to the 2nd dose last time (yes, 2nd dose ... Sophia got stuck on my hip and the pain was so bad that they gave me a 2nd dose of the epidural and it didn't go over too well both at the hospital and 10+ weeks later I was still having side effects! Not fun at all...). So I went in this time completely unsure of the epidural. I ended up laboring for two hours without the epidural until I just couldn't anymore. Well apparently sometimes when they give the epidural, it makes the baby drop down and guess what happened? Yup. Baby all of a sudden was ready to go! So we frantically called my mid-wife (who was at Riverside delivering another baby) as well as our birth photographer, Brannan. Being told not to push when everything in you is telling you the opposite is HARD but I had to wait until my mid-wife got there. This birth was totally different and I loved it. David even was able to help deliver the baby and he was the one to tell everyone the gender. It was incredible.

Birth photography by Brannan Blascak Photography

Then on Sunday before we were discharged, I took just a few pictures <3
... I wasn't able to take too many cause little man was hungry!