Third Trimester....Whooooohoooo!!!

I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated on our progress. I knew I had been slacking, but didn't know how bad. I apologize!!!!! Please forgive me. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

We have officially made it to the third trimester and I am so excited that we made it to this milestone. If she had to come early, I'm feeling ok about it. Obviously, I hope she stays in there for the time being and we make it to 38-40 weeks until she gets her eviction notice. (Dear Baby Girl....I'm good with you arriving around March 15. You don't have to wait until March 28th.)

Let's see, what's new....my last doctor appointment was almost two weeks ago by now, just after my last blog entry. Official weight gain at 25 W 3 D was 17 pounds. My biggest complaint is this pain in my left rib. I hate it. Doc says I'm pretty much S.O.L. until she comes. :-( There's nothing to do for it. She said that I can't take any muscle relaxers or use any of the sports cremes for muscle pain because they are aspirin based. It pretty much hurts when sitting. Walking or standing helps, but then I get tired of being on my feet. Sleeping is good too, but sometimes still uncomfortable. It gives me a good hour or so in the morning before the pain comes back.

Thankfully, I'm not having any swelling anywhere yet. Breathing is starting to get hard. There's just no room here already. Sleeping is hit or miss. I have good nights and bad--bad is where I have slight panic attacks in the middle of the night. The latest one was that she doesn't have enough clothes yet and what if she comes before my shower and we're not ready??? My mind starts racing and it makes me want to get out of bed and take some kind of action to make myself feel better. Usually though there's been nothing I can do at that very moment other than try to clear my head and fall back asleep.

We had a full 3d/4d ultrasound the Friday before Christmas. There was a place running a "Holiday Special" on one of their packages. We ended up sticking one of the pictures in a frame and giving to the grandparents as one of their presents. We managed to keep the u/s a secret so we could surprise them with the picture. I was a little disappointed as she wasn't very cooperative. She had been very active all morning and wouldn't you know, just as soon as I got there, she chilled out. She was breech and hanging out on the right side of my ute. I could tell that morning before I got there, my stomach was very lopsided and funny looking.

She did keep trying to show us her feet, showing Justin that she takes after me already--that she is ready for cute shoes. "Shoes in this size please guys. Thx." She also kept pointing to her ears. (Ummmm I wasn't planning on piercing those for you dear. Not for awhile. You'll have to wait on those diamonds. But hit daddy up for the both of us, will ya?)

Here's the photo we gave the grandparents:


Here are a couple more:

I actually had an ultrasound today to look at her kidney again. These pictures aren't as good and I'm too lazy to get them scanned in. She looked about the same, but sort of grumpy....like it was too early to be taking her photo? Anyway, the kidney was still a bit dilated, but they said the good news is that is isn't getting worse. So, next step is simply to come back in another six weeks to measure again. She was measuring 2 lbs, 7 oz....which is surprising to me. The tech said that was normal, to me that sounds big considering 7 weeks ago she was only 12 oz. But its good she's putting on weight and it's not just me.

And, what you've all been waiting for......me! Haha.

(27 weeks, 1 day)
Clothes on:

My super sexy (not) maternity jeans:


And ba-boom...full nekkid belly:



I thankfully have the week off of work and would love to work on the nursery....however my freaking bedding isn't here yet. I give it until the end of January and then I'm going with plan B. I hopefully will be able to get the closet dividers and mobile made and I'll post pics once I've gotten them done or far enough.

It's a..................

GIRL!!!!!!!!

We were right all along and my stupid recent dream meant nothing except to throw me for a loop. Justin never wavered.

Everything looked good, she's already after her daddy's heart by weighing a "perfect" 12 oz....daddy's favorite measurement as he so proudly proclaimed in the room when the tech said that. (Be jealous, he's alllll mine.)

I'm going to try to explain this clearly, I forget some of the terms they used, but the short answer is that I/we shouldn't worry too much about it. The one "concern" they have is that her right kidney appears to be a little more dilated than the other, so if she's working on kidney issues, she's taking after me. :-( They weren't too concerned, the range for a minor concern they said was this certain measurement being between 5 and 10 and hers was 6. Usually it clears up before the baby is born, but they like to keep an eye on it in the event they need to notify the pedi.

He said at the worst case, it will clear up by the time she's two and may have to be on some antibiotics after she's born to avoid any UTIs. That is more rare though. But....he said this is very common, he sees this about once a week and usually will clear up before she gets here. The bright side is that I have another u/s in 7 weeks--just after Christmas to see if anything has changed. We'll get to get another peek at her.

So I'm going to take his word for it and try not to worry. It's a relief to just know what we've got going on in there and very exciting to finally say one way or the other!

We went to Babies R Us to look at girl stuff (since we can now!) and I found some cuuuute outfits. I'm loving Carter's these days, they have a bunch of panda stuff!!! I'll have to post pics later of some of the cute stuff I snagged.

We also went out to dinner to celebrate--which we would have done either way. Justin is "over the moon" excited and thrilled to have a little girl on the way. He confessed (at least this is what he says) that a girl was what he wanted all along. I could have cared less, really, a healthy baby is all I asked for. I'm just happy he's happy. I might have to complain about him one of these days, but the past few weeks he has been wonderful. The first few weeks were rough when I was tired all the time without any "proof", but now that its becoming more real for him and he's seeing the evidence, he's heard the heartbeat, he's seen the baby a few times--he's been wonderful. 99% of the time, he's been so considerate the past few weeks and I am certainly enjoying this Justin.

Anyway, hooray for little girls!!! Now to decorate the nursery and decide on a name!

I'm disappointed we didn't get very good pics this time, except a couple 4Ds of her face. Here she is!

Ultrasound Results

Yesterday, I had my very first pregnancy ultrasound! There is a sac in the uterus, not in my tube!! I was beyond thrilled. My beta level rose to 7930 as well.

I was a little nervous when they didn't use the vag cam, but I guess we were just looking for a sac and weren't trying to date anything or see a heartbeat, they felt that the "normal" gizmo would work. I was surprised that it did, but the tech spotted the sac right away, right where it should be.

The one unsettling thing is that the sac was only measuring 4 and a half weeks. Based on my LMP, I thought I was more close to 5 and a half weeks. So great, they think I'm due a week later than what I thought, so maybe another week of 1st Tri! I guess I shouldn't worry about it if my levels are rising normally. At least, I try not to. I hope that maybe its just so small and they didn't get a good enough reading because they didn't use the vag cam. The ultrasound doctor wants to see me back August 12 to try to date the pregnancy then. It's a little frustrating to not have a due date, but I just hope the little one is growing and growing as well as can be expected. I don't think its possible that I didn't ovulate until the 10-15th, I just don't.

They want me to have another beta in the morning before we leave for Roatan on Sunday just for added reassurance. I've been a little nervous about the trip, but now that I know I shouldn't have a bursting tube, I've been feeling a lot better. I'm also nervous that because they wanted another beta, that they feel something might be wrong and aren't telling me. I would hope they'd prepare me for the worst. I've never known anyone to get four betas before. Maybe they are just taking me seriously like I wanted them to when I first called about the BFP.

I feel like time is crawling. I'm trying not to be stressed and trying to think very positive thoughts. I just want to be sure that this is going to be our miracle that we've waited for--I never imagined it would be so nervewracking. My symptoms seem to come and go. I get nauseous from time to time, things don't taste like I think they should, but no real morning sickness or food aversions yet. My boobs are extremely sore and I still have heartburn, so I'm going to celebrate that things still seem fine. :-) And the peeing! It's like my bladder shrank in the past week. It's possibly because that I'm so thirsty I'm drinking so much water, but man, that came on immediately.

I don't care. I'll take it. I am pregnant until someone tells me otherwise, but I hope this little baby is nice and comfy in there. So far, so good!

(Gosh it seems so surreal to say. I don't know that its sunk in yet. It's starting to, but still sounds crazy.)

There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.-- Orison Marden.