Big U/S update!

Yay!

We had our 20-week ultrasound on Christmas Eve morning, and got some cute new photos to share with the family at all the get-to-gethers the next couple days.


We have a thumb-sucker!


Little feet :)

The ultrasound went great! Everything is just as it should be, no red flags. Baby weighs approx. 11 oz. and was measuring 2 days ahead of schedule. We were able to see the little one start sucking his thumb, and watched as he pulled it out of his mouth. That was so cute, because you could actually see his little upper lip flip upwards as he pulled his thumb out.

And he is a BOY!

Hubby is so proud!

We are very happy to know the gender because neither dh or I liked calling our baby "it" so now we can refer to him as a he, or by his name, which we are pretty sure will be: Levi Carter :)

Made announcement at the office!

We had our company Christmas party on Friday and I was in charge of decorating. I asked one of my co-workers to help and we came up with some great ideas. The party was being held in part of the warehouse so we were going to be in a large dingy room with florescent lights, high ceilings and white scuffed up walls. In order to make the setting a little warmer and more inviting, we strung up white Christmas lights in green gossimer. Then to decorate the walls we hung up stockings for each person there.

Here is where the fun part comes in... I sent out an email survey to gather some "fun facts" about each employee, and we wrote one fact for each person on the stockings hanging on the wall - everyone had to guess what fact belonged to which co-worker! We even had prizes for the people who got the most right answers.

Can you guess what my fun fact was? :) My stocking read " I am pregnant and due 5/14/09!

Let me tell you, that was the talk of the party! There were only 3 or 4 people that could apply to, and we were all interrogated and watched like hawks, lol. One of my co-workers who already knew, grabbed me an empty beer bottle and whispered for me to go fill it up with water so I could fool others. It worked great!

When the time came to share the answers to the questions, I gave a sealed envelope to the "announcer" and had him read them aloud. It was so much fun to hear every laugh as they found out who played the trumpet in high school, and who once had a pierced tongue! My name was towards the end of the list, and as the announcer came close to it, I could tell he had been reading ahead. All of the sudden he looked up at me and made eye contact, giving me this awesome surprised look and warm smile! I loved it! Then when it was time to read my name, he skipped it! You should have heard all the shouts!!! After just a couple more answers, he finished with my announcement, and the entire office stood up and clapped!

No one ever suspected it, and I was just showered with congrats :) It was so much fun!

Apparently, I have a belly :)

When I was out shopping on Saturday, I got my first comment from a stranger :)

Hubby and I were making small talk with a cashier at Camp World while another clerk went to look in the shop for some sort of part he needs for the gas line on the ice fish house.

We were talking about how busy Cabela's (just down the street from their store) was because Santa was there and people were taking their kids in for photos. The lady said "Looks like you'll be doing that next year!"

Yay!

Appt. Update

Had a regular OB check-up today.

It went well, my total weight gain so far has only been 1lb - I just keep fluxuating right around the same weight.

I got scolded for being dehydrated, but to my defense this appt was first thing in the AM and I try not to drink water after about 8pm so I don't have to get up at night to pee more than 2x. I am much more hydrated later in the day :)

Got some blood drawn to test for nueral tube defects. The lab tech didn't know what he was doing and totally dug around in my arm.

And then I got to schedule the big ultrasound! December 24th at 8:30 AM! Hubby and I are super excited to see this little one again!

Baby Kicks!

I am pretty much positive that the little twitches I have been feeling is my baby tapping me :) I always thought that when I got far enough along to feel baby kicking, I would just know what it was and I guess I had this image in my mind of having this moment when I would feel it for the first time and just be so estatic, that it has been frusterating questioning myself and not really knowing if that is what I was feeling or not!

It doesn't feel like butterflies or anything else anyone on here has described it as (except maybe the whole gas bubble thing), but for me, really does feel like someone is tapping there finger on my lower abdomen, only from the inside. Pretty cool. Now I just can't wait for it to get more frequent and stronger!

Heart Palpatations

Well, I had a bit of a scary day last Wednesday.

I could feel my heart beat in my throat and it made me feel like I wanted to cough, even though I didn't really have too. I thought maybe my pulse was racing too, so I put my forefingers up to the pulse in my neck to count the beats and realized that my heart was beating quite erratically and was skipping beats here and there.

I didn't think I was stressed out, so I had no idea what else could have been causing it. After having a speedy and irregular heartbeat for a couple hours I decided to email my doctor to see if it was anything to be concerned about. A nurse called me back and recommended I go to the ER, and even tho I really didn't want to go, I went.

I got hooked up for an EKG, and some other heart tests and had these little sticky patches all over me - it reminded me of all the baby pictures of my premature self, hooked up to the heart monitor :) I was able to watch my heartbeat on the monitor which I was happy about because then I could actually see the irregular or as they called them "premature" beats - so at least I know I wasn't imagining things!

I had 4 tubes of blood taken and then I waited, for hours, for the test results to come in. Made good use of that time by taking a nap! When the results finally did come in, everyone was stumped and couldn't figure it out. No thyroid issues, nothing.

So I was discharged with the instructions to avoid caffeine, OTC's, drink plenty of water, rest and try not to be anxious. In otherwords - continue doing exactly what I have been doing for the last 4 months!

But at least I know now that nothings wrong with me or baby :)