Zach Dotsey

Yes, that’s right, Amanda and I are having a baby!

Yes, I know this is old news to a lot of people.  We found out after taking a pregnancy test on October 1, four weeks ago tomorrow.  We suspected it several days leading up to that.  Anyway, while we weren’t keeping it a big secret we weren’t telling quite everybody or making any public forum announcements like on Facebook or MySpace.  The main thing was that Amanda wanted to wait until we got confirmation from a doctor.  After having the cyst a few months ago she wanted to make absolutely sure there was a baby and not something else.

We went to the doctor today and sure enough, there’s a little baby in there.  It’s half an inch and has arm and leg buds.  You can see the head and where the brain goes, and in the sonogram machine you could see its tiny little heart fluttering away at 177 beats per minute.  I was able to keep myself from crying, but as much as I was beaming at the sonogram pictures and welling up over those, I know I’m pretty likely to lose it when the baby finally makes it out into the world.

Amanda’s doing fine.  As you may have read leading up to this she’s been feeling pretty icky and drained and got sick for the first time last night.  We’re about eight weeks and two days into it, which would put conception at about August 31.  (Let’s think about that… hee hee!)  The funny thing is that Amanda had a period after that, so we’ve had the baby growing there in her for longer than we realized.

We’ve been calling the baby Pistachio.  Amanda called it Peanut one time, but I think a lot of people call their brewing babies Peanut, so I just picked a different nut.

At any rate, the due date is expected to be June 7th.  Assuming we go to Kentucky like we do every year for the 4th of July, that means my kid will be less than a month old for its first road trip.  That should be interesting.  Baba and Pap will have a house full of kids.  Jackson will be four, Andra’s soon-to-be-born baby, tentatively named Lila, will be eight months, and our baby will be three weeks.  I don’t think we’ll be riding in one van all together this coming year.

So, we’re having a baby and we’re super-excited about it!  We’d been trying for about a year and a half, and we count this pregnancy as such a blessing from God.  It wasn’t until I was finally able to surrender my frustration about it to him that we started to realize that we might be pregnant, and I don’t count that as a coincidence.

Zach Dotsey
(is gonna be a daddy)

So now you know the big news.  Aside from that, I picked Amanda up from work and took her to the doctors’ office where she was poked and prodded and given a flu shot.  We got our first look at little Pistachio then Amanda had some blood drawn for tests and such and was given a flu shot.  We got there at 10 but didn’t get out until after noon.  It was a little frustrating once we got to the waiting room, to be honest, because there were a number of people who came in after us who got seen before we did.  Oh well.

After all of that I took Amanda to Quizno to get a sub and dropped her back off at work, where she finally told people we were having a baby.  A few people there already knew, but she’d flat out denied being preggers just because she wanted to wait until after the doctor visit to let it be known, in case of any complications or whatnot.  So she was finally able to put an end to her lies and deceit, as I phrased it to her.

I got back in time to do a little work then get on a big conference call.  I had a lot of phone calls and e-mails while I was busy with that, so the rest of my working day was spent trying to catch up with as many of those as I could.

Shortly after Amanda got back home we headed out to Taylor and Esther Hutchens’ place at Kure Beach for small group.  It was actually Justin and Lisa Hauenstein’s turn, but Lisa was supposed to have a work training tonight.  She turned out to be sick, so neither one of them showed.  Elliot Clark had to work as well, but Melissa Nicholson made it, and so did Mike and Kaitlyn Boscaljon.  We showed the sonogram pictures to everyone who was there.  Esther made enchiladas and Melissa brought a cake made of pumpkin for dessert, or something like that.  It was good, however she made it.

Small group went well, I think.  Taylor spoke up a lot, and so did Melissa and Kaitlyn.

We came home and Amanda got ready for bed.  I kissed her and the baby good night (as I do every night) then started writing all this.

I’d like Amanda to write on here, just to give some emotional viewpoints other than my own for the pregnancy, but I don’t think she feels like doing it, so I doubt she will.  Ah, well.

Zach Dotsey