Playing catch up

It's amazing how quickly the days are slipping away, and I don't even have a baby in my arms yet! So I shall leave you with a few highlights/pictures of the past couple months.

1. We put our house on the market. Getting the house fixed up to show took up a significant amount of our time in April. I think the listing turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, but we have yet to hear even one inquiry about the house.

2. Justin was thrown on a somewhat random work trip to Altus during which he took the time to check out our housing options. And quite honestly, they all have their drawbacks. Base housing is privatized and seems to be severely lacking in quality and in general concern about upkeep on the part of the company that now owns the housing. Renting will cost significantly more a month than buying, and buying requires selling in a market that is not exactly thriving. But Justin (along with my parents who met up with him for the weekend) ended up taking a look at a foreclosure that is newer (1993) and slightly bigger than our house now while he was there, and after weeks of waffling and hoping for a bite on our house here, well the punchline is that we just had an offer accepted on the house! We are about to enter the extravagant world of dual home ownership. Yikes.

3. April showers. I was excessively spoiled at two showers in April, one hosted by our church and the other by the military wives Bible study I attend.

Meet Olivia. This picture cracks me up.

33 weeks

Reagan was so excited to bring me my presents.

Due two days apart.

My lovely hostesses. 35 weeks.

By the time If I ever finish my thank-yous, I will have written more than 75! That's some serious spoiling right there. That's larger than the number of people who attended our wedding! Which brings me to point #4.

4. Sunday will be our 5th anniversary! Is that really possible?? I couldn't have asked for a better start to our marriage. Well, okay, maybe I could have asked for a better first year. :) Three moves in one year about sent me over my mental edge. But Justin stuck it out with me, so I couldn't ask for more than that!

5. I am closing in on 39 weeks. And I have yet to feel any difference whatsoever. No contractions and I really don't think she's dropped. I sure hope her birthday isn't two weeks later than expected. My parents will be here June 4-9, and I am praying they get to meet their granddaughter before they leave. Justin is convinced she will be born in less than a week, on the 29th, which would give us three straight days of celebrating--our anniversary, his birthday, and our daughter's birthday.

6. We just finished the nursery! Olivia and I still have to set up a sewing date for crib bedding, but we won't need that until we get to OK. The room looks a little sparse without a real crib and any substantial furniture, but I actually really like the colors and how everything turned out. Not too shabby for being a space Baby Girl will occupy for less than two months. You might recognize the decorations over her crib. We're officially ready for you, Baby Girl!

The nursery before.

This is all the loot my friend Ashlei gave us, which she passed down from her little girl. She and her husband also gave us the swing and bouncy seat you will see in the pictures below. What a blessing they have been to us!

His eye is on the sparrow!

Schtuff

Hmm. Methinks I have been neglecting this little blog. I have a few highlights to catch up on!

1. Justin is home! Apparently his return date was moved up a week even before he left, but he decided to keep it under wraps to surprise me. He gave me 24-hours notice that he was coming home, which then turned into 48-hours notice when his jet was grounded for maintenaince issues the next day. He knew he'd be in trouble if he didn't give me some kind of warning! The whole thing was a kind of comedy of errors. I had scheduled my latest appt for the day, unbeknownst to me at the time, Justin was supposed to return. He enlisted Olivia's help asking me to watch her son that day so that I would reschedule my appt. Which I did. For the following day. Which is actually the day Justin came home. Oops. It was a nice try. I've been going out of town for my appts, but I was able to drive straight to base and make it just in time for his landing.

2. God continues to rule out one concern after another with this pregnancy! I never did write a post about how the whole band/sheet thing shook out. Well, as soon as we heard about the doctors' concerns, Justin started praying for it to disappear. I told him I didn't get the impression that's how it would work out, based on what the doctors said. But when I went in for my appointment, I learned that's exactly what was happening! I finally saw images of this...whatever it is...from all of my previous ultrasounds. At 16 weeks it ran the entire length of an ultrasound image. At 18 weeks it was much shorter, and at this appt it had shortened so much they almost couldn't find it! So while I think it was officially classified as a sheet, it's really fairly irrelevant because it's gone now, whatever it was. The next smaller concern was placenta previa, and that was also resolved at my most recent appt last week. Hallelujah! But there's something new at every appt, and this time it was anemia. But all that means is I have to take an iron supplement. I think we can handle that one. :)

3. Justin got his orders to Altus, OK, where he will be an instructor. He should have pretty steady hours, but it's also likely that he will have one six-month deployment. Six months! People do it all the time, but I can barely survive two. So that will be an adventure if and when that happens. I'm glad he got his orders and that there weren't any surprises, but I'm still not ready to leave Goldsboro. The report date on his orders was June 30, but that's cutting things a little close for our taste. Justin's pretty confident he can get the date pushed back to July 30. We'll be three hours from my parents, which will be good, but the town itself leaves many things to be desired. But, all in all, it is good news.

4. I'm not methodical about checking my weight, but I've gained six pounds in the last two weeks. At least, I think it's only been two weeks. And that's all I'm going to say about that. Go, baby, go.

Insanity and other frivolous matters

I have plenty of darn near miraculous things I could talk about today like the way God spectacularly answered our prayers about the whole amniotic sheet vs. band thing, and that most definitely deserves its own post and a post that is of higher importance than this one. But today my brain is in a frenzy, and I'll be sharing about much more frivolous matters, like diving in headfirst to the commercial side of parenthood.

First there was much researching of strollers. That one's still ongoing. Last night I moved onto trying to plot the nursery I probably won't even be able to put together until after our move, potentially months after Baby Girl is born. But I need to start figuring out what to register for, and a nursery seemed like a natural place to start. We'd already settled on a kind of nature/woodland/forest type theme. And, well...I'll let the email I sent out to Olivia this morning (unedited) do the rest of the talking. It will be sure to make up for the last several months of my inattention to silliness on this here blog.

Enjoy. Don't judge.

Subject: These are the facts of the case.

And they are undisputed.

Happy Birthday to your man!!!!!!!

Now onto my real reason for writing. The facts.

1. It is currently 6:38 a.m., and I am awake.

2. I actually woke up at 6:12. (I think. That one might be disputed.)

3. I was up until 12:15ish.

4. I was up until 12:15 after endless hours of searching for the perfect bedding.

5. There are waaaaaaay too many options for crib bedding on the market. And even with that, Justin and I still couldn't settle on the "perfect" set.

6. Justin was actually giving me some feedback, but I'm pretty sure he started to think I was crazy after what may have been hour #4 of sending him links.

7. I found a wall print a few days ago with the lyrics of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" and suddenly I couldn't get a version of that song that Justin introduced me to out of my head. It reminded me just how fitting that song was for this time in our life and for our little girl. (You can listen to the song here: http://blog.pagecxvi.com/post/10440429648/his-eye-is-on-the-sparrow. Please do! I love it.)

8. Sometime during my marathon search for bedding, I saw this line but determined it was not at all gender neutral and that it would force me into too many pink and purple nursery choices, even though I do find it very pretty: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/Search/Search.aspx/sparrow/baby/_/N-1z1412k?AggBy=0&dim=1&grid=20&nty=1&sstr=sparrow. However, it did inspire me to search for sparrows!

9. Sometime much later in my marathon search, after Justin and I had seemingly come no closer to making a decision, I showed him the sheets I just showed you. He loved the sparrows in particular and deemed these sheets his favorite. At last! Progress. But I still wasn't sure I could be girly enough to commit to those colors.

10, I proceeded to consult the one site I hadn't yet scoured--Etsy.

11. Etsy is not the site to go to when one has already been on the computer for hours on end and it should be bedtime. Seriously. Pinterest should probably also go on that list should I ever join.

12. I found some fabric with sparrows that I love and that Justin likes just as much as the pattern we'd looked at, and I found sellers who would make what I wanted a reasonable price.

13. I finally went to bed content.

14. I woke up at 6:12(ish) a.m. day dreaming about said fabric.

15. Then the cat started running all over the room with far too much energy. I took it as a sign, gave up the fight, and got out of bed after concocting the following idea.

Okay. You may now have paragraph form. It can't be that difficult to make a blanket, a couple sheets, and a crib skirt can it? (And maybe a changing pad cover?) Do you think Joann's would have a class on that? Or maybe it's something you could already show me how to do? (Assuming you'd have the time to do that.) And at the very least, I would love to see what you think about which fabric to use for which particular piece, along with potential wall colors, etc. Will you let me know what you think? (If I don't hear from you tonight, I will assume you got lost somewhere in this meandering email. Or that you had more important things to do. Like celebrate your husband's birthday or keep William from doing cartwheels off of his scooter.) Here is the fabric: http://www.hawthornethreads.com/fabric/designer/joel_dewberry/aviary_2, the first collection being my/our favorite.

Thank you! Maybe I can actually go back to sleep now (Now that I've unloaded this heavy fabric burden onto you)!

17. I am not responsible for the coherence/silliness of anything written prior to 7:15 a.m.

Updates

I don’t really want this blog to become all about our baby, but I guess that’s what it’s going to be for a little while. I just wanted to give any of you who may be interested the latest update. **Warning: This post contains words that might make some, particularly those of the male persuasion, squirm. If you can’t tolerate the word cervix, then you should probably skip over this post.

Oh yes, I’m sure you all know this already, but I haven’t said it yet on here that we found out we are having a girl! At that appointment, our midwife, Monica, told us two things. First of all, she said that my cervix was measuring just a millimeter shorter than the range they normally like to see. They weren’t concerned at this point, but they needed me to come back in a couple of weeks to make sure that I wasn’t dilating early. That would be bad news and potentially mean bedrest for the remainder of my pregnancy. Monica also said they noted something “academic,” meaning something that was benign but worth noting for the mere fact that it was something they hadn’t really seen before. She said they noted an “amniotic sheet” and made a clear point of saying that it is NOT an “amniotic band.” She repeated this, she said, so that I would not go look up “amniotic band” and become concerned. (This point will become relevant a little later.) Other than that, she said that our baby girl looked completely healthy!

Fast forward to my next appointment, which was last week. This appt was really only to measure my cervix, so we didn’t see as much of Baby Girl. My understanding from what Monica had told us was that my cervix would either be the same length, or it would be shorter, shorter being bad. My cervix measured 12 mm longer. I don’t know whether that was a fluke or a miracle, but whatever it was, it was a definite answer to prayer. It was even more of an answer to prayer than I realized because they told me that I currently have placenta previa, which means that the placenta is partially covering my cervix. If I actually were dilating early, that would be particularly bad news because it could lead to hemorrhaging in addition to a preterm delivery. But praise the Lord that is not an issue for now!

However, that amniotic sheet I mentioned earlier? The midwife I saw at this appt, Jan, said that whoever reviews the ultrasounds classified it this time as an amniotic band. She said that the band is not currently an issue because it is away from the baby. If it is actually a band, though, it is a fibrous string that can restrict her growth if it interferes with her. From what I have read, it can cause deformities like a club foot or cleft palate, or worse, it could amputate one of her limbs or kill her if it wraps around her head or umbilical cord. Even if this band isn’t near her for now, I know she’ll start to take up every available space by the time I get into the third trimester. I’m supposed to meet with a specialist in a couple of weeks, and my understanding is that this doctor is supposed to shed more light on whether this is a sheet or a band and then possible next steps.

So that’s the latest. I’m not fretting for the time being, just waiting out the time until our next appt. Prayers are appreciated, as always, and on that note, I want you all to know just how blessed we feel to know how much so many of you have saturated our little girl in prayer, even before she came to be. Is there any better way to start a life? I can hardly wait to see the answers to those prayers come to pass in her life.

And in more lighthearted news, I felt her move for the first time on New Year’s Day! And Justin felt her move last night! I was surprised he could feel her this early. Despite feeling her move and starting to show, I still feel remarkably normal. I still haven’t moved into maternity clothes, but I am starting to feel some aches and pains. We forgot to take a picture this week, but I’ll leave you with the most recent.

So now you know

I hate keeping secrets about myself. I'd much rather be an open book. So now you know all (okay, most of) my secrets again!

Actually, there was a little more to this story. There's another person's story to share, and I want to do that person justice by sharing it. During both previous pregnancies, we never saw a heartbeat, so I was really holding my breath for our first ultrasound. Unfortunately, Justin missed out on all my appointments so far because of his training in OK. My sweet friend and our pastor's wife, Olivia, was kind enough to accompany me to my first two appointments.

Well, as I told Justin while sobbing into the phone after my first ultrasound at 6 weeks, I didn't see a heartbeat; I saw two! Yes, the Lord had graciously blessed us with twins! Now, if I'm completely honest here, the first thought to cross my mind was "At least this makes the odds of actually delivering one much higher." One friend and another friend-of-a-friend both lost a twin within the last year, so I was prepared for the very real possibility of becoming part of that 20% who experience what doctors so euphamistically call "vanishing twin syndrome." Justin, on the other hand, has always joked about having twins, and I think he was in shock with joy and disbelief.

A week and a half later I went in for another ultrasound and learned that we had lost one of the twins. Development had stopped shortly after my first ultrasound. I feel blessed that God gave me that first ultrasound to see those two beautiful little heartbeats. And while I wish I could still say that we're expecting twins, believe me when I say I feel blessed to have been given that child even though God chose to take that child home to Him so early--like our other babies, before he/she could experience any pain or suffering in this world. I have come to realize that we could hardly have been given any greater gift. To have God add to our family, and more importantly to His, for all of eternity. It's pretty incredible to think about.

But "Baby B" was going strong at that appointment, and then again at my next appointment a week later. Today I am 15 weeks! Can I just tell you how wonderful that sounds?? Any time I said out loud that I was 8 weeks or 10 weeks, or even 12 weeks, I would say it with some trepidation. When I said out loud that I was 10 weeks, it was really like saying "I'm 10 weeks and hoping that I'll make it to the next...and the next...and the next." While I'm still more than ready to see our baby wiggling and squirming and growing at our next appointment on the 20th, I'm certainly more confident that I will get to meet Baby B in person than I ever have been. The periodic sickness I've had for the last several weeks has started to disappear (I can even brush my teeth almost like a normal person again!), but now I can see my belly starting to grow. So that is my reassurance for now.

We should be able to find out on the 20th whether we're having a boy or a girl, but I've been so focused on just seeing a healthy baby that I've barely given any thought to the gender. When we first found out I was pregnant I was convinced it was a boy. But since we found out about and then lost one of the twins, I have had NO inclinations one way or another. I think that's because in some ways this pregnancy still doesn't feel real. I find myself waking up from naps feeling like I've been dreaming that I'm pregnant. I'm hoping and expecting that will change in less than two weeks! By then I should be close to feeling the baby move too. I imagine it will feel real then!

I don't have too much of a belly to show at the moment, but at Katherine's request, I'll leave you with one shot for now (taken just after lunch for maximum impact).