Last Baby-Free Trip to Tennessee!

I love Tennessee and lucky for me my good friend Shana and her two kiddos live in Seymour, TN now (they moved away for a little while but now they are back). This past weekend mom and I went to visit and have Christmas with them. We ended up leaving on Thursday night because the weather was supposed to be bad on Friday. I am glad we did because it ended up icing pretty bad down there and we were stuck inside all day Friday. Not a bad place to be stuck...funny kids to entertain us and some yummy soup that Shana made. Mom and I said this would be our last trip to Tennessee without a car seat and a baby.

It was so much fun to catch up with Shana, Emma, and Isaac. Mom and I went shopping all day Saturday but did a pretty good job resisting the urge to buy a lot of baby stuff (if you know us you know we LOVE to shop so this was an accomplishment). I bought the baby some leggings, a couple of tank tops (50 cents each...I couldn't resist), and a cute little shirt. Mom bought her a fleece pullover. I took back the camo sheets that I bought at Bass Pro before we knew if we were having a girl or a boy (now that we know it's a girl camo is not really how I plan to decorate the room...she will have a camo chair but that's it). I found a precious little hat at Bass Pro that says  "My First Hunting Hat" so I had to get it and I bought her some cute little deer booties.

We really enjoyed our visit but Sunday we had to leave and come home. On our way we stopped in Kingsport. Who knew the Hobby Lobby (the reason for our detour) was closed on Sunday? Well, I do now. Luckily, we visited Burlington Coat Factory while we were in Kingsport or it wouldn't have been worth it for use to drive 30 minutes out of our way. The Baby Depot inside of Burlington in Kingsport is HUGE! If ours was like it I would have registered there. As soon as we walked in I spotted the swing I had registered for. At Buy Buy Baby it was $129 and at Baby Depot it was $79!! I love a good deal and couldn't resist the urge to buy it. I came home that night put it together. It is adorable! The swing plays 16 songs, has 2 sounds, 4 speeds, and a detachable seat that can be moved around the house which eliminates the need for a bouncy seat. I am really happy with the purchase and hope the baby loves it too!

We wrapped up our trip with a visit to Fazoli's (since we don't have one anymore) and a quick trip through the Pal's drive through so that I could get a tea and a frenchie fry (one of the main reasons I miss living in TN). Hopefully we will be visiting TN again soon with a little girl in tow!

Belly pictures

Crib and Ladder

A couple of Fridays ago I didn't go to work because it snowed and the university was closed until 10 a.m. Kip left that morning to go run errands and called me to say that I probably shouldn't drive because the roads in our neighborhood weren't in very good condition. So, I decided to stay home. Instead of just sitting around I decided to be productive. The crib has been sitting in pieces in the baby's room since I got it so I decided it was time to put it together. It was a little bit of a challenge to put together by myself but I love building things and I like a challenge! IKEA instructions aren't the greatest and I had to find different things around the house to prop the sides of the crib up on so that I could get the ends put on but I managed to get it together and I love it! I was definitely proud of my accomplishment!

I had been trying to find a ladder to put quilts on in the baby's room for a few weeks. I have already received one beautiful blanket and I know a few other people who make quilts or blankets so I wanted a nice way to display them. I found a few ladders online but nothing I loved. I was out shopping and decided I could make my own. The girls at work say I would probably build my own house if I could and a ladder didn't seem hard. I went to Home Depot and found some 1 1/2"x 1 1/2" pieces of wood and some 3/4" wooden dowels. Mom met me there because I wasn't sure the 8' pieces would fit in my car. I called dad the next day and asked him if he would help me with my project on Monday because we were both off from work for MLK day. 

Monday I went to dad's and we cut the wood, drilled holes, glued the dowels in, and he stained it for me. I realized the stain I had from our front porch was the exact same color of the crib so I didn't have to buy stain (it's nice to know that I consistently like the same colors). The ladder turned out great. Dad and I used to spend every summer together working on apartments, laying rock, and doing other projects so it was fun to build something with him again (even if I just watched the majority of the time)! I know the baby will love her ladder. 

Countdown

21 Weeks

At 21 weeks the little acrobat moves around all the time and punches and kicks me a lot!  I am still feeling great...no real cravings or anything. I hope I continue to feel like this because I have a busy couple of months ahead. Kip, mom, Jenny, and I are going to see Miranda Lambert this Saturday, next week mom and I are going to TN to visit our good friend Shana and her kiddos, Kip has a few trips planned for archery and golf, in a month I get the opportunity of a lifetime to go work a race at Daytona, and I have 3 baby showers in March and April! So, it is going to be a busy Spring for our little family.  I have been cleaning Baby G's room out (I'm down to one small pile of stuff that has to go somewhere) and hope to put the crib together soon. I will post pictures of the nursery once it actually looks like a nursery!

We are excited that Kip's cousin, Ben, and his wife, Mandi, welcomed their adorable baby girl Makena Lei last Thursday, January 10! We haven't met her yet but she is adorable and I know our girls will love growing up together! Welcome to the world Makena!

Prepared Childbirth Class

Kip and I thought it would be a good idea to go to a prepared childbirth class since this is our first child and we didn't know much about labor except what people had told us. The class is offered for a couple of hours one night a week for 6 weeks or occasionally all day Saturday classes are offered. Since Kip works nights and has indoor archery leagues on Thursday nights the 6 week class was not ideal for us. We could either choose 2 Saturdays in January or 2 Saturdays in March. I chose the January classes because I assumed it would be cold and we wouldn't have any other plans. At only 20-21 weeks along it was definitely early for us to take the class (most of the girls were at least 32 weeks and some were closer to 38 weeks). 

The classes are from 9:30 a.m.to 5:00 p.m. (sounds fun doesn't it?) I am happy to report we survived our two week class, learned a lot, and are very happy that we took it. The days didn't seem that long. We had a wonderful teacher named Megan and we had breaks often plus an hour and a half for lunch. Little did we know that it would be 70 degrees outside on one of the two Saturdays (in JANUARY). We learned a lot about different labor techniques, the entire birthing process, and what to bring to the hospital. Before the class I was all for any type of medicine (and I am sure that when the moment comes I will probably be begging for drugs). However, they encourage you to use upright positions when in labor now which cannot be done if you have an epidural. I think the upright positions make a lot more sense than laying down and work with gravity instead of against it. The class definitely made me look at the labor process differently. 

Like I said, I have no idea how I will be when I am actually in labor and you never know whether a c-section will be necessary or not but I feel much more prepared for childbirth after my class!

20 week picture

Halfway There!

This week I am 20 weeks pregnant. I cannot believe how fast the first 20 weeks have flown by. I know the second 20 weeks will be over before I know it and we will be holding our baby girl. Here is a brief  summary of my pregnancy so far (mostly for my own records because I am not keeping any kind of pregnancy journal)...

• At 20 weeks I have gained 6 pounds.
• I am wearing some of my maternity clothes and some of my regular clothes.
• Luckily, I haven't had any morning sickness at all (except for my 48 hour stomach bug).
• I have had a little bit of dizziness, especially when I stand in place for a long time or am hot.
• I sometimes have trouble sleeping. 
• In my first trimester I craved chocolate milk and pizza.
• I haven't had any specific cravings in my second trimester, however, I did notice that our Dairy Queen will soon have Orange Julius drinks and I may have driven through the parking lot several times to see if the "coming soon" signs were gone yet so that I could get an Orange Julius...Kip even went through the drive-thru one night to ask when they would have them.
• I started feeling a few little flutters during week 18, but starting at week 19 I could feel our little acrobat all the time. She moves around a lot...it's a crazy feeling. 
• We start our Prepared Childbirth classes this coming Saturday (we are doing 2 full Saturdays instead of 6-8 weeks for a couple of hours at a time because of Kip's work schedule). 

I think that's about all for now. I will post a 20 week belly picture later this week. 

Christmas

We had a very busy, but fun Christmas! It's crazy to think that this was the last Christmas without a baby in tow. Next year we may have to reconsider the number of places we visit on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (I like the chaos of it all but it is certainly exhausting). We went from Roanoke to Narrows (in Giles County) to Salem and then to Vinton on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, we stayed in Salem and Ironto but visited 5 different places. We had a great Christmas and enjoyed visiting with our family!

18 and 19 week belly pictures

Almond Joy's got nuts, Mounds don't!

As soon as we left the doctor on Christmas Eve we started our two days of Christmas visits. We had to have a way to reveal the gender that was easy to prepare. My friend Melissa did cupcakes with blue filling when she revealed the gender of her son, Andrew. I liked that idea but didn't want to make cupcakes with both pink and blue filling since we had to prepare for both genders.

I looked online and found someone who had done M&M's with or without nuts... I liked it but thought Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars would be even easier and really funny (in my opinion). So, I bought a bag of both candies and some gift bags and on our way to see our families I put Mounds candy bars in the bags to reveal that Baby Good is a girl!

The reactions were great... we got everything from "It's a girl because it has mounds" to "Ahh it has nuts" and some people didn't understand the joke at all. The reactions were priceless! How do people not know the slogan Almond Joy's got nuts, Mounds don't????

Mixed emotions

After seeing our little girl on the screen and getting about 20 picture of her to take home we waited for the doctor to read the sonogram. Dr. Cobb sends her patients to the Maternal and Fetal Medicine office to have an anatomy scan done. It is a very detailed sonogram...they literally measure every organ and body part to make sure the baby is growing correctly and there is nothing to be concerned about. The ultrasound tech had come back and taken an additional picture of the baby's head before we talked to the doctor, which made me worry that they had found something. I was right...

The doctor said they thought they saw a small cyst in her head... it's called a choroid plexus cyst. She said that the cyst can be a soft indicator of trisomy 18, a fatal chromosome disorder. Unfortunately, I had heard of the disorder before because I have known someone who had a baby with it. I was very scared after hearing the news. The doctor said the cysts are common and usually go away on their own. As long as the cyst doesn't indicate something more serious (trisomy 18) then it will go away and not affect the baby at all. She said there was a 1 in 483 (I think that's the number...I had a hard time concentrating on what she was saying) chance that something was wrong.

We had three options...wait and see if the cyst goes away, take a genetic blood test, or have an amniocentesis test done. The doctor really didn't seem concerned...she said that based on my age and the fact that there were no other signs she was almost certain this cyst would go away and everything would be fine. I elected to have the blood test done just to be sure. The nurse had trouble getting my blood and had to stick me twice (which is to be expected considering it took me 3 tries that morning to find the office...it just wasn't my morning). They said it would take 10-14 days to get the results back but they weren't sure how the holidays would affect the time frame. I knew those few days would seem like eternity as we waited for the results.

Kip was reassured by how relaxed the doctor was about the whole thing and kept telling me not to worry. I tried not to think about it, but I am a worrier so that's hard for me to do. We told a few people and I tried not to get upset but I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride. I went from being so happy about finding out the gender of our baby to being so worried about her and concerned that she might have a serious disorder. I researched a lot and found that a lot of babies have these cysts and it rarely indicates trisomy 18.

After 8 days of hoping and praying that everything would be ok I received a phone call at work today (January 2). The lady on the other end of the phone said she was from the Maternal and Fetal Medicine office and had the results of my test. Thankfully, the results were great and everything is just fine. Shew....what a relief!!!! Now, I can go back to being extremely excited about the next few months and meeting our little girl!

Drum roll please...

After what seemed like 30 minutes of the ultrasound tech looking at every part of our little one's body she told us what we came to hear... we were having A GIRL!!! We both were convinced the baby was a boy, we had a boy name picked out and I had bought a few cute boy outfits (that will be used for diaper cakes in the future). We were happy with either gender, Kip had actually told me on the way to the sonogram that he thought it was a girl. He was right! He did ask the girl to check a couple of times to make sure it was definitely a girl. She finally told him that we had very good evidence that the baby was a girl and if it turned out a boy we needed to come find her because she wouldn't believe it.


I think seeing how much she had grown and knowing the gender really made the whole thing sink in. Yay! I get to buy dresses and cute little hair bows, shoes, etc. and have a little mini-me...I can't wait. It was amazing to see her little hands, feet, face, etc. Here are a few of the pictures...

Here is a picture from our first sonogram (at 9 weeks).  She has grown sooo much! 

Christmas Eve!

The morning of December 24 we headed to Roanoke for our 10:00 a.m. appointment. I had a packet of papers that I had to fill out and they included directions to the office where the sonogram would take place. I didn't really read the paperwork, just saw that the entrance was to the left of the main entrance of the hospital. In Roanoke, there are 2 hospitals...Lewis Gale and Roanoke Memorial. My doctor is associated with Carilion so I knew the sonogram wasn't happening at Lewis Gale because it is not managed by Carilion. So, we went to Roanoke Memorial.

The weather was nasty that morning...it was raining hard. We parked in the parking garage, walked in the lobby, received a pager (like we were at a restaurant), and when it vibrated we went into the registration area. The lady asked what we were there for and then told me that I was supposed to be on Elm Avenue. Roanoke used to have another hospital, Community Hospital, and I didn't realize they still did some things (like sonograms) at the old hospital. We took off to the car, I was frantically calling the office telling them we were on our way. When we got to Community Hospital, Kip dropped me off at what I thought was the front of the building. I ran into the Community Care office and (of course) we were on the wrong side of the hospital. I ran through the parking lot to get Kip and we went to the other side.

At this point I was in a panic...the paper work said if you were later than 15 minutes they would reschedule (see, I did read part of it) and there was no way I was letting my lack of planning keep us from finding out the gender of our baby on Christmas Eve! Kip dropped me off at the main entrance and I went in the wrong door yet again. The nice man in the lobby pointed me to the correct door and I made it just in time! What an adventure!

After a short wait the ultrasound technician came and got us and it was time to see our baby.