27 Weeks and a Head Cold

So I've had a decently nasty cold for the past week, which makes me not want to do much of anything, let alone write about not doing much of anything.  But I figured I owed you an update, so here it is!

On Saturday, we reached 27 weeks!  I can't believe I'm in the last week of my second trimester!  Ellie is having frequent parties in my belly and has even started playing tag with Daddy.  He pushes on my belly and she kicks back.  It's pretty funny.  For them.  The internet tells me that she is practicing breathing her amniotic fluid (sounds icky to me, but it's good to practice, I suppose!) and showing more and more brain activity!  And I'm getting bigger too!  Yesterday, I had to have Andy tie my shoes for me to go to work because I just couldn't reach them well enough.  Granted, I had just had a really big lunch, but still.  I will be done with work in just 2 more weeks and then good-bye shoelaces!  Slip-ons from here on out!  I promise I will get an updated belly picture to you here soon, it's just been hard with our crazy schedules.

Speaking of crazy schedules, here's a sample of what we've been up to this past week:
Monday: Andy work 7-4:15; Heather work 5-10.
Tuesday: Andy work 7-4:15; Heather work 10-3, quick dinner, clean house, teach lesson.
Wednesday: Andy work 7-4:15, dentist appointment at 5:15, quick stop home for dinner, church council meeting at 7; Heather work 9-2, make and eat dinner, choir practice at 6, pack a little once home.
Thursday: Up early for ultrasound at the specialist; Andy work afterwards until 4:15; Heather run errands while in town, make dinner, clean house, teach lessons, eat dinner, teach more lessons, sort and start laundry
Friday: Andy off work; meeting with the insurance agent to sign papers for the homeowners insurance, grocery shopping, pack and do more paperwork for the rest of the afternoon, more laundry, dinner; Heather work 5-10.
Saturday: Fall Fest all day at our favorite Christian Summer Camp and Retreat Center (where we met and got married).  Home to collapse after a long day.
Sunday: Sunday School and Church, Bells practice for Heather, lunch with Andy's dad and a friend of his, home to change clothes, Heather work 3-7, dinner, more laundry and packing.

And that brings us up to the present!  Hopefully this week will be a little less hectic, although I can't be sure.  I have a dentist appointment on Wednesday and work here and there throughout the week.  I can't wait until I'm done with work and then will have 20 more hours a week to spend on things like packing and getting ready for the new house!

Speaking of the new house, only one more thing has to happen in order for us to reach settlement on the 8th.  And it's completely out of our hands.  If this last ball gets dropped, the whole thing will fall apart, and we don't even know the name of the person whose responsibility it is.  I'm just trying not to think about it too much, because the possibility just stresses me out too much.

Our ultrasound on Thursday went well, I guess.  It didn't take nearly as long as the last one and consequently wasn't nearly as painful!  That's always a plus!  The ending conversation with the doctor was almost identical, though.  She's still only in the 7th percentile and he's still concerned about why that is.  She looks great developmentally.  Bloodflow to everywhere is great, her organ development and placement is great, heart looks great, everything is great.  Even her short femurs (leg bones) caught up!  I had to specifically ask about it because he didn't bring it up, but he said that the last measurement was in the 3rd percentile and now they're in the 28th!  So that was a bit of good news for the day.  Maybe if her legs can catch up, the rest of her can too?!  But for now, we are getting some blood work done (on me) to see if I am carrying any kind of an infection that could have spread to her very early on and caused this stunted growth.  If it comes back positive, then we will pretty much have to do an amniocentesis at 32 weeks to find out if it did actually pass to her.  I don't want to have one done.  I really don't.  But if the doctor says it's necessary, then we will do it.

The most discouraging part of the day was when he told us that whatever we find out will pretty much just be for the sake of knowledge and preparation.  At this point, nothing that they find will have a solution.  She has no physically deformities (which would at least be fixable to a certain extent), so everything else is either a viral infection (no cure for viruses) or a chromosomal abnormality (no cure for that, outside of science fiction).   So anyway, it wasn't a bad visit because there was no bad news, but I don't feel like calling it a good visit either because I didn't feel good when we left.  I'm just getting to the point where I either want an answer or to be left alone.  13 more weeks of this and then I will have her in my arms, good or bad.  That's what I'm going to focus on right now and realize that, as frustrating as they can be, the doctors really do have our best interests in mind.  God's already got her life all planned out and He'll give me the strength to deal with whatever is involved in it.  If you didn't know this already, my absolute favorite book of the Bible is James.  He's got so much good stuff, minus any sugar-coating, packed into such a few short chapters.  For example:

I think that's what I need to be focusing on in the coming weeks and months.  Building endurance.  The specialist wants to see me again for another ultrasound on November 1st (I have my glucola test at the regular OB on the 31st of this month and then go back on the 1st for my first Rhogam shot.  Another busy week.) and then has warned us that he will probably want me to come in weekly after that to be hooked up to the fetal monitor to make sure that there is no need to take her early.  Combined with the bi-weekly OB visits that come in the second trimester, plus once a week birthing classes starting in November that will certainly prepare us for any possible problems that may arise during the birth process, our endurance will be growing in abundance.  And I will, with God's grace, consider it an opportunity for joy.

25 Weeks and Other Updates

So much has been going on that needs sharing!  First up, we have picked a name!  We debated for (what felt like) a long time before finally deciding on the one that I had picked out from the beginning.  I keep trying to tell Andy that he should just go with whatever I want because he almost always ends up deciding it's what he wants too.  Happened with the house, the name, and too many other situations to even count!  Anyway, our baby girl will be named . . .

We wanted something that would carry some meaning for us, so this name was selected with great care.  Elaina comes from my mother's mother's name, which was Elaine (well, it was her middle name, but it's what she went by).  She passed away when I was 3 or 4, I don't remember which, but old enough that I remember it happening.  Joyce was Andy's mother's name.  She passed away when he was in high school - I never got to meet her.  Aside from being a beautiful name (in our opinion!), we thought it was a great way to remember and honor two wonderful women who are no longer physically in our lives.  I have taken to calling her Ellie for short :-) 

So, little Ellie is 25 weeks cooked now!  She's still very active, which the doctor says is a good thing.  At this stage of development, she is putting on more fat (gotta stay warm!) and growing some hair!  Not much else to report on the development front.

We had our 24 week check-up with the OB last Thursday.  They said I look great!  Ellie loves playing hide and seek, even from the nurse just checking her heart rate.  She would find it for a second and then you'd hear a loud thump (I can personally verify it was the sound of a good swift kick) and then she'd be in a different place and the nurse would have to find her again.  After a few minutes (and lots of laughter) we got a reading of 150.  The doctor looked at my blood pressure and said it was even better than his, so I took that as a good sign, haha!  Oh, by the way, his name was Dr. Sheppard.  Yes, that's right ladies, I got to see Dr. Sheppard at this appointment.  Ok, so this Dr. was quite a bit older and much less 'McDreamy' than the one from TV, but it still made me giggle.  He measured my bump and said I was measuring right on, so that's encouraging, and I've gained another two pounds since week 20, so hopefully Ellie's growing quite nicely in there too.  We will find out on the 18th when we go for our next ultrasound at the specialist! 

In housing news . . . on Tuesday of last week, we were able to have our home inspection!  The inspector found a few little things that need fixing, but nothing that the combined handyman powers of Andy, his dad, and my dad can't fix!  So that's quite a relief.  I was only able to be there for a tiny portion of the inspection because I had to go to work, but I was able to walk through the whole house and take note of it's general condition.  The owner's had already moved out and they had CLEANED before they left!  I wasn't sure what to expect because our Realtor had warned us that anything can happen when people are in a situation where they are 'losing' their house.  It actually was left in really good shape for us!  They even had left the lawn mower and everything there and are still keeping up with taking care of the lawn in the meantime.  I (with the help of my mom, of course) will still go through and give everything a thorough scrubbing before moving in, but it was very nice to see that they had taken such good care of it for us.  All of this is happening now because . . .

Our settlement is scheduled for November 9th!  We will take the week after that to clean and paint and fix those little things (and finish packing, haha!) and then move the following weekend.  This is exciting on the one hand, and really a bummer on the other.  Now I actually have to pack.  That's really hard to do when you're only moving 5 minutes away.  Some things (like most of the kitchen) will just get thrown in laundry baskets and taken over by the car load to get put away immediately, but a LOT of the rest of the house really does need packed up into boxes so it is contained and doesn't have to have a 'home' right away.  I hate packing.  And I think I'm starting to nest, so it really goes against ALL of my instincts to be putting things IN boxes right now.  Andy's doing a lot of the work, which is very helpful, but it still makes me cranky to even think about having to do it.  It's one of those necessary evils, I suppose.  I'm trying to keep my spirits up by picking paint colors and planning room layouts and all that.

We just got an email from our Realtor saying that the seller would be willing to meet with us to show us how the downstairs gas fireplace works (something even the inspector couldn't figure out!) and also all the swimming pool information.  We're going to do it, because how else will we ever know?!  However, I am a little nervous that it will be awkward to meet with them.  They are, after all, losing their house to a couple of kids (that's what we look like, anyway!) that are barely older than their own.  We're going to have to see them at the settlement anyway, so it's only awkward because they'll be teaching us how to use their house.  Oddly enough, I had a dream about this very thing a few months ago.  They were nice about everything in my dream, so let's hope that turns out to be true :-) 

I don't have any new baby pictures for you this time, so as a consolation prize, here's a picture of our soon-to-be house, taken when we had our first walk-through all the way back in May.  I was convinced enough at that point to take pictures, it's just taken a little bit longer for the rest of the universe to agree with me :-) 

Home, Sweet Home.  Well, soon anyway!