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! :)