9 Months of Ruby and Expecting

Well, Matthew and I are 9 months into this parenthood thing, and I gotta say it’s going well. We’re in a good rhythm. Ruby loves her daddy and thinks he’s just the funniest person she’s ever met. And sometimes she thinks I’m funny too. We both love this stage of babyhood. 

I mean, I’ve loved them all so far, but this one is a particular favorite. 

She’s mobile – crawling all over the place, including all over us. She’s laughing – honestly, she’s the happiest baby. She smiles at everyone who looks at her. She’s vocal – not exactly making words yet, but she squawks and squeals and makes lots of consonant sounds all day every day. Shes almost never not making noise, and I can’t wait until those noises turn into words. I’d love to know what she has to say. She takes everything in. She notices her surroundings and truly looks at them. It’s obvious she wants to understand what things are and how they work. 

She has the biggest FOMO I never knew babies could get. Gone are the days of contact naps and sleeping anywhere or through anything when she gets tired. In fact, we are barely clinging to naptime as it stands now. We do all the things “they” say you’re supposed to do: blackout curtains, noise machine, super boring environment to encourage sleep. But she will still hang out in her crib for over an hour sometimes, resisting sleep. She’ll roll around and bang on the bars of her crib. She’ll play with her paci, tossing it through the crib bars to see how far it’ll go. (I’ve gotten smart and keep 3-4 in there at a time so as to avoid a tantrum most of the time.) She’ll sit straight up and rock back and forth staring through the crib bars (we call that the Hannibal Lecter). If we gave her a bottle to help lull her to sleep, she’ll bang that against the crib bars as well. Anything to keep herself awake and from potentially missing out on something. 

Eventually she will throw herself down into one of her many… interesting sleeping positions and we might get 45 minutes out of her. Or two hours. You just never know. 

But she sleeps all. night. long. Yes, you read that right. Nap times are an adventure, but the 12-13 hour overnights make everything worth it. Mom and dad still get their evenings together and we are

✨G R A T E F U L✨

We’ve had some setbacks over the course of our few months together, but it feels like all the hard work we did has paid off. And as a bonus to the 12+ hour overnight sleeps, she doesn’t even cry when she wakes up anymore. She’ll sit and entertain herself until we come get her. I really can’t believe how lucky we are. And I hope and pray and cross my fingers and toes that it stays that way.

Everyone tells us the next baby won’t be the same, but I’m holding out hope. It wasn’t just luck that got us here. It was quite a bit of hard work and staying strong through the setbacks… Mixed with a lot of luck, also yes… We practiced a soft sort of sleep training that I also cross my fingers and toes that it works as well with the next one. 

Speaking of the next one. As much as I love Ruby’s stage of life at the moment and I am so excited to see where she goes from here, I do find myself missing those sweet newborn cuddles. The closer we get to baby boy’s due date, the more excited I get to have those again. This pregnancy has been quite a bit rougher on me than the last one, and I really can’t wait to not be pregnant anymore. But I am also so grateful that he is healthy and growing and that none of my body’s issues are affecting him in any way. And hey, it’s not like I wasn’t warned about getting pregnant over 35. Everything they say is true. lol. 😭

We have decided on a name that I thought might be fun to announce here. It took us a while this time around because we didn’t have one in the chamber like we did with Ruby. One thing that was important to me was naming a boy after my pawpaw who passed away last year. He was a good man, a great father and grandfather, always had a joke at the ready, and had tons of friends. He was a steady rock to his family, and someone I hope our baby can be like when he grows up. But Clarence Radcliffe Styron, III is a difficult name in this year of our Lord 2026. Yes, it’s timeless, but I also don’t want our kid to be bullied for his name. Especially when people are naming their kids things like Brayleigh and Ocean. We wanted something classic but not overdone, and I think we did it with

Clarence Conway Austin

Clarence after my pawpaw, and Conway after the producer of the greatest Christmas album ever made. And we plan to call him Conway. 

We can’t wait to meet him.