The Big Reveal

I FINALLY have the nursery cleaned up enough that I felt I could share pictures. It seems the nursery (a.k.a. the bonus room) seems to be home to random things that need to get put back into the attic.  (It makes sense, since we have attic space on either side.)

But, today!  Today, it's cleaned up and ready for it's time in the spotlight.

Want to take a tour?

Here's the view when you first walk in.  See my little helper?

 Closer view of the wall/window

 The changing table

 Um...This is why he's in a big boy bed now. ;) 

 This is actually where the rocking chair will go once the baby is actually sleeping in here. This cradle, while beautiful and antique (was E's grandpa's), is a pain in the hiney to put together.  I'm doubting she'll even sleep in it. *sigh* 

View from the bed. 

( I'm pretty sure Isaac exceeds the weight limit of that cradle.  Seeing as one of the supports popped out.)

 The crib.  Minus my helper.

 The Ultrasound wall. :)

Bonus picture: not really part of the nursery, but still stinkin' cute.  Newborn diapers.

There are still a few things I need to do.  In fact, I bought a growth chart, just today, that needs to be hung up.  Oh, and the simple little quilt I need to finish start to go on the bed. (ha! simple!  help!) 

I hope you enjoyed the tour. 

Two different worlds

Tomorrow, at 1:00 pm CST, E and I will head to the OBGYN and have our anatomy scan done for this little baby bit growing in my uterus.  Scheduling the first appointment after lunch, in hopes that we can avoid a long waiting room experience.  (I can't believe I have to wait until 1, though. I may drive myself insane...)

As I type this, I'm actually praying.  And listening to worship music.  And crying.

Why?

Because I am stuck between two different worlds. 

World number 1: So excited to get to see our baby bit tomorrow.  So excited to hopefully find out if it is a he or a she in there.  So excited to see him or her move around on the monitor, and get to take pictures home to keep.

But, there's another world I live in. 

World number 2: I'm scared something might be wrong.  I know what anatomy scans are for, and its not finding out the gender of the baby.  Its for finding abnormalities, birth defects, problems with the baby or with me.  I know, all too well, that things don't always go as planned.  In fact, they rarely do.  I have known too many women who go into their scans with hopes and dreams, and come out crushed with a harsh reality of dispair.

Honestly, it is hard to live in either world for long.  If I try to dwell on "is the baby a boy? or a girl?" I am quickly reminded of world 2.  If I dwell on the later, well, it does no one any good.  Especially me. It makes me jumpy, depressed, worried, and anxious.

I know this is not a new experience to those who have lost babies.  In fact, I remember quite clearly the way I felt last time around.


There's a balance somewhere there. I know it. Which is why I'm praying. And listening to worship music. And crying.

I'm listening and watching this song, The More I Seek You.  It is one of my favorites that we sing at church.


My favorite lyric: "I melt in your peace.  It's overwhelming."

May I be overwhelmed by His peace.  Today, and tomorrow, and the next day.  No matter what the results of tomorrow are.

6 days in the dark

Day 1: The storms
Wednesday morning O went to school on a two hour delay due to a Tornado warning early in the morning..  A's school was on schedule.  I had a few errands to run, so I sent both of them off, with a plan to keep an eye on the weather and an ear on the radio. I finished the things I needed to do, and went to eat with my mother in law.  It was sunny and warm when we were seated.  By the time our food came, the storms were back.  We ended up getting stuck in the restaurant for over a hour, waiting for the rain to let up so we could leave to pick up the kids.  Got home, found out that a tornado had just missed MIL's house by about a mile.

MIL calls to tell me that they don't have power.  I invite them over for dinner.  The storms start again.  I quickly finish dinner, afraid that our power might go out.  Set the table, tornado sirens go off, turn on the tv and see that it is indeed for our area.  All 7 of us head to the bathroom- where the power goes out, and, consequently, the sirens stop at the same time.

We finish eating, send off MIL and FIL, and try to get the troops ready for bed.  Another tornado is heading our way (which we know because of the radio.  sirens still aren't working.) and we get back into the bathroom.  Finally head to bed.  O isn't having any of that.  She has anxiety attacks all night, constantly asking us questions every 15 minutes.  I am pretty confident she didn't sleep until well past 3 am. 

Day 2: The day after
We hear on the radio that a tornado hit TVA itself. Initial report is that power may not be restored for 2-4 days.  We thought about traveling to MI to stay with my parents, but decided that 2-4 days wasn't worth the drive.  Plus, gas is expensive.

We head to Lowe's to get stuff to do E's projects around the house, and see this just around the corner:

We hang out around our house.  We play with the neighbors.  We hear about the crazy lines to get gas and food in Athens (which has power and is about 15 minutes from us.)  We have an impromptu get together with the neighbors to grill all of the meat that is going to go bad before tomorrow.  The weather is beautiful!

E and I play several rounds of Yahtzee.  Unfortunately, O still has issues going to sleep.  Still has anxiety induced nightmares.

Day 3:  We're running out of food. 
We have peanut butter bread again.  The stuff in our fridge has been moved to our freezer in efforts to keep it cold.  We decide to head to Athens to try to find something to eat for lunch, and find some gas for the IL's generator. 

On the way there, the normal "route" we take to get there is full of traffic.  We go a back way.  We are shocked at the amount of damage to houses and fences.  Not to mention a field that was completely full of Derbies.  Amazing. 

Almost all of the gas stations have super long lines, so we eat at McD's first, then try to find gas.  We get lucky and find a gas station that we only had to wait at for 10 minutes.

We head home the normal route, and see this: 

Complete devastation.  Feeling blessed and a lot less "inconvenienced". 

Weather is still beautiful.  We have dinner with our neighbors, who kindly let us use their gas stove top to cook some noodles and sauce.

E and I play Yahtzee again.  Its been quite fun spending evenings with him like this.

Day 4: We're out of here!
We head to Nashville for the day.  Going to use our last day of our zoo membership, and hopefully visit some friends. On the way there, we stop to go to the bathroom.  O is washing her hands and she says "Mommy!  Mommy!  They have HOT water here!!!"  Yep.  Its a novelty now.

The weather is beautiful again, and we have a wonderful time at the zoo.  We find some where to have a HOT meal.  Then, we head to Franklin, TN.

Franklin is having a festival, so we hang out there for a bit.  However, the festival was too crowded to be fun, so we then headed to my friend Raechel's house for a visit, and a hot shower.
We have a wonderful visit, and I have a wonderfully hot shower.  The kids got to make new friends and ride in a super cool bike.

We had to leave, in my opinion, too soon.  I always love visiting with these folks, but we had to get back before curfew. (Which was dusk to dawn for our community)

E and I play Pay Day.  We both commented how we haven't played that game in years.  Very fun. 

O finally sleeps well and only wakes up once.  I, however, am still not sleeping well.  I miss my sound machine to drown out the sleep noises of dear E, barking dogs, etc.

Day 5: More feelings of gratitude

We head to McDonald's again- this time for breakfast.  Everyone is pretty sick of peanut butter bread.  Especially me.  We decide to go past a friend's old subdivision (they moved to AK a few years ago) on our way.

I've never seen anything like this.  Ever.  Only a few houses are left standing.  Houses very similar to ours.  This tornado hit only 4 miles from our house. 

(I know its hard to see, but this rubble used to be houses!)

We start to run out of undies and socks.  So, I wash a load of laundry in the bath tub.  Since that went so well, I decided to do one more load that we could hang outside to dry. 

Its also the day that I clean out the fridge and freezer.  We had a few things survive in my IL's deep freezer, but we lost everything else.  But, in comparison to losing a house, I'll be happy to replace these things.  They're just that: things. 

In a positive light: my fridge and freezer haven't been this clean since we moved into our house 3 years ago.

We go out to eat with the IL's for dinner.  Mexican.  Yum!

E decides to go to work in a temporary set up office they have there.  He leaves around 7.  A starts throwing up around 8.  Not really the most fun thing to do/clean up in the dark.

Day 6: The power comes on

We heard that Costco had power, so we head there.  No samples, of course, but we get out of the house, and even get a cookie in the process.  While we are there, my OB calls to ask if I want to come in for my appointment (they were closed on my original appointment day because of the power issue, too.) Since we are near there, we bring the whole crew.

While I'm back in the office, E takes the kids to the park.  The nurse can't find Baby Bitt's heart beat with the Doppler.  I tell her my last scan showed my placenta in the front.  She goes to get my dr., who, on the way in, has to run to the hospital for a delivery.  So, she calls in a NP.  The NP tries for over 15 minutes to find the heart beat with no success.  (I'm not scared, or worried.  With time, and much effort, I can find it at home.)  They whisk me off to an ultrasound.

At this point, I'm super excited!  I'm hoping they can maybe peek at the gender.  Well, I find out we're having a baby............. 

Skeletor!

Seriously, though, the ultrasound tech isn't the sweetest person ever.  She has the wand on my belly for a minute-tops.  Didn't even try to get a good picture for me. (though, You can see the skull.  Thus the name, Skeletor!)  I keep peaking at the picture, wondering if those three lines down at the end of the abdomen are parts or leg bones. Still neat to see my baby again.

We get home and put Zeke to bed.  I'm putting the dishes away when A notices that the lamp is on.  Hurrah!  We have power! 

I's light is on in his room, so we turn that off.  The first thing I do is take a nap.  With my sound machine.  Ahhh...  Pure bliss.

Feeling extremely thankful for electricity, and, more importantly, a house that went undamaged.  (Thank you, God, for keeping up safe!)

The things on my mind

Two things have been prevalent on my mind this weekend.  One, is pretty minor, but comes with weird fears.  The other, well, its sort of major, I guess.

The first- I have my first dental "work" appointment in over 10 years tomorrow morning.  I have 3 cavities that have to be filled. Unfortunately, I've put them off for a while, (one time I cancelled because I chickened out, the next time because the RE didn't want me to have any work done until I was out of my first trimester. Which, as a total aside, I will be out of tomorrow. woot!)  I have this weird fear that its going to hurt really bad.  I mean, I've had stuff done before.  In fact, one of the cavities is simply a place where an old filling fell out.  But, its been so long that a little fear has set in, I guess.  I have even been dreaming about it the last few nights.  Logically, I know its not a big deal.  Emotionally, I have a sick feeling in my tummy.  I don't want to go!

The second- I have my Nuchal Fold scan on Tuesday morning at 11:30 CST.  I wasn't really all that nervous about it until yesterday.  I started to get a little concerned that it seems like I haven't grown much, belly wise, in several weeks.  It seemed like I bloomed rather quickly in the uterus department, and now there hasn't been much change.  Of course, I'm concerned that this means there is a problem.  I'm sure its fine.  (again, the logic part of me tries to reason with the emotional part.)  But, there's always this little voice in my head that says things can always go wrong.  The trick is trying to take that little voice and make the best of my life, versus sulking in fear.  Right?

Anyway, if any of you feel so inclined to say a quick prayer for me for my NT scan on Tuesday, that would be so great.  As for the dentist tomorrow, I plan to take a muscle relaxer before I go. (just teasing... I think.)

A day full of baby news!

I'll start off with my appointment, it was extremely loooooooooong. I got into my u/s right away. got to see baby boy, but not much of his face. He was down pretty low and was super content to have his hand and arm around his face pretty much the whole entire time. The u/s tech was getting frustrated with him since she needed to measure his noggin and he wouldn't let her get a good picture. She said that she measured generously and he was measuring in at 6lbs 4 oz (which is in the 50% for 36 weeks gestation). She also said that I had a good bit of amniotic fluid. On the higher end of the normal range. Even higher if you consider that most people's fluid levels are much lower at 36 weeks. Let's just hope my water doesn't break at home, right?

In case we were a little fuzzy on the gender, (which we were NOT!) here's another money shot!


Turns out that last week, my OB was being "generous" when she said that I was 1/10 of the way there. Turns out, I was only a "finger tip" dilated last week. I was 1.5 to 2cm today! Now, we just wait and hope my body continues this lovely pattern. :)

Now, onto the most exciting news in my opinion: one of my favorite people gave birth to a beautiful baby girl this morning. My friend, Devan, went in at 5 to be induced. They didn't start the pitocin until after 6:30. The dr. came in at 9:15 to break the water. Baby girl, Lila, was born at 10:51. Here's a picture of the sweet babe.

I just missed watching miss Lila come into the world. I had an ultrasound at my dr. (thankfully, the hospital and my OB's office are connected!! I got to visit a little bit before my appointment and after my appointment before going to pick up the kids.) and had to leave about 25 minutes before she was born.

My friend Devan rocked this birth, though! All natural, pain med free, and that's WITH pitocin folks! She said it hurt pretty bad. But, luckily, or unluckily for her, there would've been no time for any pain medication anyway. As it was, the nurse delivered baby Lila! I told her that I can only dream of a birth that fast for my next babe.

More questions than answers

Well, I was fully prepared for two scenarios this morning at my ultrasound.

1. Everything would look great. We'd come back at 8 weeks for another scan.
2. Things wouldn't look good and we'd go home and grieve.

What I wasn't prepared for was: more questions than answers. First of all, I should mention that Dr. H's office is calling me 5w 5d pregnant, and not the 5w 2d (or 3d) pregnant that I calculated. He said their office doesn't go by Last Menstrual Period. He said that they go by your LH surge. Since they know exactly when that was (since I took the trigger and did all of that blood work) they put me at that date.

Dr. H said that between 5.5 weeks and 6 weeks, they expect to see a gestational sac, a yolk sac, and a fetal pole. They saw the first two, which measure right on at 5w 5d, but not the last. See, this stuff developes with in days. So, it could be that we are just a day early. OR, it could mean that the baby is not growing appropriately.

Here's the game plan. We wait. (I've mentioned how NOT patient I am, right?) I had blood work done today to see if my numbers have risen at all since my last draw. If they have, then we wait again until monday to do another scan. if they dropped, well, I'm sure you know the conclusion there.

Just when I thought I was having an "easier" pregnancy this time around. I've just been brought back to my knees, begging God to keep my baby safe.

Before I leave you with too much gloom, I'd just like to take a moment to say this: Since having my children, this is the FIRST ultrasound I have made it to. It still feels like a miracle. Even though I didn't hear a beating heart, and there was no fetal pole, I saw my baby on that screen. Its itty bitty body being formed in my womb. God knows all about my baby right now. He knows if its going to make it, he knows if its a girl or boy, and he knows this child by name. He has formed it in my womb.

Here's a picture of my miracle.