To the doc again...

So this time it was just fine. Really nothing to report. Daniel made me ask him about going to the Backstreet Boys concert because he was a bit concerned haha. But the doctor said it would be just fine. He suggested maybe going to someone other than the BSB, but if the BSB is my pick then it would be fine.
Starting this appointment I'm going to be seen every two weeks. Oh that was really strange to realize I'm that close already! It seems like just a month ago I knew eventually I'll be starting every two weeks for visits, but it seemed like forever away. I don't know why or how this is going so fast for me, but it really is. Which I suppose is really nice. Hopefully it still goes fast for my last month... which is only in a month! Oh crazy.
So everything is going great. The baby's heart is getting louder and louder everytime we go in. Her movements are stronger and more often. It's fun... until she finds a spot that hits a nerve or something haha.
We bought a baby names book to help us decide on her name. We're having fun reading through it. We also started registering at Baby's R Us. We need to go somewhere else too to register.
It still really doesn't seem real. I don't know that reality has really hit me yet. I mean ya, I get that my stomach is growing, and there is some little person in there moving around like crazy, but it just seems like time is going by just like it always has... And then I get to the point of ...Oh, but I can't do this, and I can't do that right now. Then it seems real haha, but only for that moment.

Glucose screen test

So this appointment they told me ahead of time I will need to be there for at least an hour. So I planned for an hour off of work and went in. They had told me I'd be drinking a very sweet drink so that they could test my sugar levels and blood counts and such. It's a routine test once you reach about 28 weeks.
Well I go in, and they do the usual. Then they tell me to drink something. I take a big gulp and realize very quickly it's incredibly nasty! It tasted like over sugared, over syruped, under carbonated orange soda. I'm not a fan of soda or orange flavored things to begin with. So I decided to finish it quickly instead of slowly. So I take two more big gulps and I'm done. Then she tells me I can't eat or drink anything but a little bit of water for at least an hour. I can go do whatever as long as I'm back within an hour so that it has time to work through my system and they will be able to draw my blood.
I left, came home, then went back and they drew my blood. They told me that I would get all my results at my next appointment unless they found something wrong. It really wasn't all that bad, except that the nasty drink was nasty and made me want to throw up for the first time in months.
So I haven't heard anything from them yet. I'm guessing that's a good sign. I'll have to see what the doc says at my next appointment.

Welcome to the Third Tri!

So, here's 28 weeks, the beginning of the third tri! Crazy to think I'm that far along already. It seems like it has gone so fast, but at the same time it's taken forever. Oh my heck, she is going to be here in a little more than two months!! We still haven't officially decided on a name so we bought a baby name book to look through and see if there is one that really jumps out to us. It's a pretty fun book. It has the names' history, popularity, other spellings, etc. Plus we'll have it for future friends and family and ourselves when another baby is on the way.
So far the third tri has been not so kind as the second. Day one of officially being in the third tri, my back hurt like crazy, I had a bad headache, I was so tired... oh it was just not a fun day. And the week hasn't let up on me much. My back is starting to hurt more for (seemingly) no reason. But that is really the only bad thing. I keep telling myself... I will not complain, I will not complain. Hopefully I won't too much. I don't think it's good to start now, since I haven't yet, and I don't want to get into the habit of complaining about my little girl.
As of right now (writing this) she is about 15 inches long (head to toe) and weighs about 2 and a half pounds. Can you believe that fits in there!!! Sometimes I can't, and then I feel her move and I remember she really doesn't have that much room, even being all curled up in a ball.
There are times when she will just start moving like crazy and it just tickles. But it's so weird to watch my skin ripple almost all the way accross my belly. It's been fun to feel her more and more. It's also nice to know she's moving so much because that means she's doing well.
Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. If I think of more I'll put it in a different post. Thanks for reading!

24 weeks

Well I'm 24 weeks along now and constantly growing. I always feel hungry and want to eat. But I'm feeling pretty darn good. I'm not sick, I'm not tired, I'm not having too many aches or pains. So I'm thinking things are going pretty well.
We went to our doctors appointment a little more than a week ago and he said everything is going just like it should. We talked to him a little bit about the big day. I said I really would like to go as natual as possible, he said that is his philosophy too. So I'm glad we agree on that. Then he said if I want to do it that way then we should start thinking about taking some Lamaze classes. He said we could wait until the next visit to really start looking into that. I'll be 28 weeks by then so it will be perfect timing.
It's been pretty fun feeling her get more active. It's strange though too because it really does tickle! She still likes to hang out as low as she can possibly get, which sometimes hurts a little bit. It makes it awkward to sit sometimes. I just feel like I'm squishing her head or soemthing haha. My pants are getting tighter too. I'm still wearing my normal jeans and just doing the rubber band thing. I'm hoping I can make it all the way with my normal jeans and just not do them up. But since they are starting to get harder to sit in, we'll see how that goes.
OH!!! I found my old stethescope from forever ago when I was taking vet tech classes. I brought it home, and we tried listening to her with it. It was so fun! We could hear all sorts of movement. It mostly sounded like gurgling. But we can listen to her heartbeat with it too!!! Oh I love it! It is so cool. We've been listening almost every night for almost a week now. We are having a ton of fun with it.
Other than all that, there really isn't too much stuff that's new. Just that she's growing like crazy!

Funny stories

Alright, so everyone has those embarrasing moments, pregnant or not. I think in some ways being pregnant makes some of those embarrasing moments easier to come by. For one, the gas and/or constipation issues or extreme opposite of. For two, you tend to lose your mind easier. For three, the constant pressure on your bladder. There's so many more that you could find something embarrasing to laugh about, but I now have a story about the last one...
Just yesterday the Young Men group came by to help clean up and trim up my mom's backyard. We were so grateful for them coming by because my dad usually did all of the yard work and we just didn't even know where to start. Well, this little girl really likes to hang out as low as she can, so needless to say my bladder gets squished A LOT. So in all the fun of watching the boys cut branches and trim bushes there was a lot of irritants that came out of that and into the air. I almost felt like I was getting allergies. The stuffy/runny nose, my eyes were itching a bit. Then, it happened... I felt a sneeze coming on. I'll just say I have always loved sneezing. I think it feels so good. Lately with a stretching stomach it feels a little better to bend over ever so slightly to sneeze or cough. So I did that, I sneezed... and peed my pants!!!! LOL!! I couldn't believe it! It really wasn't that bad because I didn't have much to lose haha. But oh my heck! I was so shocked, embarrased, and upset. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. No one noticed anything, thank goodness. Except that since I'm sharing this anyway I don't think I'd really care if any one did.
So I told my mom after everyone had gone, and of course she laughed out loud. Then immediately said you need to work on Kegals! You should be able to stop midstream. I said, I DO and I CAN!!! That's why I was so surprised it happened! lol. I'm thinking from now on, I'll be more careful where I sneeze. Except today I did and I was just fine. It must have been a fluke moment for me or something.

Alright, so now that that one is over, here's a not so embarrasing story...
Daniel and I were up really late last night talking. Or at least late for us. It was around 12:30 that we finally fell asleep. She was moving around a little bit, about as much as I'm used to so far. Just a little bump here and there for a few minutes at a time, then she stops. Well around 11:00 she started moving a little bit more than what I'm used to. I knew she is a little bit of a night owl to begin with, but this was a little more than I've felt before. That may be just because I am usually asleep through it. So 11:30 rolls around and I lay down on one side and we're still talking. She starts kicking my side. I wasn't even leaning on my stomach in any way, it was seriously my side, like between my rib and hip. I've never felt her there before! It was the weirdest thing. So it actually got really distracting so I moved over to my other side so she would stop and we could still talk and not get interrupted. Well, she decided to kick the other side instead! I was like, seriously?? Usually if I move or switch like that she stops. She must have wanted in on the conversations too. So then she starts hitting this one spot, over and over. It felt like a nerve or something because it was making me twitch lol. It almost tickled. She was moving a lot, it's like she's trying to tickle me from the inside... the funny part is that it works sometimes! So that was getting distracting too, so I sit up again. And she still wouldn't stop! She was going crazy for at least 45 minutes. I've never felt her move so much, or so strong! It was so fun. Daniel was watching and feeling her move too and was just loving it. It's a lot of fun, unless I'm trying to fall asleep. I can't fall asleep if she's moving so much. It's just not a normal thing to fall asleep to haha. Finally I decided I was starving, so we came down to get a snack. After I ate, she stoped moiving and I was able to fall asleep. It was pretty funny.

Pics from second ultrasound

GIRL!!



Her feet together. Toes pointing to the left.



A hand. It's really blurry.



Profile picture. I like this one. She has gotten so big!

Second ultrasound to double check...

So like I said a few posts back, when I went to the doctor and we talked about the first ultrasound, they found something wrong with her heart. So he sent me in to have a second ultrasound to double check things. Well I just went a few days ago and I guess I'm not worried. The doctor there said she wasn't, so I'm trying not to be.
So we get there and the tech takes us back to the room and makes sure the notes she has are correct and that there is something on the heat. I say that's why we're here, so tell me something good, please! She told us she will basically do the same thing as the first ultrasound just a little more in depth and focus mostly on the heart.
She starts with the heart and is looking at it at every angle possible. I really like how much time she put into looking at the issue. It made me feel like I was with someone who really cared and knew what she was doing and looking for. It was really awesome too because we had our own big screen to watch what she was doing so we didn't have to try to look at her monitor. She would slow it down, and zoom in, then zoom out, and zoom in again at a different angle. We saw the heartbeat in a graph (whatever that's called haha). Then she zoomed in and started explaining to us what she was seeing. So she slowed down the video and told us to watch a specific part. She showed us that is the spot where they found the hypoechogenic spot and said that it was connecting all the way so it's nothing to really worry about. Then she moved on to all of the other things to look at, like the gender shot, profile, feet, organs etc... She said that everything looks great. It was really fun to watch her try to get a shot of the legs/feet. The little girl wouldn't stop moving. She would move just a little bit then pause just long enough to make us think she was done then spaz and move again lol. We were cracking up. Finally she did stop long enough to get a cute shot of her feet both together. Then she finished everything and said the doctor would be in to do her own ultrasound and check out the heart again.
The doctor came in and said that all of the images the tech got were great and that everything looks good so far. There were a few blurry images she wanted to check out herself and then make it to the heart. So she took her time also and looked at everything in as many angles as she could. Then she made it to the heart and zoomed in and zoomed out and then back in and looked at all different angles again. I loved that they were really paying attention and trying to figure this out! So finally she started to explain everything to us. She said that when there is a spot on the heart like that usually it points to Down Syndrome. I freak out immediately of course and I ask if my baby is ok. She said that if there were more abnormalities in any other organ, particularly the heart, she would be a little concerned. But she said that everything else looked just fine. The shape of the heart, the beat, the other organs, the face... everything was perfect except that one little spot. So then she comes to her conclusion and says that it is a calcium deposite between the muscle. She zooms in on it for us again to let us look while she is explaining everything. She said that the muscle to open and close the valve is functioning fine even though that is there. Once a calcium deposit is somewhere it's there forever. I freaked out about that too. I asked if it would affect her heart in any way, or her activities. She said not at all. Thank goodness! She said that they find something like this in about 5%-6% of perfectly normal healthy pregnancies and babies. I'm still thinking that a small amount, but she thinks I'm in that small percentage. She said that it is kind of like a scar. The heart somehow was injured in some way when she was developing and the calcium is what comes to fix it, then it just stays ther like a scar. But it won't affect anything in any way. The doctor said that she isn't worried in any way and doesn't see anything else abnormal or alarming that worries her, and tried to reassure us that we don't need to be worried anymore either. Then she left to make her notes to send to my doctor and we were good to go.
But of course I'm still a little worried. I keep trying to tell myself that they found nothing wrong. But I'm still worried. Maybe it's just the maternal instincts coming out, who knows. But that's the most up to date I have on my baby... beside that she was really active today. It's so fun to feel her move. OH!!! I almost forgot, it was the coolest, strangest thing to watch the ultrasound and see her move and feel it at the same time!!! Oh it was crazy. It's like, hey I'm not just watching a movie, this is actually happening!