Big News from the Big Sister

We are excited to announce that we will be welcoming baby #2 around Easter of 2013.  We shared the good news with our families and close friends following our first sonogram at the end of August and now I finally have a picture of Ally wearing her new shirt to post and make it "blog official."  This week baby is 13 weeks and I just had my second doctors visit with our new practice in Peoria.  All appeared well in the first sonograms at 8 weeks and today the heartbeat was a steady 158 bpm. 
So far almost everything has seemed different this time around, except for the severe sickness which I also had with Ally for a very long time. We are in a new place where we had to find new doctors, we have a crazy almost 3 year old to care for and I am experienced pregnancy at a completely different time of the year.   Finding a practice was not difficult as I took the recommendation of Ally's pediatrician but its a different set up and I am amazed at just how much things in the OB industry have changed since I was pregnant last time.  This particular practice has 5 OBs, 5 midwives and 3 nurse practitioners on staff and I will spend most of my time with the midwife, which I am not familiar with.  I don't think Ive spent enough time there to make any judgements yet but its different.
We chose this time of year to try for another baby for a few specific reasons and I definitely underestimated how the start of the school year stress would compound first-trimester pregnancy pains.  Its been tough to balance the stress and time commitments of work with the sickness, tiredness and overall moodiness that comes with being pregnant.  I expect that to fix itself as I get my staff trained at work and we get into the swing of things with events and hopefully the symptoms will change too. 
As with Ally, I have experienced severe sickness this time around.  I had hoped it would be different but its almost been worse.  The midwife I have seen thinks it may be more reflux related that pregnancy sickness because of my straight inability to keep anything down.  Drug protocols have changed so I am taking prescription nausea meds and over the counter antacids for now and that has been helping over the last week.  I have to keep a close eye on things and make sure I don't get too dehydrated.  I am really hoping this can get under control and I don't experience it for as long as I had to with Ally when these meds were not available. 
Ally is very excited about the new addition, although its not really clear if she knows all that is going to happen.  She has named the baby "Marty" after her favorite movie character and has told a lot of people about it.  There is a lot to be done over the next several months including identifying which room will belong to who in the house, transitioning Ally into a twin bed so we can put the toddler bed back into the crib and reevaluating our stock of baby items.  Its exciting and we know it will go fast but right now we are just taking it easy on the baby prep and enjoying time with Ally.  We also have several friends that are due around the same time with their first babies so its been and exciting time for many of our friends too.