26 Weeks!

Time seems to be flying by so quick, yet not quick enough! This week was rather uneventful. I went in to work on Wednesday for the day and have otherwise been cleaning and packing my stamp room (so sad!). Our pre-inspection is tomorrow at 9 am so I vacuumed and steam cleaned all the carpets, Drew cleaned all the dog slobber off the walls and cleaned up the kitchen, everything else was still pretty clean from last week! Hopefully our pre-inspection guy will say that there isn't much we need to do (aside from fix the grass) and that will make it easier on us!

I have an OB appointment on Tuesday, my last one in England! I'll get my records to take to my next base and be good to go!

Here's my 26 week pic.. I feel like a whale some days (today was one of those), I have to keep reminding myself that there's a little person in there and that it's not fat, though that seems to be accumulating in places as well. I'll update more after the OB Tuesday!

Repeat Toxoplasmosis Test

One of my OB doctors just phoned.. working on Sunday! They received my repeat Toxoplasmosis results back and everything was negative again, yay! That means that my middle test was probably a false positive and that with the perfect ultrasound results that everything is fine and dandy!

Just wanted to share that little tidbit of info!

Oh, and Cheers to 25 weeks along! 15 weeks and counting until we get to meet our little girl!

Do we have a name??

After lots of thought and going back and forth.. we've narrowed baby bean-ette down to TWO names! There's a lot of meaning and reason behind both names, and we STILL can't decide. We have more time of course but are anxious to call her something besides she, her, and bean!

So, we've settled on Ann for the middle name for sure, and the first name is going back and forth between Lyric and Lindsey. I think in the end we'll probably end up waiting until she makes her appearance and see which she looks more like. Maybe one will fit her better than the other. At least we're getting closer and agree on something, even if it's two things! For now, she'll just go by "L", or "Baby L"!

That said, Drew went to his Dad's 101 class yesterday and he learned all sorts of stuff! He changed his first diaper on a baby doll, and learned how to swaddle. He also learned about how to deal with his hormonal wife and that he isn't alone in the hormonal wife department! He seems to be more and more excited about being a Dad!

On the belly front, Baby L is quite abusive. She kicks and tumbles all day long. Drew can feel her moving regularly now and you can actually see my belly bounce and shake when she's really active. Sometimes it hurts! I'm pretty sure she was using my spinal cord as monkey bars the other day, and whenever she would kick my left leg would reflex.

We're still waiting on a hard copy of orders. It's getting pretty frustrating since we're just waiting around and trying to clean and organize as much as possible. I'm going into work on Wednesday as a locum for the day, just when I thought I was done! At least I'll get an extra days worth of pay, it certainly is welcome! I can't remember if I mentioned this previously, but we got pre-approved on our home loan! We're all set for when we get to LA. We've been looking at houses through the realtor's website and writing down the ones that interest us, so it should just be a matter of finding one that suits us once we get there and getting the paperwork done! Scary and exciting all at the same time!

That's all for now! I hope you are all having a great weekend!

OB appointment

Ok, I had my 24 week appointment today and all is well! I'm measuring a little bit big, but she said it's fine, that after the 1st trimester babies grow at different rates. As long as it stays within 3 inches of how many weeks I am, then it's considered normal (I measured 2" more). The baby was really active during the appointment and was kicking at the Doc when she was measuring and looking for a heartbeat (which was 150-160 bpms).

My blood pressure was good 106/70. The triple screen and my 1 hour glucose test came back normal. According to their records I've gained a total of 12 pounds, and she said that was good. I'm suppose to go back in 2 weeks for a final visit before we leave and to pick up my records to take to the next base. We covered things to do during travel to prevent problems, like drink lots of water and only water on the plane, get up and walk around as much as possible, don't cross my legs, etc. She seems to be very happy with my progress!

I also picked up some luggage with WHEELS today since I'll have to do some traveling on my own, the giant duffel bags I moved here with probably weren't going to cut it while I'm 6 months pregnant. I remember struggling with those bags then, and I wasn't pregnant! Drew's orders still haven't come in, but they should hopefully be here this week and we can start getting everything scheduled. He took Cossie down to the pet shipper today to get measured to verify what size crate they would need to build. Looks like a big one, but he had given us a quote for the larger size just in case so that's good.

I also got the scanner working and the ultrasound pics from Friday scanned, so here they are!

Top half of body

Close up of her little head
Up the nose, and the little mouth! Drew thinks she has his nose, but I think that's gonna be my chin!
Two tiny feet squished together. Will she have my giant big toes??
Hope all is well, and happy Monday!

24 weeks

Can you believe theres only 3 weeks left in the 2nd Trimester?? YOWSA! It seems like this one is flying by, but the first one was soooo slow. So, I'm updating with my 24 week pics today. It was kind of depressing, I went to a PartyLite party last night and was discussing PCS dates with another girl there. I was explaining how our date had gotten pushed back to January, but I'm due in January so we had to apply to get our old date back and she said, "oh! I didn't even know you were pregnant!" I'm thinking gee, I really do look fat! Just when I was getting proud of my baby bump!

So here's the pics, I'm even wearing one of my new maternity tops from Dianne (that's Drew's mom), Thank You!

Well, we're cleaning and going through our stuff just waiting on our orders so we can schedule our housing pick up and everything else. Drew is off this week, so we're getting to hang out as well! Lots to do, and so little time it seems.

I'll update some more tomorrow after I see the OB!

More from yesterday

Okay, now that I've had time to sit, I'll go over yesterdays events!

I picked Drew up at work around 10:15 and we headed to Cambridge to find the hospital. We got there (after a few wrong turns) and got parked. The building wasn't really labeled so we went in and followed the signs to the Rosie Maternity Hospital. I almost lost Drew at the Breast Unit *giggle*, but we finally made it to where we needed to go.

We got checked in at 11:15 and didn't get called into the room until just after noon! Yikes! That's NHS for you I guess. It was pretty scary in the room, there was the specialist, another doctor, and a medical student in there. First we went over my file just so she could clarify results. She said that based on the results alone, she's inclined to say that it was either a false positive on the recent blood work, or a false negative on the original blood work. However, she would do the scan and make sure no abnormalities were found there.

I got up on the table and she started scanning. She did all parts of the brain, which appeared normal, she was talking us through each step of what she was looking at. She started scanning the heart and at that point I started to get light headed like last time. I told her how I was feeling and she had me roll on my left side. She said that it was normal for me to get light headed and it was from lying on my back, and the pressure of the baby on my major blood vessels restricting blood flow. Good to know I'm not just weak sauce! I was still sweating and light headed but the doctor was able to keep scanning while I was lying on my side. She continued to look at the heart, the kidneys, spine, we got to see her nose and mouth, all of her little fingers, even each of the joints, and her little feet. She was picking her nose at one point, silly girl, but we didn't get a picture of that.

This is funny, but kind of gross. About 10 minutes before she finished I was coming around, but still not feeling great, I had this awful urge and I wasn't sure if it was gas, or the big D. Considering I had my rear pointing towards this poor specialist I wasn't about to chance it so I squeezed my cheeks tight with all my might. I had goosebumps, and my bowels were screaming in pain. The doctor noticed that I was grimacing and asked me if I was okay, and I didn't want to tell her I had to do one or the other, so I just creaked out, "I have to pee!" She said, "you're in pain???" And I said, "no, pee!!" I silently mouthed to Drew, "I have to fart!" Let me tell you, the next 5 minutes until I managed to control the urge was painful and long, but it finally passed (the 5 minutes, not the gas). It was pretty embarrassing, but at least I was able to hold it in!

She finished up, another specialist had a quick peek at the brain as well, but the conclusion from both specialists is that everything was 100% normal on the scan, and that we should expect a healthy baby. She said she couldn't rule out any genetic or chromosomal defects, but since my triple screen came back low risk that we should be okay there as well.

We finished up and headed back to Mildenhall so Drew could get back to work. I ran a couple of errands and headed back to Ely to pick up Kat from work so we could go see Wicked. We made it to London just in time for a quick bite to eat with Jackie and her friend Brian, and then headed into the show. It was wonderful!! If anybody has the chance to see it, and hasn't yet, I highly recommend it! It was a great going away gift from my friends, and I'll miss them terribly.

I got a call from Sally Ann (my boss, well, was my boss!) to let me know that the Toxoplasmosis results came back on the original cat that started this whole thing.... negative as well! So that's good to know.

I have my regular 24 week OB appointment on Monday, so I'll let them know the results as well. Hey, tomorrow is my 24 week photo too, so you're getting TONS of posts this month! I also have more ultrasound pics to share, but the scanner is being feisty so I'll get them up as soon as I can.

Talk to you soon!

Temporary Update

I have to run out the door in a few to go meet the girls to head to London to see Wicked. I just wanted to let everybody know that the ultrasound went great, 100% perfect and no abnormalities were detected. The specialist also agrees that it was either a false positive test this time, or a false negative test last time. I'll update with more about the visit tomorrow since I'll be home really late, but I didn't want to leave you all hanging.

P.S. We got some more pics of our baby girl, and guess what!? She picks her nose already! Just like daddy! Heehee.