Our Family of Two Is Now Three!

Our precious baby is finally here, out in the real world. That's right - we have a baby boy: S. Funny enough, I felt that he would be a boy very early on in my pregnancy before we could possibly know for sure because I had vivid dreams of having a boy. Even though we kept the sex of our baby a secret, most of our family and friends guessed that we would have a boy, too. Weird, huh?

I had a... let's just say intense experience delivering at a Korean hospital, and I am so happy I decided to stay at post to have our baby. I cannot say enough kind things about all the doctors and nurses in labor and delivery at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital. Soon, we'll be checking into our joriwon (산후조리원), the postnatal luxury spa where the three of us will stay for two weeks. (I'll make sure to blog about that later, too, but all I can say for now is: why don't we have those in the United States?)

You might wonder why we're not posting our baby's face all over the blog. After all, he is very adorable (you'll have to take my word for it). But we decided to leave our son's face off our blog and social media pages when he's young for a few reasons. First of all, M and I were lucky enough to grow up at a time where we could decide how we wanted to put ourselves out there on the Internet. Although we can't guarantee total privacy in an age with facial recognition and other technology, we wanted to give our child a chance to make those decisions when he's old enough, too. He's too young to know about our social media profiles, let alone express an opinion about whether he wants us to put his face there or not. This isn't the only option out there, but it was the right one for us.

I also don't want this blog to become a mostly mommy blog or family blog. I started this blog to share some information and life updates with folks back home, of course, but I also hope it can stay a resource for people who are interested in the U.S. Foreign Service and a career in diplomacy. There are plenty of fantastic parenting and cooking and lifestyle blogs out there, and I just don't see that type of content as part of the purpose of ours.

So with that quick update, I'm signing off to catch some precious shut eye and make the most of my recovery time. I plan to do future posts on the best advice I received as a first-time pregnant woman working and living overseas as well as maternity leave in the Foreign Service, but I have a feeling I may be posting at some weird hours for the next few months. It's all part of the adventure!