We're Expecting Our First Child!

Baby Guerra is due in September and it's a...

2024 is proving to be quite the whirlwind.

Mark and I found out I was pregnant a few days after Christmas. It was the happiest way we could have imagined sending 2023 out the door and into oblivion. We would enter 2024 with a secret: We were expecting our first child.

And in our favorite month, no less. I’m due in September. On Labor Day, to be exact. Ironic and fantastic isn’t it?

At our 8-week ultrasound, Mark and I watched in awe as our baby wiggled inside me. At one point, the baby appeared to be waving at the camera, happy and healthy. I was in the thick of grief, but as I was saying goodbye, I was also saying hello, and that hello was a wonderful thing.

It was the 12-week ultrasound that changed my and Mark’s entire world. There was our baby, looking like, well, a baby. Not a tadpole. Or a human submarine. But a baby. A baby that opened its mouth and rubbed its eyes. A baby that tried to get its legs over its head and stretched out so we could count two arms and two legs. I could have stayed in that room forever, staring at our little miracle.

At the little life our love had created.

Instead of doing a gender reveal party, we wanted to find out what we were having together, in a way that was intimate and sentimental to us as a couple. So we took the envelope with *the answer* back to where it all began - our alma mater. We took a stroll to the place where we met, sat on a bench in the 65-degree, sunshiny weather, and learned that come September, we would be meeting our baby girl.

When this newsletter hits inboxes, I will be one day shy of 14 weeks pregnant. I don’t want to rush a minute of this experience, but I cannot say I am sad to see the first trimester come to a close. It was a lot emotionally, and, yes, I had my fair share of physical discomfort, too. Still, I’m finding that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t endure for my daughter.

My daughter.

Our sunshine. Our happiest thought.

There are six months left until September.

We cannot wait to meet our little girl.