Dr. Appt

18 weeks...

So I haven't been able to figure out the video so you will just have to come over to watch it.

We went to the doctor this morning for our "big" ultrasound. They confirmed it was a girl and all looks wonderful!

Rob and I were both amazed at how much she has grown since our last pictures. She is still a little peanut weighing in at about 8oz.

4d Ultrasound

More stories and videos to follow...For now here are some pics of the 4d ultrasound we had on August 7, 2009. Rob and my parents were all there for our wonderful 45 minute session.

Squirming Around...

She was playing with her ears..

Here is our little one covering her face...

August 7, 2009- 4d Ultrasound Update

I have looked over this post a few times and I really don't know what to write. I am a little stumped but I know I have some anxious readers. So here is what you get for pressuring me to write this and post it quickly...

The day we have been anticipating arrived but our little one apparently had the wrong date marked on her calendar because she did not want to reveal herself to us. She made sure to be very polite and keep her legs crossed.





Friday, August 7, 2009, Rob and I hopped into my parent's car and headed off to St. Pete for our appointment. The room had a very calming atmosphere with the lights dimmed and music playing softly behind the small sectional couch. Everyone sat down and I had the honor of being perched on the tall examining chair where we all had a view of a large flat panel television which displayed the beautiful images. At first, the little one had a terrible case of the hiccups, her entire little body leaped with every one. After settling down, she showed us how she loves to play with her ears and rub her face. Eventually, my orange juice kicked in and she decided she was going to kick and kick! You know she is going to make an excellent soccer player! After all the warnings we received prior to the ultrasound about the baby looking like an alien and being able to see all her bones, we were very surprised to see she was a little chunker. She had a small amount of meat on her bones with a little pooch for a belly. It was a wonderful 45 minutes! Although, she insisted on her legs being crossed the entire time! Thankfully, the ultrasound tech offered for us to come back in a week and get another view to make sure her guess of "girl" was correct. We are all thinking pink and looking forward to this Friday, August 14 to see if she reveals herself for at least a brief moment.

Doctor Visit

My routine 2nd trimester visit was today. It was a brief visit but I was excited to hear the heartbeat again. The last few visits have been with a certified nurse midwife which I thought I would enjoy more than a doctor for a number of reasons including the thought of a closer relationship than a doctor would offer. Today I opted to visit with the doctor and was pleasantly surprised. She was warm, caring, listened to all my concerns and even took the time to describe everything she was doing and I should be doing during the pregnancy. I have made my decision to try and stick with her through the rest of my appointments and ideally she will deliver the baby. It will be hard to truly choose who will deliver since it is a large practice and it will all depend on who is on-call that day. Well back to the actual appointment, she used a doppler to find the baby's beautiful heartbeat. My heart wanted to steal the show and cover-up the baby's heartbeat but the baby eventually won and it was about 138 bpm. The doctor also released me back to lifting weights at the gym. (I immediately text my trainer when I left and said he needs to tone up my flabby legs and floppy arms!) She was also satisfied with my weight gain and even offered me the ability to gain a little more. I believe I will still continue on my path of healthy eating with the occasional sweets for right now. I figure I will make up for it once the third trimester kicks in!

I also opted to take the second round of genetic testing at my next appointment since it will just include a more detailed ultrasound and some more blood work. My next appointment will be August 24 but that is truly an eternity when it comes to determining the gender so we have decided to have the 4d ultrasound this Friday! We have invited our parents to come enjoy the experience with us and we all are very excited. I am going to take votes before the ultrasound to see what everyone will guess: girl or boy?!

Girl or boy we know they will be a little soccer player. Last Thursday, July 30, 2009, I was sitting at work and felt a thump. Instinct made me immediately look down at my belly and think, woah, was that a kick?! A sat very still in hopes of feeling it again but apparently he/she was playing shy. Later that evening I was lying on the couch and Zoe cuddled up to my belly right near the baby and sure enough there was that thump again. It was amazing! Feeling him/her this early makes me sure they will be the next Mia Hamm or Landon Donovan!

Bedtime Memories

Bedtime has always been a source of adventure for my mind. Growing up my sister was forced to share a bedroom with the little sister she always wanted. I think it really was an excuse to torture someone younger. Being the younger sister, I received the short end of the stick when it came time for deciding who gets the much more awesome, bug free, top bunk. There never really were spiders but every night at bedtime my sister would instill in my young mind that there were millions of spiders on the bottom bunk that were going to get me. When I asked to come up to the top bunk for my safety, I was quickly denied. Over and over again. Karma came back and bit her, literally. While I laid awake fearing for my life from the 8 legged creatures, she would be fast asleep and within no time her little arm would flop over the rail and be dangling there for me to welcome with my sharp young teeth. It was my only defense to the spider talking bully.

The best memory from bedtime will always be my Dad's stories. I had a massive book of every "once upon a time" story you could ever dream of and every night my dad would read me the story of my choice while adding all the best character voices. (If I was really lucky I would get two bedtime stories!) I cannot wait for our little one to get to the point where I can share the same tradition with him/her.

While on the topic of bedtime and "him/her" I must share one of the interesting additions to pregnancy: vivid dreams. Prior to the pregnancy I always considered myself as having insane dreams and wondering where in the world my mind can come up with such nonsense but I was wrong. Nothing compares to pregnancy dreams, nothing. The dreams are mostly so unbelievably bizarre that I refuse to share them for the thought someone will lock me in a mental facility. Lately there have been a number of dreams based on determining the gender of the baby, which we all know is constantly on my mind. The latest craziness involved me having a baby girl and to really show off her feminine side she had 4 whoo-haas. Yes, 4. 1 in the normal location, 2 on the left leg and 1 on the right leg. I agree it still was insane but it makes me really wonder if that is my brain trying to tell me it is a little girl or just playing tricks to make me think it is a girl so at the ultrasound it could reveal itself as a little boy. We truly cannot wait for an answer to the gender question!

Snickers Cravings

According to all doctors, internet websites, and my fancy calculator I am officially in the second trimester. I was really expecting over sized shiny balloons to fall from the ceiling and a burst of confetti but I settled for the satisfaction of knowing I made it through 1/3 of the pregnancy. As I was searching through the various websites and discovering all the new and exciting message boards I realized something unique. So far I have not had any cravings, strange or normal. I was totally looking forward to sending my husband out at a crazy hour in the morning to fetch me some off the wall concoction that most people would turn green over. Granted, I understand it is still early on but it seems everyone else has already experienced this craziness. Maybe I am the lucky one that really has no desire for this amount of craziness. I know it is something my family has been waiting for since I was about 6 years old. Now you are curious why my insane family would be waiting for such an odd memo for over 20 years.

When I was 6ish I would have these unbelievable cravings for a Snickers candy bar. I would wake up from a dead sleep, go up to my father, and it the cutest most adorable face I could muster up would say "Daddy, I want a Snickers". It was as if I was waving a magic wand that put my father in a trance and he would race around town to find any store open at that hour and buy his little girl a snickers. This of course frustrated all my older siblings and my mother but they just hadn't mastered the cute voice, eyelash batting, and the art of sticking out the bottom lip to win over a daddy's heart like I had. These Snickers cravings happened very often and they were more like a pregnancy craving, I HAD to have one. The type of candy never changed, it was always, always a Snickers. After a while of sending my Daddy out in the middle of the night, he tried to get smart and buy them and bulk and store them in the house. I would sniff them out like a hound dog. I remember his two favorite hiding spots: the top shelf of the pantry where most little girls would never reach and the second drawer in his dresser where he kept his undershirts. I don't remember when I finally grew out of the cravings but I know it continued for well past a year.

After Rob and I told my parents we were expecting we were sitting around the table chatting about various things when my father burst into a loud belly laugh. We all looked at him like he was insane until he finally caught his breath for a moment to say to Rob, "good luck". He finally clarified his wishes by adding good luck with the cravings as he had remembered the Snickers from my childhood. In preparation for this, Rob thought he would out-smart me and purchase a box of fun size snickers ice cream bars. Although I did enjoy a few, I must say Rob ate the majority of them. Now that they are gone, I have no thoughts of them returning. Mainly after seeing the lack of nutrition they can provide. They do contain protein!

A long awaited post...

Oh look, it's another overdue update. I will try and wrap this up pretty quickly seeing as though my fingers no longer want to type updates anymore. Jeez, you would think I was trying to take care of a million kids.

Monday, July 13, Rob and I woke up nice and early to eagerly go to our appointment at TGH for our nuchal screening test. This is the ultrasound that focuses on the back of the neck and other physical features of the baby to see the risk of downs. I was a little hesitant to go to the appointment after reading more about the high risk of a false positive. (In this case, a positive refers to the high risk of ds.) We checked in and before my bum could reach the soft coushin of the waiting room chair they had called us back. With a quick squirt of the warm jelly for the ultrasound and we were off. I swear the tech's main purpose was to push all of the jelly-like goo into my belly button so the rest of the day I would feel like my belly button was leaking. Don't worry, my belly button does not leak...I hope. Anywhoodle....as the tech is performing the ultrasound we are getting some really great pics of the little one. In order for the tech to get a good measurement she must make the baby jump which she does so by hitting the ultrasound wand against the pile of goo which splatters across my belly. Of course, I did not mind seeing as I was highly entertained by watching the baby. As she was nearing the end of the test, I asked if she would be so kind to look a little further south. She willingly looked and received a great view of what appears to be a GIRL! Ok, so she was only about 75%-80% sure but it was still a glimmer of hope that we may know the sex of the baby! After the u/s we spoke with the high risk doctor who stated the baby is looking great and it does not look like there is a risk of ds. What a great day! She was so pleased with the progress of everything that she cancelled my appointment for the following week and put me back down as a regular patient and no longer high risk. (I was only high risk for one appointment.) After a quick poke for some bloodwork we were on our way. Here is one of our pictures from this visit. Yes, Rob pointed out she is smoking but I am choosing to ignore that. Once you see it you will not be able to ignore it either. Oh, and for the record I am taking that 75-80 percent chance of it being a girl and refering to the baby as a her from now on. Rob seems to disagree with this decision but that's his choice. His reasoning is what if it turns out to be a boy and we called it a girl this whole time. I tried explaining she will never know but he does not want to jump on the train.

Since that appointment, I finished up my Summer semester of classes and I am officially on summer break! Yesss! My Mom and I also hit up the outlets for some shopping. We went with the mindset that we will buy neutrals. WRONG! Besides the fact that the stores do not sell neutral anymore, we went slightly pink crazy. The sales were amazing and we couldn't pass it up! So we are really hoping this little bundle turns out to be a girl!

I found a coupon for a 4d ultrasound so I set up an appointment for August 7. I hope they will have a good view and tell us for sure if our little one will be a girl or boy. The waiting is awful! I also have another appointment at the doctor on August 4 for just a check up and my 2nd trimester bloodwork and then August 24 will be the big ultrasound at the doctor to determine, once again, the sex and count all fingers toes, etc..

The name debate still continues on and still continues to go nowhere. I think we are both pretty set on Hailey but cannot figure out the perfect middle name. Some of the contenders for middle names are Jayde, Rose (the only problem with Rose is the fact that if you say Hailey Rose Smith the "se" in Rose tends to slur with the "S" in Smith. Minor, I know but it is still an issue.) There are a million other names that sound nice with Hailey but just don't fit exactly to this baby. Hmm...Maybe we will focus a little harder once we know for sure the sex so we can really know if this will be the name. Maybe. Ok, that's all you get for today.