It's A Girl!!!!

I apologize for not updating sooner, things have been busy on the home front these days. We had a scare the other day, because of some red spotting. Amanda called the doctor's office and they got her into Maternal Fetal Medicine for an anatomy scan to check things out on Wednesday. We went into this scan thinking that she had placenta previa (meaning the placenta is placed over her cervix), which can be dangerous and can cause spotting. The nurses and doctors wanted to make sure there were no tears in the placenta, or need to be concerned for Amanda or the baby. I was so happy that I was able to go in with her and see everything first hand for myself too :) The baby was moving all over the place, SHE is beautiful! Yup, she! It's definitely a girl! All measurements looked good, and she was super active.

We have one issue at this point, which is her umbilical cord. Normally an umbilical cord has three vessels, two arteries leading to the baby, and one vein leading away from the baby. This umbilical cord is two vessels, one artery and one vein. The perinatologist (high risk doctor) assured us that this is pretty common and most of the time there are no risks. One thing we have to watch is her heart, as in some cases the two vessel cord indicates an issue with the heart. But our baby has a strong, healthy heart with four chambers that is looking great! We have to take Amanda back on November 18th for another scan of the baby to take a closer look at her heart again, and then again on December 2nd. It appears that we will be having a scan every couple of weeks to keep an eye on her growth progress, but hey, that just means we get to see her more often!!!

Oh, how have I made you wait through an entire post without revealing her name?! Please meet, Virginia Faylea! Virginia is a family name on Dan's side, both his maternal and paternal grandmothers' name, and also his sister's name :) We made her middle name up by combining my mother's and his mother's middle names, Faye and Lea.

And without further ado, here are our most recent pictures!


This is her left foot :)


This is her face, it's hard to make out unless you know what you're looking at....but she's looking down a bit.


And this is the "money shot" showing her girly parts! Yup, definitely a girl!


We are so blessed!

They Are On Their Way!

Well, after a VERY long weekend in GA getting things situated, Dan is on his way home with a van full of stuff and people! :) They were FINALLY able to leave this morning a little after 10am after the housing move-out inspection was done and getting their car into storage.

Logan is not a good traveler, and Dan is having some issues with him staying buckled in....that's not good! Abigail and Jacob are doing great though. They just stopped at a Burger King for lunch right outside of Atlanta, and let the kids run around and burn some energy on the playground. Hopefully they will nap for an hour or two and allow Dan to drive in peace for a bit.

The Move Has Begun!

Well, yesterday morning at the butt crack of dawn (3:30am) Dan got into the van and started his long 14 hour drive down to GA to get Amanda and the kids situated and moved up here! It was a long day with ups and downs (specifics aren't important), but he made it down and his parents made it up. (My wonderful in-laws made an 8 hour drive up from FL to GA to help out!). Today and tomorrow consists of packing, cleaning, hauling stuff to storage and the likes. Hopefully they will be able to head home sometime Sunday or no later than Monday, but only time will tell.

What we know for sure is that this time next week, everybody will be up here, and we'll be able to be more involved with the pregnancy and appointments! We're looking forward to having everybody up here.

It's hard to believe that she's 20 weeks and 3 days already! Halfway through!!! OMG! We're going to have a baby in less than 20 weeks! In 4-5 months, we're going to have an infant and another one quite close on his/her heels! Hopefully we will be able to get an appointment for her soon after arriving so that we can have the anatomy scan to make sure all is well, and also find out gender! Wow.....it's all happening so fast!

Update On Last Dr. Appointment

This past Tuesday Amanda had another OB appointment. They did an ultrasound, but weren't able to see if it's a boy or a girl :( The baby was looking great though! Heart rate was 162bpm WOOHOO!

She has another appointment next week I believe which will be the last before they move up here! I can't believe we're only a couple weeks away from everybody being up here, where we can see her every day! We're excited!

Random Updates, Nothing Major

I know it's been a while since the last update. Fall Semester started back on Monday, so I've been swamped with the first week back to school, and all of the IVF stuff that Dan and I are going through. We have finished the cycle, and are now in the two week wait to find out if it worked or not. But that's enough about our IVF journey, because THIS blog is about our baby who was conceived in our hearts :)

We did finally receive the ultrasound picture from 8w3d! You can't see much of anything but a little blob, but we love her/him already! I still think it's a girl!


We also have a definite date for Jame's deployment. He'll be leaving on October 11. Dan and my Dad will be driving down to GA on the 15th or 16th to get her and the kids situated and moved up here! It's just so hard to believe how fast time is going. I've never made it this far in a pregnancy, so it's just surreal to me! I can't believe that today she's 13weeks4days along! OMG! In just five weeks (possibly even before we get her moved up here) we'll be able to find out the sex! Less than two months until she's halfway through! In six months, we'll be holding our little baby!

Anyway, that's our newest update :)

Yesterday's OB Appointment

I know it's been a bit since I've updated, but we've been super busy.

Yesterday Amanda had another OB appointment. She's been super sick these past couple of weeks, so I was anxious for her to see the Dr. ASAP! Turns out this visit was only with the nurse, but when she had to run out of the room no less than three times within 20 minutes to puke, they decided that she definitely needed to see the Dr right then! He decided to put her on Phenergan to help with the nausea. She has lost about 20 pounds in the last few weeks, so the Dr. wasn't pleased with that at all. We're hoping the medication works and she's able to put a little weight on, and stop losing! If she doesn't, then she'll have to start getting some sort of shots at the Dr. office to help her gain a bit of weight. She had these last time, and she hated them, so we're really hoping that the Phenergan helps!

Otherwise the baby looked GREAT! He/She was moving all over the place, had a heart rate of 165 beats per minute, and was measuring right on track! We're sticking with our initial due date of March 3, 2010! Depending on the Dr. she has, she'll be scheduled for the c-section about 1 to 2 weeks before the due date, so our little Leprechaun will be born in February!

Our Slings Arrived!

Ok, so UPS showed up this afternoon, and I'm SO excited! Both of my slings from Kangaroo Korner were delivered and I LOVE them! I think I'm going to like the ring type one the best, but the pouch one is nice too. I'm a big girl, so I was afraid that the slings wouldn't fit or work right for me, but they do fit well! I tried them both on, but alas, nothing to put into them except for my Bengal kitten....HAHA! I thought for sure he was going to scratch the hell out of me not wanting to be any part of this, but he LOVED it! I walked around with him in the ring sling for a good 10 minutes, I even took pictures!

Here is Tucker playing the part of guinea pig: