24 Weeks and A Trip to the Specialist

So today we have arrived at 24 weeks!  Nothing huge developmentally going on, but Baby Girl's skin is starting to get more opaque and pink, so that's exciting.  She's punching and kicking me regularly, which I don't mind one bit.  Yesterday, she was kicking so hard that I could actually see my stomach move!  That was pretty crazy.  I had some serious mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it was awesome to actually SEE how strong she's getting.  On the other hand, I felt a bit like an alien was about to come busting out of me.  Andy hasn't gotten to see that yet, but he DID get to feel her kick last Sunday!  He got fed up with waiting, so he sat me down on the couch and parked his hands on my belly for over an hour to make sure that he would be there whenever she decided to kick.  He didn't recognize it at first because he thought it was just a little muscle twitch, but eventually he felt it for real.  He was pretty excited, to put it mildly.

As far as names go, we are 99% settled on the one that we like.  However, he still doesn't want me sharing just yet in case we change our minds.  I'm not going to be able to keep it to myself for too much longer though, so I hope he gets over it soon!

Quick update on the house: things are moving along very well - and very quickly!  We got all the paperwork from the banks and have our inspection scheduled for this coming Tuesday morning.  We've submitted all the necessary paperwork to our bank for the mortgage application to be processed and will be signing papers and scheduling the appraisal on Tuesday afternoon.  I don't know when we schedule the closing, but I'm hoping for November 2nd.  After we get the keys at the closing, we are going to give ourselves until Thanksgiving to get everything moved.  Our first month's mortgage is included in our closing costs, so we're going to go ahead and pay November's rent too.  This way, November is paid up on both houses and there's no rush to get from one to the other.  We can take a week or two to clean and paint the new house before moving everything and then have a few more days to clean over here before giving the keys back.  Giving ourselves this time and space will (we hope) really reduce the stress of moving and it gives me a little bit longer to get everything packed!

Now, onto our visit with the specialist this past week.  Andy was unable to get off of work to come with me, so my mom came along, which was a BIG help.  They people there were really nice and we could tell they really knew their stuff.  Basically, after almost 2 hours of ultrasound and talking with the doctor, they've come to the conclusion that she's still too small, but there's no apparent reason why.  The doctor explained that up until the 3rd trimester, all babies grow at pretty much the same rate.  After 28 weeks, they start growing differently based on their genetic predispositions to be tall or short or whatever.  So my being short should have nothing to do with the baby's size right now.  That being said, any measurements that fall between the 10th and 90th percentile are considered in the 'normal' range for growth.  Well my baby girl is only in the 7th percentile, so she's just small enough to warrant further investigation.

They did not change my due date because developmentally speaking, she's right on track for 24 weeks.  She has all the pieces and parts that she should have at this point and they are all put together in the right order and working well.  Overall, she is proportionate, except her femurs (thigh bones) are a bit shorter than they should be for the rest of her body.  The doctor basically said that being this small at this age could mean any one of a hundred different problems (none of which have solutions, of course), but there are no secondary indicators to point to any particular one of those problems.  Even her short leg bones don't necessarily mean anything because problems that cause that usually affect the arm bones too, but they look totally normal.  So she's small, but there's really no indication as to why.  He mentioned doing an amniocentesis to check for chromosomal abnormalities or infections, but didn't think it was really necessary at this point.  Her blood flow measurements everywhere (placenta, heart, brain) were good, so there's not really a concern about a nutrient deficiency or anything like that either.

We were pretty much told that there's nothing (specific) to worry about, but they are bringing me back on October 18th to check on her growth and make sure she's still progressing normally.  I'm guessing they are probably going to want to monitor her growth throughout the rest of the pregnancy too.  Andy's going to come to the rest of these specialist appointments with me, just because they're so overwhelming.  It's hard to process all that information all at once, especially knowing that no matter what the problem would be, there's no fix for it.  It did make me feel better to hear him say that it's entirely possible that I was like this as a baby too, they just didn't know it.  The technology wasn't sophisticated enough to take such precise measurements back then.  So it could still be just the way my babies are going to develop, we just don't know that yet.

So that was our trip to the specialist.  It didn't really change anything for me, seeing as how they still don't know if there's anything wrong, but at least I got some more good pictures out of it!

This one is probably my favorite from the whole session - you can see her profile really well, including her adorable little nose!  And, if you look carefully, her lips are parted and it looks (to me) like she's smiling :-) I have also been told that it looks like she is blowing a bubble, but that's just her hand behind the other side of her head.

Here, you can see that she's getting her workout on by doing crunches!  Her face is turned away (which is why her head looks weird) but it was funny to see her flex in and out of this position, touching elbow to knee.

So this coming Thursday I go for my regular visit to my OB and then I will be headed back to the specialists on October 18th.  Even though they say nothing is necessarily 'wrong' at this point, please continue to pray for my baby girl to grow big and strong and make it above that 10th percentile!

Ups and Downs

The past two weeks have been so full of ups and downs for us.  I'm exhausted.  It's been so crazy I haven't even wanted to give updates, but now enough has happened that I just have to!  But first, a baby update . . .

We have reached 23 weeks this weekend!  I can hardly believe it.  Baby Girl is kicking and punching like a champ and Momma loves it!  Well, most of the time.  Sometimes, she gets me in some kind of organ that really hurts.  But it's still very encouraging.  Andy still hasn't been able to feel anything, which makes us kind of sad.  I swear she's strong enough that he should  be able to feel her, but she always stops moving as soon as he touches my stomach.  Even when I touch it, she stops.  It's very frustrating.  The internet tells me she's about the size of a grapefruit now, but I'm not so sure with how she was measuring a few weeks ago.  The other cool fact is that all of her facial features are fully developed now, so we should (hopefully) get some good pictures at our next scan!

Ok, on to the life updates . . .

First let's start with an up:
Andy is making terrific progress on the furniture for Baby Girl's room!  We have the glider that is completely done and sitting in the living room . . .

. . . And it's super comfortable too!  I actually use it a lot already.  Last week, the dresser was also fully completed . . .

The picture is bad because of the horrible lighting in our basement, but it really is pretty.  We painted the hardware oil-rubbed bronze and I think it looks really sharp against the Marshmallow White.  And then just this past week, he has been working on getting the wardrobe sanded down and ready to prime . . .

Again, horrible pictures because the lighting is just terrible, but you get the idea.  They were gorgeous pieces of furniture before, and I really like how they are turning out!

Down:
Last Friday afternoon, on my way home from work, my car completely died.  I made it onto our road, but not quite home, so I had to walk the rest of the way.  This in itself was very upsetting to me, seeing as how it was a hot day and I'm quite pregnant.  We had it towed to the mechanic, who was closed for the weekend and couldn't diagnose anything until Monday.  So on Monday we got a call saying that it was the alternator (which is a fairly expensive part) and it was located in between the engine and the dash, so there would be quite a bit of labor as well.  Between driving Andy's car (when he wasn't at work) and borrowing my Father-in-law's car, I was able to make it to work and all my other commitments for the week, but it wasn't enjoyable.  I'm used to driving my SUV, so driving around all these little cars all week long just drove me crazy - not to mention how hard it was to get in and out of them!  Anyway, my car came home on Thursday night, but the bill was $659 (which is a lot for us).  So we had to pull money from our budgeted areas for moving expenses and improving the new house once we move in.  It's frustrating to be doing so well on budgeting for upcoming expenses and then have to use it because an unforeseen circumstance arises.  We were proud though that we didn't have to dip into our savings for our down payment and closing costs, so that was a little bit of a silver lining to an otherwise cloudy event.

Up:
On Saturday (the day after my car broke down), my mom came down to take me shopping at some nearby outlets to get ideas for clothes for Baby Girl!  It was so much fun.  We were supposed to be just window shopping so that she could get a feel for my taste in baby clothes and stuff like that, but we ended up walking away with a few adorable outfits that were just too cute to leave at the store.  I love that even though we moved away from my parents last fall, they still live close enough to come visit like that on a semi-regular basis.  It also made me so excited for the baby to be here so I can dress her up and snuggle her all day long :-)

Down:
Monday evening, I had to work.  That, in itself, is not really too big of a down.  However.  This particular retail job requires that I do a lot of straightening of the store.  I go around and put things away, straighten the items on the shelves, pull things forward, etc.  It ends up being a lot of getting up and down off the floor to reach the bottom shelves.  At 8:59 (we close at 9:00) I stood up from kneeling on the floor, and my pants ripped right out.  The new girl that I was training thought it was just hilarious, but I wasn't so amused.  Here's what I had to walk around in the rest of the night . . . 

Yeah.  Luckily, we were only there for another hour finishing things up and my t-shirt was just long enough to pull down over it.  Now, if you've ever been pregnant, you probably know this already, but those of you who haven't, let me make this very clear:  Maternity clothes are flipping expensive.  Seriously.  They cost just as much (if not more) than regular clothes, but they NEVER go on sale.  So when I found some on clearance at target for 50% off, I snatched up two identical pairs right away.  When I was wearing them, though, it felt like one pair was a half-size smaller than the other.  Not enough to be uncomfortable, just enough so that I could tell the difference between two otherwise identical pairs of jeans.  I guess the tight pair got just a little too tight on Monday night.  I now only own one pair of jeans and a pair of capris.  The weather has cooled down sufficiently that the capris are officially out of season.  So I have one pair of pants to wear to work and no money to go buy more because all our money just went into my car.  I guess I will start saving my pennies and hopefully be able to get a second pair in a few weeks.  It just feels ridiculous to only own one pair of jeans, but I guess that's the way life goes!

Up:
This is the big one.  This past Friday, I was in the music room and my phone chimed letting me know I had a voicemail.  Our cell phones don't get great reception in our house (because of the tin siding, we think) so it never rang, but the voicemail was very surprising!  It was our Realtor, Janet.  She's been awesome, by the way.  If any of you are ever looking for a house in my area, let me know and I will get you hooked up with her.  Anyway, she called to say that we heard back from the mysterious investor that was the last piece to the puzzle.  They wanted us to change something.  Andy got home and she called and actually talked to him and it turns out that they will approve it if we push our closing date back (from October 19th) to on or before November 9th!  Of course, we said yes to that and went right out and signed the papers agreeing to it.  So we don't have all the paperwork from the banks and such yet, but we DO have a closing date SET for no later than November 9th!  It will take another week or so to get the rest of the paperwork in and then we will file the actual mortgage application and schedule the inspection and really get the ball rolling.  The best part, for me, is that I know we will have the keys by November 9th.  No more waiting and wondering.  It's time to start packing.  Well, we decided I could wait until the beginning of October to start that so that I have a week to just enjoy this good news and get mentally prepared.  The only drawback is that now yesterday was the first day of Autumn and I don't get to put out any of my fall decorations.  But I'll take it if it means I get to put up the Christmas tree in a house that we own!  I just feel so excited and so relieved.  This is really, finally, happening.  And just in time too, because I was starting to feel antsy about getting the nursery set up :-)

Neutral:
I have mixed feelings about this next one because it hasn't happened yet.  On the 27th, we will go in to the specialist for the scan to see why Baby Girl was measuring so small.  I've been really hungry this week, so I hope she was just a little behind and will have caught up by then.  Andy can't get the day off to go with me, so my amazing Mom is coming down so I don't have to go alone.  I'm not really worried, I just don't like having to wait so long to find out.  Luckily, a doctor should actually perform the scan and be able to tell us something right away, so that cuts down on the waiting quite a bit.  Anyway, just please keep us in your prayers this week for good reports, calm nerves, and a cooperative baby!  

(Also, I told Andy that we need to agree on a name for her before I go in for this appointment, so hopefully that announcement should be coming very soon as well!)

It's A...

First of all, here's how the votes broke down, including those who voted in real life instead of online:
Boy - 5, Girl - 12.  And the winner is??



. . . . . .

GIRL!  

Yep, that's right, we're having a baby girl!  We could not be more thrilled.  We haven't decided on a name yet, so for right now Baby Girl will have to do.  That still feels a lot better than 'he or she'!

I did actually drink all 48 ounces of fluid that I was supposed to, which the ultrasound tech was very impressed by.  I also did NOT pee my pants, which I was very impressed by!  I really almost didn't make it though.  I did go to the bathroom before we left home (shhhh don't tell) and I was in pain by the time I got up on the table!  Luckily, she only scanned for a few minutes before letting me go, and watching the monitor really distracted me from it.  My instructions specified 'non-carbonated' fluids, but I guess I should have gone with all water.  I had a 1/2 cup of coffee (which is less than the Dr. said I am allowed per day) and an entire bottle of vitamin water along with two more bottles of regular water.  Baby Girl was SUPER wiggly and energetic and hard to get good pictures of.  OOPS!  Maybe they should specify to keep the sugar low?  Anyway, chances are she would have been that wiggly anyway.  Seeing that made me feel SO much better about not feeling much just yet.  I have been feeling more and more, but I definitely was not feeling all of those flips!

She also is apparently a little camera shy.  She would not take her hands away from her face for a legitimate profile picture.  I still think the pictures turned out SUPER cute, but the tech wasn't quite satisfied with any of them for the purpose of seeing just the profile.  So, I guess there's a chance we'll have to go back in and have another one done.  I'm not complaining about getting to see her again!  Except that it kind of hurt.  The tech had to be kind of rough with me in order to get Baby Girl into the positions she needed.  She rolled me around, jiggled my belly, everything.  Afterward, my back hurt pretty back and I figure she had nudged Baby into my kidney at some point.  Ouch.  I feel all better now, though :-)

The last thing we noticed about Baby Girl is that she kept fidgeting with her umbilical cord.  Not joking.  While her hands were up by her face, she had ahold of it and was tugging and playing and pretty much just fidgeting with it.  Hmmmm.  I suppose she really must be my child - I've always got to have something for my hands to be doing!

As far as determining her health, we didn't get very far on that front.  Between the tech and the machine, we could tell that she has all of her facial features, both arms, both legs, a nice round head, and fingers and toes. Also, she weighs right around 11 ounces, which is average.  However.  The doctor that I was supposed to see afterward to read the scan and talk to me about her health had been called away to an emergency surgery, so I saw a Nurse Practitioner instead.  She was great, but didn't have the qualifications to read the scan, so we will have to wait to hear about her health.  They will have one of the doctors look over it sometime in the next week or so and then if there are any pressing problems or they need it to be redone because the pictures weren't good enough, they will call me back in for another one.  This was the conversation I was most anxious about having (I didn't really sleep last night) and we didn't get to have it.  But I still feel so much better now that I've seen her.  Of course we won't know anything for sure until I see the Dr. next in October, but I can stop worrying about some of the major medical concerns that were crossing my mind.

Ahhhh!  Ok.  I'm still freaking out a little bit.  I really can't believe we're having a little girl!  Up until this week, I was very neutral.  I really didn't have a preference either way.  Then I woke up on Monday and for some reason thought, 'I really want a little girl.'  So I'm a little extra excited that I still get one, even though I made up my mind at the last minute!  Ok, here's some of the better pictures of my little Baby Girl . . .

Look!  I'm a girl!  She was really modest and made the tech work hard to get a shot of this particular area.  Good Girl!

Tiny little baby toes!

Laying on her side, waving hi to us!  Look at that cute little ear!  The line you can barely make out between her hands and her ear is her umbilical cord that she was fidgeting with.

This is a little hard to make out, but she's laying on her back and we're looking down on her.  She's got her legs crossed and is clearly giving a facepalm.  That's my girl!

The rest of the pictures look cute in person, but didn't scan very well.  I was a little disappointed that we got regular printouts instead of a disc of digital images, but whatever.  I'm not about to complain!  We got to take home 11 different pictures of her, so I'm very satisfied with that!  And that's all for today!  Stay tuned for updates on Little Miss McD!


UPDATE:  Just got a call from the Dr.  They looked at the scan and noticed she is measuring pretty small.  She's all put together right, so there's no genetic abnormalities to be worried about, she's just small.  So they're referring me to get another scan done by an office that specializes in high risk pregnancies to figure out why.  I think that it's just because I'm pretty petite and she takes after her momma, but that's my opinion. He said it's either that or our dates are off and I'm not as far along as we thought.  There is also a slight chance that the placenta isn't delivering nutrients like it should and that's why she's not growing well.  He said not to worry about anything at this point and just to wait and see what the other office says.  They will call tomorrow and set up an appointment for me.  Guess we'll get a second chance to see her after all!  Please keep all three of us in your prayers for an easy answer to these questions!

20 Weeks, A House Update, and A Guessing Game!

Today we have reached the halfway point!  20 weeks!  We definitely had a growth spurt this week.  I've been getting hungry roughly every two hours.  I feel huge!  Baby is supposedly the size of a banana, which means 10.2 ounces and 6.5 inches.  He or she is moving around a lot more (I'm 99% sure I feel it now!), which is great, but it also means wiggling right into my bladder or up into my stomach, giving me heartburn.  Oh, the heartburn.  Tums are my new best friend.  Some people have told me that means I'm going to have a hairy baby, but I dunno.  My mom apparently had a lot of heartburn with my sister and I don't remember her coming out particularly hairy.  I mean, she had hair, but she wasn't furry or anything!  Leg cramps have been plaguing me at night too, which, along with the heartburn and continuing crazy dreams, mean that I haven't been sleeping very well.  Not cool when it comes to being coherent for work!  Hopefully not too much more of that (work) though, before I can leave and concentrate on the studio and the baby and getting into the new house!

Speaking of the new house, we heard from our Realtor this week!  Here's the background situation, in case you don't already know.  We found a house and I fell in love with it.  Andy took a little more time (he was hesitant about the pool, of all things), but after we found out about the baby, he was on board with it too.  We put in an offer in June and it was accepted by the sellers right away.  We signed the paperwork on June 25th.  Typically, we'd be homeowners by now.  However, the sellers have gone bankrupt, so the house is tied up in Bankruptcy as one of their assets.  So, it had to be released from Bankruptcy court before we could do anything with it, which we were told would take around 30 days.  THEN, the house is in short sale, which means that the bank is letting the owners sell it for less than they owe so that everyone can get out from under it before a foreclosure has to go through.  These particular owners had also taken out a second mortgage at some point, which means that both banks have to approve of the sale price and the loss they'd be taking on the house.  That can take anywhere from 60 days to 6 or 7 months after the Bankruptcy release.  So, we have absolutely no idea when we are going to get into our house.  In theory, this works out ok for us because we're currently renting right now with no lease, so we can stay as long as we need and then leave whenever we get the house with no penalties or anything.  But there is a slight chance that all this could drag out beyond January, when Baby is due to arrive.  So there's a lot of stress there.  We could either be here with no room for the baby, or at any time get a call saying we've got the house and have 30 days to get all the paperwork and inspections done and move in.  That's a lot of pressure every time the phone rings.

So we got an email from our Realtor the other day.  She said that the listing agent has gotten verbal acceptance from the bank holding the second mortgage!  Our offer was enough to cover the entire debt to the first bank, so they aren't an issue.  However.  There is a surprise FOURTH party that no one (not even the listing agent) knew about until this week.  The second bank had sold their portion of the mortgage to an investor at some point.  So now we have to wait for written approval from them too.  The bad news is that we don't know who this investor is, so there's no way to tell how long it could take.  The good news is, out of 4 parties needing to approve our offer, we are down to the last one.  It's still crazy stressful.  Every week that passes with Baby's development, I worry that we won't make it into the new house in time to get the nursery ready for him or her.  I just have to keep reminding myself that God allowed all this to fall into place like this on purpose.  We wouldn't have gotten pregnant or gotten the house if it wasn't going to fall together ok.  That's a tough thing to remember, but I'm trying :-)

So, that was the house update!  Now, onto the guessing game.  Andy and I decided long before we even thought about getting pregnant, that when the time came, we wanted to find out the sex of the baby.  We're going to have that opportunity on Thursday!  We go in early on Thursday morning for the Anatomy Scan, commonly referred to as the ultrasound.  We'll (hopefully) get to find out boy or girl, but also learn all about how our baby is developing.  This is good, but also a little nerve wracking.  If there's a physical or developmental problem, this is when we'll find out.  So I'm a little anxious going into it, but holding on to the exciting part about finding out more about who will be joining our lives in January.  In the spirit of friendly competition, let's open up the debate!  You tell me: will it be a boy or a girl??  There are a lot of ways that people say they can tell, so I'm going to try to give you the answers to all the wives' tale questions . . . 

Heart Rate:  160 both times we've listened in.
Craving:  Sweet things like fruity candies (not chocolate at all) and also some salty things like chips and pretzels, but mostly pizza and pizza-type foods (garlic bread, pizza rolls, etc.)
Heartburn:  Yes.  Definitely.
Carrying High or Low:  I don't know.  The baby feels to be sitting pretty low, but when I look at my belly, the widest part seems to be smack dab in the middle.  Well, you tell me.  Here's the 360 view of my baby belly at 20 weeks, including a backside shot for if you are like my coworker Jackie who swears that you can tell by looking from behind . . . 

There you have it!  That's all the information I can think to provide you with.  If there's anything I missed, let me know.  So, what do you think?  Am I cookin' a boy or a girl in my oven??