Currently on my Nightstand . . .

. . . and I'm not just reading it for fun (although I am one of those crazy people who enjoys reading birth stories).

No, I'm reading it in preparation for Baby #4, due to arrive sometime in the late spring!!!!!

I went natural with my other three kids (for clarification, that just means I delivered them without medication, but it was definitely in a hospital). Mike and I took a natural childbirth class before Aaron's arrival and then again before Maxwell's. Then with Bradley, I figured I'd been through it twice already and knew what I was doing, so I just skimmed through my HypnoBirthing book and called it good.

This time, I really feel like I need to prep myself mentally. This is our biggest gap between kids (2 years, 8 months), so, you know, there's been some time to forget . . . and also remember. You'd think with the fourth child, I wouldn't be afraid of labor, but in some ways, I'm more afraid now than I was with Aaron (when I was blissfully optimistic that it would be as smooth and beautiful as the HypnoBirthing class made it out to be). Now I know that it hurts. A lot.

Hence, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, which many of my natural birth friends have recommended as an excellent source of positive birth stories. It is that for sure, but it's also a little on the . . . extremely unconventional . . . side. What I'm trying to say is I might not be enough of a hippie to embrace most of what it's saying. We'll see.

Enough of that. Should I tell you more about the actual baby?

Besides being our fourth child, this will also be our fourth BOY! We've had three ultrasounds that all confirm this as fact. And we couldn't be more excited about adding to our own little basketball team (or something . . . neither Mike nor I are really big sports people). I will probably devote a whole post to why I think having a fourth boy is awesome in every way (since everyone seems to think they should offer condolences instead of congratulations), but for now, just know that we are really very happy about it.

My actual due date is May 30th, but I usually tell people I'm due in early June--both so that I don't get my hopes up and also so that I don't have people asking me on May 1st why the baby isn't here yet.

I'm 25 weeks today, and this is actually the first pregnancy picture I've taken. That's one of the differences between Baby #1 and Baby #4. The other is that at 25 weeks, I look like I did with Aaron at 34 weeks. Trying not to be depressed about that.