Addi is here!

Join us in praising God for our new baby girl!



Adelaide Elizabeth Gillham arrived on Tuesday 2/24, 

at 4:26 AM.  We're going to call her Addi.

Here's her welcome home sign.

And here's beautiful Addi!

Baby girl is coming soon!

It's only 16 days until our little girl is scheduled to arrive! We've been going to baby classes and having baby showers and baby blessings (thanks, everyone!) and preparing the house.  

So far, Arianne and the baby are doing well - everything seems normal. Arianne's starting to feel more uncomfortable as the baby grows. And we're more and more able to see our baby's movements in there. It's amazing to see.

Here's what you really want to see - photos of Arianne.  The first photo is Arianne before Christmas.

Here's one of the two of us.

These two photos were taken just today. 

Progress report

This photo was taken in Mito, Japan, back in the days when we were hoping to get pregnant.  We thought the name of the store was funny.  Little did we know that at the time, Arianne was already preganant...

And here's Arianne!  

Baby Girl is getting bigger in there!

This photo was taken at 18 weeks.

And here's the latest: Arianne is now at 22 weeks.

It's a GIRL!!!

Today we found out for sure: we're having a baby girl!  

We're overjoyed and thank God for answering our prayers that the ultrasound would show a healthy, growing baby.

We got a bunch of photos, but we'll just give you these three.  Out of modesty, we'll save the photo which shows the evidence that she's a girl for family members eyes' only.  ;-)

Now it's time to start getting girlie stuff for her. Stay tuned for a name choice.

Breakdancing Bamboo

Last Wednesday, Arianne & I went to our 2nd baby doctor appointment.  The nurse came in and put a microphone (?) up to Arianne's belly.  She had to poke around awhile, but we heard it: shwoom, shwoom, shwoom, mixed in with Bang! Biff! Pow!  The nurse explained that those regular shwooms we heard were the baby's healthy heartbeat.  The other noises were an active baby moving around.  

Then the nurse told us that there are lots of wives' tales about how to tell if the baby is a boy or girl (she really said "wise tales").  She said that in her experience the way to tell is to see how     active the baby is: 

• active babies tend to be boys
  
• calm babies tend to be girls.  
  

In other words, she was predicting that all of the bangs, biffs, and pows indicated we're having a boy.  But she wouldn't let us quote her on that!

Arianne asked if we could have another ultrasound.  Dr. Goff looked at his watch, checked his schedule, but then said he would do one.  Today's picture comes from that ultrasound.  We saw a growing, very active 8.9 cm baby!  This baby is moving a lot.  Unfortunately, when Dr. Goff took the picture, the baby turned his head the other way.  

So does this mean our active baby is a boy?  I told my Dad what the nurse said about active babies being boys.  Dad just laughed and said, "The nurse doesn't know how many active girls are in the Gillham family!"  So we'll see...

Keep praying for us!

Happy Baby, Baby! Part 2

Arianne had her first baby doctor appointment today...and we’re having a baby! Ok, we already knew that, but it was good to hear the Dr. say so.

She had an ultrasound, and we could totally see baby Bamboo. We could see his face and arm and legs and umbilical cord. (I’m going to call the baby “he” just because I don’t like saying “it,” but it was too early to determine the sex.) And then while we were watching him, he moved around. I think he’s like his mommy and doesn’t like to be disturbed while he’s sleeping! :-)

Right now Bamboo is about 3.5 cm long, which means he's been growing 10 weeks and 4 days.

Amazing!!! I was just so amazed to see a living, moving baby inside Arianne. It was an exciting, humbling, awesome moment.

Happy Baby, Baby!

On July 4, we found out that we're going to be parents!  We decided to rename that day Dependents Day.  :-)

Because of this picture and because we don't yet know the gender, we like to call him/her "Bamboo."  Of course we're still negotiating what Bamboo's real name will be.

Join us in praying for a healthy Bamboo & Arianne, an easy pregnancy, and lots of joy along the way.