Charlie's BIG news...

Well, I'm guessing his T-shirt speaks for itself!

Yes, Charlie is going to be a big brother... and he is VERY excited at the prospect. As are we!

We have kept things pretty quiet until now - because we wanted to know exactly what was what before we made any big announcements.

I'm guessing most of you know that we lost our first son, Will, shortly after he was born, to a fatal genetic condition called Meckel-Gruber Syndrome. Every child we conceive has a 25 percent chance of inheriting that same condition, and dying either before or very soon after birth.

Both Will AND Charlie were born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome - a very complex and incurable cardiac condition. Although nobody is totally sure of the recurrence risks, having had two children with the same, left-sided condition, our chances of having a third were up around 10 percent.

Maths has never been my strong point, but we were facing around a 30-32 percent chance of any future baby being born with a lethal or life-threatening condition.

Other than taking massive doses of folic acid, there was nothing else we could do to help prevent this happening, except hope and pray for the best.

And so far, it's looking like our prayers have been answered. We have been scanned every few weeks and the baby does NOT have Meckel-Gruber syndrome or HLHS.

So far, according to the consultant, everything is looking "wonderfully boring" and we couldn't be happier about it.

So, when is the baby due?

Please don't shout at me - I've held out on you all for a VERY long time... Charlie's baby is due in about 10 weeks! (But if everything goes the same way as it did with Charlie, we're probably looking nearer to 12 weeks because he was two weeks late, and only came when he did because they pulled him out by his ears!)

But you haven't missed all the news along the way... I've been writing another, private blog, detailing our journey to a sibling for Charlie, and at last I can throw it open! Click here to take you to the new blog and find out what we've been up to for the past 30 weeks! This link takes you to the very first post, so you can work from back to front in chronological order.

I'll put the blog button in the sidebar later so you can click straight to the blog from there too.

So. There's the big news I've been promising - hope it was worth the wait!

PS It's a GIRL!!