The BIG news

Hello all. We have been sitting on part of this news for a while, but part of it is new. Firstly Meeks is pregnant! She is 12 and a bit weeks pregnant and is doing pretty well. She has had a few weeks of nausea and periods of extreme tiredness, but has largely been well. The pregnancy came as a bit of a surprise for us and was not planned - we did want to have another baby, but wasn't expecting it quite so soon. In fact the day before we found out Meeks was pregnant we had spent a couple of hours counting months and days and working out when was the best time to get pregnant given the busy times we have ahead with Meeks' sister's wedding in London in April and the planned holiday to Europe etc. Little did we know Meeks was already pregnant! Despite our best efforts to be in control of our lives, sometimes God reminds us that he is the one who is truly in control. Here are a couple of ultrasound pictures from yesterday's ultrasound:

Now if you click through on that image you might notice it is a bit bigger than the normal pictures I include on the blog. That is because this is a bit of a test of how observant you are. Go on click on the image above and have a close look at it then come back and continue reading.
















Now aside from the normally difficult to understand ultrasound images there is some important text on there. Go and have another look.



















That's right we are having twins! This was a huge surprise to us when we found out at the 12 week ultrasound yesterday morning. They are non-identical, are in two separate sacs and have two separate placentas. The ultrasound operator thought one might be a couple of days older than the other one. We don't quite know how that works. It's weird we had this funny feeling it was twins right from the start, but when we saw Meeks' obstetrician 2 weeks ago he had a brief look with the ultrasound and only saw one baby, so we had put the thought out of our minds. But as soon as the ultrasound operator put the probe onto Meeks' stomach yesterday, even we could see that there were two babies. The ultrasound operator said, "So you're having twins" and we said, "What?", she said, "You're having twins, didn't you know?". It was just amazing, we were speechless, I couldn't stop laughing, somewhat delirious, Meeks was crying. We had always debated whether we wanted 2 or 3 kids and had decided that if this next one was another good baby like Mitch we'd think about a third. Again, God has taken that decision out of our hands! We spent then next few hours coming to terms with it and every once in a while something would pop into our head that would make us realise how much our life is going to change.

Firstly it means that Meeks can't fly to Krissy's wedding in the UK in March/April which we are extremely sad and disappointed about. We are so sorry Krissy and Glen we were really looking forward to it even when Meeks was going to be very pregnant. We will just have to make the time in December when you are out here even more special.

It also means that we are going to go from having just us and Mitch, to being a family of five in a three bedroom house. We had started preparing the nursery based on one baby (which is why we had been moving Mitchy into a big bed etc) so we will have to rethink things a bit. The two babies can share a cot for a while, but we'll eventually need another cot.

We'll also have to sell the Mountain Buggy pram and get a double with a skateboard attachment for Mitch.

Our car lease finishes in March so we will have to think about getting a bigger car. We were going to get the new Mazda 6, but we will probably need something bigger to fit two car seats and booster seat for Mitch plus room for a double pram. Meeks' only requirement for the car is that she doesn't want it to have sliding doors.

I was going to take a few weeks off when the baby was born, but that will probably increase to 6 weeks or so. IBM allows me to take up to 4 weeks unpaid leave each year so I will take advantage of that. The double baby bonus should cover the shortfall in my salary.

The nappies! Oh the nappies, so many nappies to change!

Anyway, yesterday was a big day for us and the next 6 months are going to be pretty intense (not to mention the years after that). Please pray for Meeks' health and the health of the babies (they are going really well so far, they are healthy and similarly sized and positioned well). Also pray for Mitch as he adjusts to the idea of having not just one little brother or sister, but two. Yesterday he was a bit confused that Mummy had two babies inside her instead of just one, but today he seems a bit more okay with it.

Anyway, that is our big news!