did I forget to mention this?

Baby #3 is officially our first boy!

I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of excited. Baby girl clothes are cute and all with their ruffles and bows, but I'm ready for trucks and dinosaurs and robots. (Not that girls don't like trucks and dinosaurs and robots, but you know what I mean.) I had a feeling he was a boy, though I'm sure that feeling was just based on the notion that we were "due for" a boy, which of course doesn't make any logical or statistical sense, but whatever. Jack was convinced (equally illogically, I might add) that we were fated to have only girls, so of course when the ultrasound revealed the truth, I turned to him and very maturely exclaimed, "I TOLD YOU SO!!"

I took a Facebook poll, and everyone agreed that there's nothing weird about posting grainy sonogram pictures of my fetal son's nether-regions on the Internet. So that makes it officially okay, right? So here's proof.

I knew since before we were married that my firstborn son's name was pretty much decided already-- my husband being "the fourth" of his name and all. But the nickname was all ours! But... there are surprisingly few nicknames for John, so my list of options was actually fairly short.

So this is John C. McDonnell V, aka baby Jackson. 

He's a cutie, inn'e? 

Also, here's kind of a funny thing: pediatricians are weird about what week of pregnancy we're in. For the first half, we're pretty much like everyone else. But speaking from a medical perspective, fetal viability begins at 24 weeks... or maaaaaybe 23. So at like 22 weeks, pregnant peds people start to get all nervous. Not like a baby born prematurely at 22 weeks is worse than a baby born at 19 weeks... they're both "nonviable." But it just feels like, so close! But then the anxiety doesn't really lessen significantly at 24 weeks, because 24 week preemies are sick as crap and a lot of them die or have severe brain damage, so you're all like, "STAY IN THERE BABY." And then with each passing week you breathe slightly easier. Because while a lot of babies born at 29 weeks will need to be on a ventilator and stuff, mostly they end up okay. And babies born at 32 weeks need to stay in the NICU for awhile, but their lungs are reasonably well-developed and they can breathe pretty well. And most babies born at 35 weeks are basically the same as term babies except maybe they'll be more jaundiced and have a little trouble eating, but they're really totally no big deal. Except there's some evidence that babies born at 37 weeks have a higher risk of like, neurobehavioral issues than babies born at 40 weeks, even though 37 weeks is technically term.

So we have all this stuff running through our heads whenever we think about what week we're in (26 currently for me, FYI), and it's kind of weird and maybe a little morbid, and mostly it all amounts to "STAY IN THERE BABY" even when we're sick and tired of being pregnant.