Pregnancy Ups and Downs

It has been a VERY long week. I am in the process of switching positions at work and this week I started training for that and it has made for some long days... BUT I have off tomorrow because my family is flying in tonight and a bunch of friends are driving in tomorrow for my shower this weekend. SO I am really looking forward to getting to spend some time catching up with everyone!

OK.. last week I posted about finding out I was pregnant, but it's clearly been awhile since that happened as I am now about 8 months along. So, I just wanted to type a post with some of the ups and downs (and there have been lots of them) that have gone on to catch you all up to where I am now.

So in August I found out I was pregnant. Then had to wait about 5 weeks until my first Dr's appt and then a couple days after that I had my first ultrasound. Which was the first time I let myself really get excited about everything. It was such a relief to know there was a heart beat and everything looked good!

About a week later I had my first "down". I got a call back from the Dr's office letting me know there were some issues with my blood work. They told me I came up positive for being a carrier of cystic fibrosis. I know it may not seem like a big deal to some people, but to me it was. I kind of panicked. I didn't want to be the cause of any issues for my baby. Vince had to go get tested to see if he was a carrier (usually only 1 out of 30 people are carriers, so it wasn't a huge risk but at the time that seemed like a high percentage). If he was a carrier too there was a 50% chance our baby would have CF. Thankfully after about 10 days of waiting (why does it take so long to get blood work back sometimes??) the Dr called to say Vince was NOT a carrier. So this baby (or any future kids) can't have CF, they could be a carrier like me but they would need 2 strands of CF to develop the disease. To say I was relieved would be an understatement.

The next month or two I dealt with the first trimester (and into part of my 2nd trimester) fun of morning sickness. Good times. At one point I kept losing weight so the Dr considered making me go to the hospital to get an IV.. but thankfully not too long after that I started to gain the weight back. (and since then the scale has constantly been going up... maybe a little too much haha).

A few weeks before Christmas when I was 20 weeks and got to go for my second ultrasound. Vince and I both were SO excited because even though we had seen the heartbeat at the first ultrasound this would be the first time we would actually see our baby. It was AMAZING. I couldn't stop smiling while I was looking at the screen and every time I would turn to look at the Vince he was starring at the baby with the same exact smile as me :) The Dr said everything looked good and the baby's measurements were exactly on track.

This was also the appointment where they could tell us whether we were having a boy or a girl. We decided since it was so close to Christmas that we would have the Dr put the gender into an envelope and we could open it together, just the two of us at Christmas. It ended up being my favorite moment from the entire pregnancy.. and definitely the best Christmas gift I have ever opened :)

On Christmas Eve we went to his families house for dinner and then went home, started a fire, and watched a Christmas movie (Home Alone, one of my favorites). Before we knew it, it was almost midnight and we decided to finally open the card. Now, just so you know.. the ENTIRE pregnancy I thought I was having a boy. I have NO idea why I thought that, I just did. So to be honest even though I was excited to open the card, It wasn't like an "OMG I can't wait any longer!" type of thing because I thought I already knew what the card would say. Well, I was wrong.

The card said GIRL. and Oh. My. Gosh. it was one of the biggest and best surprises of my life. I was over the moon excited. (so was Vince!) Since I was so sure it was a boy, I hadn't even thought about it being a girl. From that point on I have thought of nothing else but bows, ribbons, and cute little dresses. (ok not really, but I am really excited to be able to get all of that cute little girl stuff haha)

On Christmas morning we were going back to Vince's parents house to open gifts with the family and to tell them the gender... but when I got up that morning I was spotting. I was about 23 weeks at this point and it really freaked me out. I told Vince, but decided not to say anything to anyone else about it. I called the Dr on Monday morning (2 days later) and she immediately had me come in. She couldn't really tell anything from my exam, but wanted me to come back a week later.

By the time I went back I was having really bad cramps and more spotting. Our little girls heart beat sounded good and she seemed to be fine, but they wanted to make sure I wasn't going to go into early labor.. So I had to go for another ultrasound a week later. At the ultrasound they found that my cervix had been open (which isn't normal that early), but I didn't seem to be progressing anymore than that.

Even though I was nervous about having to check on everything again.. it was really nice to see our little girl. (and to make sure she is in fact a girl lol). How amazing is this picture of her hand on her face... I can't believe how much you can see from an ultrasound!!

They talked about bed rest a little, but thankfully she ended up saying as long as I tried to stay off my feet at work and then at night made sure to keep my feet up I could wait and see how things went. (obviously I would go on bed rest if she really wanted me to, but I really didn't want to use my time off before the baby was even here)

Since then its been a week by week kind of thing. (I feel like I am at the doctor's office more than anywhere else lol) I have weeks with no problems at all and weeks where I am spotting and having contractions on and off. The Drs have said since then "if we can just get you to 32 weeks then we can breathe a sigh of relief". Well I am now just a couple days shy of 32 weeks and finally feeling better. So, I am hoping the little lady will plan on staying in for a while long, but it's nice to know that if she does decide to show up early then we are out of the "danger zone" as one Dr put it.. haha.

So like I said there have been lots of ups and downs... but overall I have really enjoyed being pregnant and going through this whole thing with Vince. He has been absolutely wonderful the entire time and has taken such good care of me. This pregnancy has brought us even closer together, which I didn't even know was possible haha.

OK well that should sum up most of it for you. Hope I didn't bore you too much ;)

I probably won't post again until next week, but hopefully I will have lots of cute pictures from the shower to show you then! Have a great weekend! :)

TGIF

It's Friday and it's GORGEOUS outside. I just got done meeting Vince for lunch (and an appointment with our lawyer about house stuff.. but that's a whole other post) and while I was driving back to the office I had the windows down and my sunglasses on and I realized that simply the weather can make me so happy. Unfortunately this nice weather isn't supposed to last long, but it does give me hope that spring is just around the corner!

We don't have too much planned for this weekend. Vince's cousin is moving into a new house on Saturday so while Vince is helping with that I am going to go get my hair done and run some errands... but other than that I plan to kind of just lounge around and do nothing for the next two days.

I may also start working on organizing some of the nursery. The furniture doesn't get delivered for two weeks, but my shower is next weekend so I figured the stuff that we have already bought I should at least start putting away. On Wednesday I actually came home to find a large box on my doorstep.. my grandmother ordered us our travel system (stroller and infant seat) for my shower but didn't want to have to bring the box herself so I got to get it a little early ;) I had Vince bring it in before he left for work and then I spent the next 30 mins putting it together. It was actually really easy (the hardest part was getting the darn thing out of the box haha)... but it's really nice and I love that the color can be used if we have a boy next time. (not that we are even remotely thinking about that happening any time soon!)

once I was done I wanted to play with it and since I don't have a baby to make sit in it yet, I used Ty as a stand in. Too bad he hated it and immediately jumped out every time I tried to make him sit there haha... poor dog..

Hope you all have a good weekend! Happy Friday :)



Are you serious?

So as promised I will update you on some of the changes in my life since I stopped blogging. I figured I would start with the biggest and most important change.. Vince and I starting our family.

Like you know, I am pregnant and due at the end of April. (technically my due date is April 29th, but after some of my more recent appointments the Dr said she thought that might be a week off.. so now they are saying somewhere between the 22nd-29th). Which makes me around 30 weeks. (Oh. My. Gosh. Just the thought that my little one will be here in about 10 weeks is CRAZY! and oh so exciting! :) )

I won't explain everything, because that would be WAY too long.. but I do want to do a quick recap of some of the more important moments.

I will start with one of the best and most exciting moments... finding out I was pregnant :)

I had briefly mentioned when I was blogging awhile ago that Vince and I wanted to start trying to have kids. I didn't go into too many details because it was something I really wanted to keep private at the time. It wasn't the easiest thing for us, it was actually kind of stressful. We tried for 8 months with no success. (Which I know is NOTHING compared to what some people have to go through, but even just those 8 months of constant disappointment was hard.) I talked to my Dr before we even started trying and she suggested using the ovulation kits and the thermometers and all of that fun stuff. So after 8 months of nothing I talked to her again and she said that I should take a few months off of trying and then maybe after the first of the year we could look into having some tests ran just to make sure there weren't any issues. That was in the beginning on July. So we stopped trying and planning (and stressing about it) and then just like that it finally happened. On Monday August 23rd I found out I was pregnant.

I wasn't even planning on taking a test that month. Typically the months before I would take a test 5 days before I even missed my period to see if I was pregnant, but this time I was trying to not even think about it.

Well on Monday while I was at work I realized I was a few days late (which wasn't the first time that had happened so I wasn't getting too excited yet), but I did go right after work and buy a pregnancy test. I took the test and left it in the bathroom and actually ended up forgetting it was even there for like an hour. Then as soon as I remembered I ran back in and saw the 2 lines (which meant it was positive) on the screen. I stood there and just looked at it for a minute and then decided that it had to be wrong since I let it sit too long so I had to take another one. Long story short after 4 (yes four) tests all showing the same results I finally let myself get excited.

I ran out to the store and bought a bib that said "I love my Daddy" and stuck it in the top of my bag. Shortly after Vince got home I was sitting on the couch and he got up to get a drink and I asked him to get something out of my bag for me... he pulled out the bid, read it and just turned to me and said "are you serious?". I didn't say anything, but nodded my head yes and waited for him to let it sink in. Within seconds he was lifting me off the couch in a big hug. To say it was one of the best moments of our relationship would be an extreme understatement ;)

Now some of you may notice that I said I found out in August and I quit blogging in September.. so why didn't I mention it? Well we decided to wait awhile before telling anyone other than our parents. We didn't even tell siblings or grandparents until I was further along. But since I knew his mom (who couldn't wait for me to get pregnant) would be over the moon excited, we did want to at least tell both of our parents right away. I called my mom first (since she doesn't live here) and we cried together haha.. and then later that night we gave Vince's mom this picture frame as a way of telling her.

I took the picture with my old phone so it's blurry, but it says " we are expanding our home by 2 ft, additions to be completed in April 2011". We figured it was the perfect fit since we were in the process of building a home at the time haha. We told her we would put an actual picture in it as soon as the baby was here :)

SO anyways that was the story of how this all happened. Obviously a LOT has gone on during these past 7 plus months of being pregnant and I don't want to bore you with all of the details..  but I will do a very quick recap of some of the big things in a post soon!

Hope you all are having a good week so far. This week is kind of busy for me, but I will try to post some more later on in the week! :)

Where do I begin..

OK, so clearly I have taken quite a bit of time off from blogging.. and to be honest I have sat at my computer multiple times and started to type up a new post, but never ended up finishing it.

I guess I am struggling a little bit with the whole blog concept.

I originally wanted to use it as a sort of online journal, but then I got a little unsure about how much of my life I really wanted to be posted for just anyone to see. So because of that when I was blogging before I got a little side tracked and my online journal turned more into just random posts with not much substance. And that just started to annoy me. I felt like I was posting things just so that I wouldn't go too long with nothing new on my page, but it wasn't helping me to get things off my chest or just process my thoughts like an actual journal would do.

Now, it's been almost 5 months since I stopped blogging and to be honest I miss doing it. I have spent some time thinking about if I actually wanted to start up with this whole thing again and if so what do I want to get out of it. (other than getting to know all you wonderful bloggers out there ;)) So this time around I am going to try my best to make this more about me and my life and use it as a place to kind of sort things out and also just to write random things down that I want to remember. Basically I plan to write whatever I am thinking about at the time and not worry as much about who's reading or whether I am wording things just right so I don't offend someone (which obviously I would never intend to do).

So I hope you will follow along again and not hate me for being gone so long ;)

Now the big question is where do I even begin to start updating you all with my life over the past few months??

I'll have to dedicate a couple of the next posts just to fill you in on what's been going on, but just as a quick sneak peak... I am pregnant and Vince and I are expecting our first baby at the end of April (about 10 weeks away and we CAN"T WAIT!), we've moved into an apartment while we wait for our house to get built (if that EVER  happens.. it's been such a stressful process), and we're both still working like crazy and trying to decide just what our goals are for our a careers.

So stay tuned and I will update you some more! Hope you all have a great weekend :)