kike au kiume?

girl or boy? blue or pink?

Not that I am totally into the forcing of specific colors onto children and thus defining their sense of self (and lets face it this kid is wearing what we have no matter what) but hey, Annikah just so happened to select these two balloons at our lunch in Dar after finding out about mtoto mchanga so we decided to let her tell everyone the news.....

First.....We had to say Kwaheri to our survivors; Jim and Rhoda on Sunday (lots more pics and stories to come though). There were some long hugs, tears, and great times shared. Again, we were humbled that family would travel so far at such great expense to see our lives here; to meet our friends, experience a bit of the culture, see the beautiful creation, and spend time with us. They made it and while there was no million dollar or even shilling reward they were both true survivors!! We hope some day they make an All Star repeat appearance. Annikah was our comfort again as we both cried and she reminded us that "me still here with you" and even the hopeful "Bibi and Babu come back." Accompanied with lots of face stroking and hugs; what a sweetie!
Thanks Bibi & Babu for blessing us....and surviving!

After some craziness finding a place to stay on Sunday night (which involves my husband being a rockstar and locating a guesthouse in the dark that we happened to have stayed at 6 years ago when we were here with Habitat) we were all exhausted and went to sleep early. The next morning we headed to our 5 month appointment to check my weight, blood again (since last time there was a thyroid imbalance) and also hopeful that we could find out the gender as well (I even drank some sugary tea in hopes of getting mtoto mchanga moving.)

It also has occurred to us that second born kids really get the shaft in many ways. We have not been reading books about the baby's growth, planning showers, reading tons about birth or parenting, or anticipating every new thing. Granted much of that has to do with living in Africa, having Anni to keep us busy, and the fact that surviving this pregnancy has been the main goal since I still feel miserable most days. The only countdown I am doing is the one until I am done with being pregnant!! And I guess some of these differences are good. After all, really no one NEEDS the epic list of baby items they hand all rotund and overwhelmed Mama's to be when they walk into Babies-R-Us and we hope we have leaned a bit about kids by keeping Miss A alive and well for nearly 3 years. But alas, I decided we need some pics of the journey of mtoto mchanga..

here I am at 5 months preggers

(gained back half the weight I lost and definitely have a bump now)

right before our ultrasound appointment
Anni and Jason in the waiting room...notice she has to cross her legs "like Papa"

So at our appointment the technician did her thing and mtoto mchanga was very active and this time Annikah was much more interested in seeing everything on the screen (I think because the baby looked more like a baby instead of a bean or alien like the last few times). The technician is great and she does way more detail and checking then many of my appointments stateside. Everything measured right on time for our pre-Christmas baby and she was able to say that in her estimation the baby is a......

But WAIT....Annikah wanted to be the one to announce that mtoto mchanga is a.....

KIKE!! (Girl) Anni's only response after hearing the technician say girl was

"see I told you Mama, Papa!!!"

here she is waving!

Everything looked great which is still a miracle to me since I have been so unhealthy during the last 5 months. Another testament to God being the creator and author of life! The only issue detected was what she called a "high resistance uterine artery blood flow" which we will need to have monitored more closely. This basically means that the blood flow of the placenta is stressed in some way and while not an issue now it could become one later. We are not sure what this means yet except we know that it can possibly result in preeclampsia or low birth weight babies. But she was sure to tell us that these risks are only SLIGHTLY increased and that after 6 weeks (and another scan) we will know more. I also will monitor my blood pressure closely here with our team leader's machine (thank goodness they have EVERYTHING!). The majority of these pregnancies have a perfectly normal outcome and a few years ago most women were not even checked for this during scans. We also need to try to research a bit more since low birth weight babies is also a risk associated with HG so we want to get more information before deciding what is best. Jason left yesterday for East Asia for a 12 day work conference so we did not have much time to process everything but I will say we know the first name of mtoto mchanga (we always agree on girl's names but boy's names are another story:) and are excited that the baby seems to be doing well. So now we plan a bit, wait a bit, and pray a lot. That is our big news...