We all came home from the hospital on Monday night. Meghan was allowed 48 hours in the hospital and I stayed with her the whole time (on a very small pull out bed). We had people at the house watching Eden which was nice for her and helpful for us.

Eden has adjusted nicely to having a baby brother. She loves walking up to him and saying “Baby”. (We’re still trying to get her to say “Andy.”) We take this as a win because she sees pictures/videos of herself and also says Baby!

Her sleeping hasn’t taken any hits with the addition of Andy. We knew she could sleep through anything before but now we know she can also sleep through a crying baby. Luckily Andy can also sleep in the same room when Eden is crying, I guess he heard it enough while in the womb to be used it by now! As a second stroke of luck, I (Ben) can also sleep through Andy’s cries in our room at night. This comes in handy when Andy is asking to be fed at 2 and 5 in the morning! (Don’t worry, I can’t sleep through Meghan poking me and telling me to go get Andy a change of clothes though…)

I’m taking one more week off of work to help set up some sort of schedule with Eden and Andy and to let Meghan rest up during the day. The following week Donna and Lauren are coming to stay for a few days. Hopefully by then Andy is sleeping through the night! (One can dream at least, right??)

Andrew Benjamin Wolfe was born on Feb 20th at 7:42 pm. He was a sizeable 8 pounds and 21 inches! Meghan did a lot of hard work and is quite tired today. Painful contractions started around 9am, got some Nubane around 4pm, and started pushing about 6pm. He has been sleeping on and off now…which is about how his parents are sleeping too! More pictures are over on the photos page.

Well, the magical day has come…and gone. The day that we had waited for and planned for passed uneventfully for us. February 18 was my due date and Andy apparently decided that he didn’t care that Ben and I were ready and waiting for him. Instead I have been scheduled for an induction on Saturday morning. We are to present ourselves on the Labor and Delivery floor at the hospital at 6:30 Saturday morning, things will start rolling, and Andy will hopefully make his debut sometime Saturday afternoon. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers and we will be sure to post an update and pictures as soon as possible!

Sorry for the delay in updating everyone on the pregnancy. Things have been so busy since we came home!

The end of the pregnancy has been going so quickly. I am now 35 weeks pregnant and I still feel pretty good. I have occasional discomfort and spend about an hour awake each night waiting for Andy to go back to sleep after I go to the bathroom. I have almost decided to make my permanent residence in the bathroom. It feels like my bladder is always full although this is clearly not the case since most of the time hardly anything comes out (too much info??? ). I haven’t really gotten used to my big belly and find that I am often ramming Andy into doors, Ben and anything else that I try to squeeze past. Andy is definitely running out of space and I can feel him kicking and punching all the time. He had the hiccups for the first time last week and it was funny to see my entire stomach jump.

We have now taken our hospital tour, our childbirth preparation classes and our breastfeeding class. I think we know the material pretty well, but can you really be prepared for childbirth? We’re getting very excited as we get closer and closer. We have started to make plans for decorating Andy’s room and hopefully we will be ready for him when he decides to come!

Whew! We’re almost there! It’s hard to believe that I am already in my third trimester. Time has gone by so quickly (especially since Eden came home). My belly button is basically flat now and Eden and I can play peek-a-boo around my tummy because I can no longer see her when she’s at my feet. Andy moves a lot and I feel him most often on the right side. He gives little kicks just below my ribs. He moves around a lot when I lay down at night but I am getting used to it. I am not getting used to the feeling of my skin stretching at night. Sometimes I don’t even want to move because my stomach feels like it is stretched to the max. I’m still dancing at Sally Test with the kids but I definitely don’t do the jumping in the bunny hop or the straddle stretch during the cool down any more. The kids laugh at me during the song where we ‘hug your knees’ because I can’t put my knees together to hug them, I have to stick my belly in between them. Eden likes to ‘Pat, pat, Baby Andy’ and to give him kisses which is very cute.

I am meeting with my OB here in Kenya over the weekend to discuss our travel plans and wrap things up before we head home, then I have an appointment on the 4th with my OB in the US. We are hoping that we will get a clearer ultrasound picture and confirm 100% that Andy is a boy.

Meghan neglected to include a few important points from the magistrate meeting.  First, we actually made a date to see her back here on Sept 2nd 2010.  Second, she said that at that time she will do everything she can to help us with the adoption and that no one will deny us an adoption of Eden!  We’ll still need to worry about getting her adopted in the US and/or getting an immigration visa for her…but as Meghan keeps saying: “one step at a time.”

We had our second ultrasound of Baby Andy yesterday.  We had the same bed-side ultrasound machine as last time, so I took our video camera and recorded the entire thing.   You can watch it here or find one of the HD versions over on the http://wolfes.blip.tv site.

Wow, time is flying! I feel like we just posted our 20 week update. Andy is moving all the time now. He likes to kick Eden when she sleeps on my belly and he gets very active at night when I lay down. That makes sleep even more challenging because every time I get up with Eden, I have to wait about 10-15 minutes for Andy to stop moving after I get back in bed.

Ben was finally able to feel Andy on Oct. 25. He was very excited and says that it seems a lot more real now.

I had my first OB visit here a couple weeks ago and Sierra said that everything looked great and she was very happy with me until the end of my appointment when she weighed me. I had lost a couple of pounds since my last check-up in Indianapolis and that got me in trouble. She told me to make sure that I am eating enough and trying to get 6 smaller meals in instead of just 3 big ones. It’s hard because we’re so busy and the food options are pretty limited here, but I have gained 3 pounds since my appointment, so I think I’m doing pretty well.

You can see that my stomach has really grown these last four weeks. I’ve had lots of comments recently about how big I am getting and I’ve even found my clothes are fitting differently. My shirts suddenly seem much shorter in the front. We bumped the ultrasound back to my next appointment so we will just do everything on November 13. We will be sure to take pictures of the ultrasound for everyone to see!

Just to cheer you all up after my last post, I uploaded two more videos of Eden today to http://wolfes.blip.tv. Sorry about the lighting on this first one. The power went out right before I got the camera. For the second one we were smart enough to realize we could open the curtains to let in more light!

Power outages here are actually rare. Pamela says that that was the first one in the year she has been there. Apparently they were repairing a transformer on a main power line that was coming out of town. Not sure why they chose a Sunday night to do that…

We had an ultrasound today over at the Riley Mother and Baby Hospital. Sierra was able to see the baby’s head, arms, heart beating, ribs, and legs. It was being a little difficult so it took her a few minutes to get the wand in the right position. Meghan turned a little bit and … Click to continue »

Well, we have already had a change of plans. We found out in June that I am pregnant! We’re very excited but we found out at the same time that pregnant women are not allowed to adopt through our adoption agency. We’ve put adoption plans on hold until after the baby is born.

I’m due February 18, 2010 which seems very far away but we know it will go quickly, especially because we will spend my second trimester in South Africa and Kenya. We will keep you updated on the pregnancy and our travels! This is the picture from our first ultrasound at 9 weeks.