It's a...

boy! wow!!! I had an ultrasound on Wednesday--just to determine gender--and I must say that he looks more like a baby at 16 weeks then he did at the 9 week ultrasound. We saw him waving, kicking, and squirming...and I have started to feel him move!

Billy and I both felt like this one was a boy, but it's a change to think back to when John was a baby instead of our latest experience with spunky Havilah. John was such a sweet, cuddly baby! 

Obviously I have no idea what this baby's personality will be like, but another boy...oh boy! There's apprehension on my part because of John's struggles. I wonder if this boy will have the same sensitivities and if he'll have a speech disorder. I wonder if he'll need to take the scenic route everywhere he goes (more on this in a minute) or if everything will come easier for him than it does for his big brother.

We're excited that he appears to be healthy and we are now moving into the dangerous waters of naming him--John and Havilah were so easy!--now...it's another story. Good thing we have 5+ months to think about it (oh, and the seven huge baby name books from the library may help too). We really do want to have a name picked out soon. Seriously, you can pray for us that we will find a name that suits him, our family, and our picky (and separate!) preferences.

Without further ado, here he is--baby boy Honeycutt (the top is a profile; the bottom is a shot of his back and arm; sorry no maleness pics for the blog):

On a different note, I wanted to share a poem of sorts that I heard from a lady at our church who's four-year-old son has some very serious, undiagnosable developmental delays. The poem is "Welcome to Holland" by Emily Pearl Kingsley:

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this . . .

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo’s David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” 

“Holland?” you say, “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy. I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland, and there you must stay.

The most important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for awhile and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

The pain of that will never, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Of course, John's needs are so much less than many, many that I personally know. The therapy office alone is a humbling place--all those mamas and daddies with children who have needs that they can't meet. 

But still, I identify with this. I like to think that in Italy I had a car rental arranged. Well, here in Holland I'm getting everywhere by bicycle. It's good for me to bike, and the scenery isn't too bad, but it's so s...l...o...w and I can't visit all of the places I would like to go.

So you see, I worry for this little babe. It's the same feeling I've had for the first 16-18 weeks of my last three pregnancies, because my first baby's life ended there. I know worrying about his future won't get me anywhere, and really I'm trying to just leave this baby in God's hands where he belongs, but still I can't be wholeheartedly--and naively--excited. I'm going to work on that though, because this child is his own person, even if he does have delays or disabilities. 

And at least this time...I know my way around Holland.