Deep breaths and lil beats

My sister in law had sent this to me during the wait to get to the heartbeat appointment.
She knew that's what I'd been waiting for.
Seriously she's been so thoughtful and in each moment as much as we have. It's meant so much. 

Erika:
It's ironic that our blog is called “One Breath Closer” because I have been holding my breath quite a lot this time around. I’m not sure why. I’ve been trying to celebrate each step along the way, but each time there’s good news I seem to gulp in more air. Holding it in. Big cheeks, like if I hold the air in, then that moment will last until we get to the next milestone. 

In my mind, that next big milestone would be the heartbeat. But the doctor had scheduled an ultrasound for just a week after the pregnancy test. I thought that was early and wondered what it was for. 

Now I know we’ve been through this before, but it’d been a while and my brain is mush. Florencia was the first to discover our mistaken calculations. We all totally thought that we would only be at 3weeks out based on when we did the transfer. But we forgot to add the additional two and half weeks and realized we’d actually be at 5 weeks

 and 5 days at that next appointment! Over a month! 

It definitely took a bit for that to sink in, the fact that we were much farther along than we’d thought. And this was pretty much exactly what our faces looked like when we figured it out. I checked through my posts from Mateo and found the FET calculator I’d used last time. Glad we cleared that up.

So for the next appointment we were out on the road at 6am and caught a beautiful sunrise. 

The sunrise must have been a sign of good things to come. The ultrasound  was fairly quick (click here to see our almost pomegranate seed-sized baby) and though still super early, the doctor saw what he was looking for and sounded confident. 

Though what was funny was that once he found the one sack, he kept looking around for more. Lol. Florencia then said, “I appreciate you looking for a second, but please don’t find one.”

 He didn’t. It’s just the one.

And even through this smile, I had doubts. I had some anxiousness. I felt like maybe my smile was too presumptuous. I so wanted to be fully happy and I think for a moment I was, but still with the mindset of, “So far so good.” I think it was after this appointment that Luis told me, “Dude. We’re having another baby. It IS happening.”

 I was definitely still in the maybe baby stage. It all felt more like a dream and too good to be true. So I just wouldn’t let myself fully feel anything. But in just one week we’d be back for heartbeat. So I filled my lungs with some more air and held it for the next seven days. 

Luis:

I actually try to put my ear on Mateo's chest and take a listen every now and then, but he often complains that I am crushing him so I only hear a few beats. Coming from the uncertainty of the last few weeks, it felt good to finally get to listen to our growing baby's heartbeat. 

Roughly 7wks.
About the size of a blueberry.
Remember when Mateo was just a blueberry?

There it is.
That beautiful lil beat.
To hear the heartbeat, click here. 

After the ultrasound, relieved, Florencia pulled out this tiny heart she had tucked away for luck. 

We had not seen my parents in a long time and had planned to meet at Irvine Park on Labor Day to ride our bikes and have an evening picnic, but the heat and ash sent us indoors where we had dinner. My parents are not on Gram or Facebook so they only get updates of baby when we seen them. 

After dinner Erika handed over her phone for my mom to hear baby's heartbeat, to which she immediately said, "es un baron," just like she did when she heard Mateo's for the first time. Why would she think that? To sum it up she said it had a strong hard beat, "Asì...POOM...POOM... POOM.... si es niña, serà mas como, "ping... ping... ping...." It made us all laugh. Either way. Strong beat. Strong baby.

When we got back from our heartbeat appointment, this had arrived in the mail. I'd ordered it a few weeks back from Morgan Harper Nichols (the same artist I mentioned in my Hope post) to serve as a reminder for me. I’m telling you guys... her work is everything. It arrived at just the right time. I’m not holding my breath anymore.

The heartbeat appointment was the day before our 13th wedding anniversary and we were given a very special card. So instead of an excerpt from a letter to our baby, here is a letter from our baby to us.

The Element of Surprise

From my amazing friend Jen.
"The Wonderful Things You Will Be" by Emily Winfield Martin

Erika:

So, in the last couple of weeks many of you have been asking me this very question....

it's a... from Erika Perales on Vimeo. I Love Lucy season 2

Whelp! That's all I can say too. Last week we had our 20 week anatomy scan and we totally could have found out what it is... but we held strong. We did not turn around to see the screen. Luis and I both looked at each other, wide-eyed... freaking out... realizing THIS was our chance... that all we had to do was give in and we'd be able to find out! All we had to do was turn our heads.... Oh MAN, we were so close to turning around. At least I was. 

All we needed to know is baby is healthy, everything looked good, it's average size right now, with fairly long arms (like the Mezas) and has a super cute nose. The best part was it looked like baby was praying at one point, with its hands cupped together. I will assume baby was praying for "Papa." 

These are the eyes I was locked into so I wouldn't turn around.

Baby waving!

Baby praying!

Baby!!!

When we told people that we weren't planning on finding out the gender, 99.9% of people said we were out of our minds. Like straight, CRAZY. But at this point, after waiting so long... I honestly don't care one way or the other. We are just so excited to be having a BABY. And I don't feel like I need to know what it is (other than a healthy baby) in order to plan and feel connected. I will say, when we were in Mexico... it was a bit challenging... and I ended up buying both little boy AND little girl stuff. And even when we went to Vietnam a few years ago, I bought a little blue AND a little pink kimono. But even once they're here... our baby boy will not always wear blue, nor will our little girl always wear pink.

Our next post will be about all of the registering and planning madness that we're in right now.... I think I will call it Baby Obsession.

And "Gender Neutral" is apparently really common now. Ducks and Frogs are no longer your only option! (Thank you God.) There are like a million colors out there and most look great for boys and girls. Also, we've already planned out how to make our "travel-themed" GN nursery. Oh... and that's actually a cool story. So, maybe a month or so into the pregnancy, I started thinking about nursery ideas. I'd shown Luis some images of blankets and wall-hangings related to travel, since we've been lots of places and since baby is our new "adventure."  Up until that point, I hadn't mentioned the idea to anyone else. Well, then like 3 weeks later Tina sent me a link to a GN travel-themed nursery! and was like, "...totally thought of you guys... It is perfect for Baby Perales." I was like NO WAY! She totally read my mind! We were thinking of the SAME thing! The link even had some baby blankets and decorations I'd already found. It's super awesome to see how in-tune Tina has been with us.

OH! one more thing... Last week Tina texted me that she ate pizza and the baby started kicking like crazy! Yay! Baby likes Pizza!!! It's definitely a Dominguez!!!

Here's a look at the video from the 20 week scan. ...by the way, if you have a good eye for telling if a baby is a boy or a girl... keep it to yourself please! It had been almost 2 months since we'd seen baby (we had been used to every 2 weeks...) so when you see this, baby is HUGE! Size of a banana here. No longer just a tiny blueberry....

 
Anatomy scan from Erika Perales on Vimeo.
(You can watch a few other Baby Perales videos from our blog here.)

#TBT  Grain of rice status! 6wk heartbeat!
(You can watch a few more Baby Perales videos from our blog here, too.)

"Baby, it was so amazing getting to hear your heartbeat again! It had been way too long since we'd seen you. I can't believe how much you've grown! But the days are going by more quickly now! And soon we'll get to meet you, face to face! Thank you for praying for Papa! It's working!" 
---excerpt from a letter to our baby