We are having a baby! (Pt. 2)

With only 4 weeks to go before my expected due date, I figured it was time for that update 😉 In this post, I’ll share how we told Vittorio’s parents, and how the rest of my pregnancy was (with more bump pictures of course). Are you ready?

Alright so like I said in the previous post, we told my family in the beginning of July, but we had to wait until the end of July to tell Vittorio’s parents since we were only flying in there 23rd. It was SO hard to keep our mouths shut in this period. But we managed! The difficult part was also that we would first stay in Venice for the weekend since my father and stepmother were coming to meet Vitto’s parents. When we arrived, it was only Vitto’s mother so we still had to wait until the next day… She had a bottle of prosecco ready, so we had to come up with an excuse that we were not drinking for a while… Imagine that 😀

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How we told Vitto’s parents

So the morning after, when Vittorio’s father arrived with my father and stepmom, we prepared a little “scenario” of how we would tell them. We said we wanted to take a selfie together again, since we hadn’t seen each other live for so long because of COVID. Instead of taking a picture, I was actually making a video while I said: “This is the first picture of us with 5!” His mother replied: “How so??!” and I replied with a smile while rubbing over my belly. “Oh mamma!”, she exclaimed. His father’s face, when the coin dropped, was also priceless, and he immediately grabbed me to give me a kiss. His mother even burst into tears of joy. It was so heartwarming to see, and I’m also welling up again now writing about it. I have a video/picture but I will not post it because they don’t like being exposed online and I respect that 🙂

Finding out the gender

From about 11-12 weeks of pregnancy, you can have a test done called the NIPT test (non-invasive prenatal testing) to determine the risk for the fetus being born with certain chromosomal abnormalities. Down syndrome is the best known example. It’s not an obligated test, but we decided to do it, so we would at least know if this would be the case. We were still in Italy at that time, so I had the test done there. A nice bonus is that they can already determine the gender of the baby, since it’s a DNA test.

What do you think it is?

I’ll give a hint with a picture – as soon as Vittorio’s mother knew, she bought this as a gift 😀

IT’S A BOY!!!

For us it honestly didn’t matter, as long as the baby was healthy, we were happy. But the test returned, and we are expecting a little baby boy. Here’s another picture I took where I thought I already was showing a belly 😛

It’s really crazy how fast that little baby is growing, especially in the beginning. At 12 weeks, the baby is already 6cm big, around 20 grams and the size of a plum. Here’s my echo from around that period:

About 8 weeks later (at 20 weeks), he is 20-25 cm, 300 grams and the size of a pointed bell pepper:

At 24 weeks, this is what my belly looked like:

Babymoon

For our wedding in 2020, we got a nice gift voucher from a dear friend of Vittorio’s family to use for our honeymoon. Since we had to postpone our party already twice (hoping now for Summer 2022), our voucher was expiring and we had to book something before December 2021. We decided to turn it into a babymoon, a last holiday with the 2 of us before the baby arrives and to spend some quality time together. As we were deciding on the destination, Mother Nature was not on our side.

First, we wanted to go to the Canary Islands but then the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted in La Palma on September 19th. Then, we thought of Crete but next thing an earthquake hit the island on September 27th. We didn’t want to travel too far just in case I needed medical care or the pregnancy, but we still wanted some sun. Eventually, we landed on Portugal, where we would do a mini-roadtrip in the Algarve region. I’ll write a separate blog on that, but we basically landed in Faro, then went to Albufeira and finally to Lagos, before flying back from Faro.

The objective was really to relax, enjoy and spoil ourselves rotten. So we booked all 5 star hotels with wellness facilities and booked some massages. I made sure to check they also offered pregnancy massages 🙂 I can really recommend doing this by the way, it’s sooo nice to take some time for yourself in this way. Happy mom = happy baby!

Final progress pics

So today I am 35 weeks – the baby is the size of a honeydew melon, about 2,5kg and 43cm long. It’s the final countdown, as Europe would sing 😉 My expected due date is February 9th, so 4 more weeks to go. But let’s see when he decides to show up.
Here’s a little comparison picture of the last weeks:

Pregnancy shoot

While I was in Belgium for a final family visit pré-baby, I met up with my friend Tina to do a little photoshoot with my baby bump. She is not a professional photographer but she might as well be because DAMN, she’s got skills! It was a cold and rainy day, but she managed to capture these beautiful pictures of me and I am so grateful to have this memory to look back on. Go check out her site and Instagram as well 🙂

Baby Room Preview

Ok this also deserves a separate post because I HAD NO IDEA YOU NEED SO MUCH STUFF. It was a bit overwhelming to be honest, starting from: ok so what do we need for this baby? And then you start making a list… and keep adding and adding. I’m sure I will later also make a post on things I didn’t need in the end 🙂 Buuut here’s a sneak peak of our baby room (yes, spoiler alert for the baby’s name):

Alright, that was it for this update again! My maternity leave has started now, so in my final weeks before the baby arrives I will be resting, nesting and prepare as good as I can for this avalanche that is about to come. Wish me luck for the delivery!

xoxo
Claudia