junior

One of the most asked questions when you are pregnant, just behind people wanting to know if it's a boy or girl, is:

Have you picked any names?

Well, Derrick decided to get my mom with this one. My dad's name is Stew, but because his full name is Stewart Philias Bouchard, Jr, my grandparents have always called him Junior. This drives my mom NUTS to say the least.

I was telling Derrick about how she really cannot stand this and he thought it would be really funny to tell my mom we were naming the baby Junior!

It was hilarious!! My mom went nuts, just as I had forewarned ... but it was so worth it : )

So yes (and no) we have names picked out.

Derrick and I agreed on a boy's name just after finding out (or so we thought) that we were having a boy ... but it is a surprise!

And I have a girl's name picked out, but it is going to be a surprise to everyone including Derrick ; )

All I will say is that Derrick, Abbie (Abigail), Madison and I all have seven letters in our first name, so the names each have seven letters.

it's a surprise ... again!

So for the last month I have been mentally preparing myself for having a boy and then finally it hit me - no one ever confirmed that we were having a boy!

The ultrasound technician certainly didn't confirm it, as I had told her we didn't want to know ... and we haven't been back to see the doctor until today.

So I walked in to our appointment with the ultrasound photos in hand. When Katie walked in, I handed her the photos and asked - we are having a boy, right?

She knew that we really didn't want to know, so she was surprised that I was asking. I explained what had happened at Fletcher Allen and pointed out the penis ... she looked at it and said that it was hard to really know for sure with the 3d photos because it is trying to make images of things that aren't really there. (For example, the baby doesn't have any arms in the photo). She told us not to paint the room blue.

So now we have no idea. Perhaps it's as Shawnna says, that she just told us that she didn't know because she knew we wanted it to be a surprise. But Katie had also told me before that she was really good at reading ultrasounds ... I am still mentally preparing for a boy : )

baby lemnah ~ 19 weeks, 1 day

Derrick, Abbie, Madison, and I went to Fletcher Allen today for our third ultrasound. We were pretty excited and hopeful that we would be able to see a 3d image of the baby. (3d wasn't around when I was pregnant with Abbie and Madison).

This ultrasound would have been the first opportunity to find out whether we were having a boy or girl. As some of you know, I never found out with either of the girls, so when I first found out I was pregnant, I was pretty adamant that I did not want to know this time either. But after talking with Neva about it, I realized that she was right - this was Derrick's first time having a baby and he really should be the one who decided. He decided that he wanted it to be a surprise, too.

As soon as we walked in I was sure to mention that we did not want to know the sex of the baby ...

The first images we saw were the regular ones - still very neat to be able to see our little munchkin. At one point I thought I saw something, but didn't think too much about it. Then it switched over to the 3d and ~ WOW ~ it was amazing! Sure enough, as you can see in the image above, right there in plain sight was what we were certain was a penis.

Truthfully, my heart sank. Obviously my first priority is to have a healthy baby, but I was really hoping for a girl. I went home and cried. Finally, Derrick and I sat down to talk about it. I was very honest and told him that I was worried that because this was his first biological child and it was a boy, that somehow he would treat this baby differently than he treated the girls. (That he would love this baby more than he loved the girls).

I am really glad that I told him how I was feeling. He told me that even though Abbie and Madison may not be his biological children, he loves them as though they are. I already knew how amazing he has been from day one with the girls, so that was all I needed to hear.

baby lemnah ~ 11 weeks, 3 days

Derrick, Abbie, Madison, and I went to Copley today for our second ultrasound. Everything looks great and we even lost a week! Our first due date was calculated to be March 19th, but according to this ultrasound, the new due date is March 12th! I will take all I can get : )

everything happens for a reason

Yesterday I woke up in a panic. It was the Lemeiux family reunion and we planned on having crab legs for dinner at my parents' house afterward. For some reason I just had this feeling that I may be pregnant. So I went to the store to pick up a pregnancy test to ease my wandering mind.

As it turns out, my intuition was right - the pregnancy test came out positive and I started freaking out. I called my mom and asked if she would mind bringing the girls to the family reunion and I would meet her there (not mentioning what I had just found out, of course). I dropped the girls off and headed right up to my doctor's office.

As luck would have it, the doctor on call was Mike Sampson. I just laughed. Mike is a close friend - he had been my doctor since I was in middle school. In fact, he was my entire family's doctor (my parents, brother, and grandparents).

So I went in and peed in the infamous cup and went back to the waiting room ... to wait.

A few minutes later the door opened, and when I looked up, I knew that I was pregnant. Standing there in the doorway was Mike, not the nurse. When I reached him, all I could say was, "I know I'm pregnant." He just smiled.

But when I got in the exam room, I started crying. I didn't know what to think: this certainly wasn't planned and I had no idea what Derrick would think or say. To say the least, I was scared.

I left the doctor's office, went home to shower and collect myself, then headed off to Washington (the town, not state) for the family reunion. I did not say a word to anyone. I wanted to tell Derrick first, and he was working.

Now you would think that when he was done work that afternoon, I would have told him, right? Nope. We headed back to my parents' house for dinner and I tried to pretend like my mind was not racing a million miles a minute.

I don't know why, but I just couldn't even bring myself to tell him when we got back to the house last night. I laid awake all night scared to death about what Derrick would say and think.

This afternoon I asked my mom if the girls could stay with her while I drove Derrick back home (to Barre). We dropped the girls off, but instead of heading back to Barre, I told Derrick that we were taking a detour first. I drove him up the the bike path on the mountain road and told him we needed to go for a walk.

We walked hand in hand, all the while I was trying not to cry. I knew exactly where I wanted to tell him - there was a bench not too far from the parking lot with a perfect view of the mountain. When we got to the bench, we sat and I just stared at the mountain ... then I started to cry.

He must have thought I had lost it ... but before I told him, I wanted to know where our relationship stood and where he saw it heading in the future. I wanted to know that if our future was to be together, that it wasn't because of the baby.

After hearing what I had hoped he would say, I was hystarically crying. Derrick was holding me and asking what was wrong. Finally somehow I was able to muster up enough to say, "I'm pregnant!"

What came next was not at all what I had expected he would say. He asked me if it was a monkey? Or an alien? I said no to each, and he said, "So why are you so upset?"

Hello?!!? Did you just hear what I said, I'm pregnant!

As fate would have it, at that very moment this little girl riding her bike crashed and without hesitation, Derrick ran over to her and helped her up. I knew at that moment that everything was going to be okay.

Some of the best things in life are those you are not expecting.

On a very ironic note, today would have been his one year wedding anniversary had his engagement not ended just before the wedding ... Everything DOES happen for a reason.