Goose Goose!

Last time I posted here, I was newly pregnant and not yet ready to make a public announcement about it.
Then I took a long break from this space (just as I have - unintentionally - during every pregnancy and life transition so far). Now, we have a new baby boy!

Miette and Sebastian came with us to the ultrasound appointment partway through the pregnancy, and upon being asked what we should name the new baby, Miette promptly replied, "Goose Goose!"
The nickname stuck, and we still call him that fairly often. This was in part the inspiration for choosing Augustus as his middle name - that [Augustus/Gus] being as close as we were comfortable getting to naming our child "goose."

Here is a collection of photos (mainly taken by Jesse) from before and after Soren's birth:

My brother, wanting to be there with us during labor... (Just a short visit, he left before anything got too exciting.)

Waiting it out.

Soren Augustus was born at 1:11am, July 9th.

8 lbs. 7.5 oz.

Crackers!!!

A VERY happy and proud big sister!

Sebastian was not much impressed by his new brother, but was as willing as ever to be a goofball and capture everyone's attention.

Soren was large and healthy, and he has remained so since. Shortly after delivery, however, I experienced some complications that grew more severe until I was admitted for surgery about 14 hours later. The problem ended up being an extremely rare and difficult to detect uterine laceration that led to significant internal bleeding, requiring blood transfusions. Because of this, we were in the hospital a few extra days and the recovery at home has been much longer and slower than we were planning on. 

We have been home for 3 weeks now, and we are working our way back to normal. Being a newly postpartum mom always includes many emotional highs and lows, along with general fatigue, and the trauma of what happened this time around has only added to that!

Thankfully we have been blessed with tremendous support from family, our church community, and other friends, making this so much less stressful than it would be if we were on our own.