DOB

So we might/probably/I think we do have a date of birth for our little Mason man. Assuming that things don't go wildly off target, and that scheduling doesn't switch on us, Mason Alexander should be arriving into this world on Friday June 19th. That's 11 weeks away! *Gulp*

I went and had a doctor's appointment this morning and all is well. Mason's heart is beating away in the 130's and he was nice and squirmy for the doctor. Could be because I had to do glucose test part deux, lovely thing about having GD in a prior pregnancy - you get to take the tolerance test twice! Blech. Hopefully I continue to be diabetes free, we will find out in the next few days. Then the doctor brought up the idea of scheduling, which I had been meaning to do myself. Since my original due date was the 26th(ish) we are going ahead with things exactly a week prior to that. Shouldn't be an issue as the little bean has been measuring ahead by a week anyways. Just crazy to think that I can mark it on the calendar now, and really feel the heat of the countdown. Perhaps it's time to actually get serious about putting together the nursery?

In less pleasant news, I will be off on a plane again tomorrow. This time for an even longer duration (with a layover!) to go and visit my ailing grandmother in North Carolina. With my mother and Skyler in tow. While 28 weeks pregnant. Can you feel the impending doom? I can. This in the end will be a good thing, it will give my grandma a chance to finally meet Skyler and (sort of) Mason. Also considering that travelling of this sort really won't be in the cards for us for about another year... who knows what can happen in a year. My grandma has been healthy for all her eighty some years, up until lately. I would hate to think that I left things too late all because of some temporary discomfort. Unfortunately that discomfort starts tomorrow at 8:30 am and won't stop until sometime around midnight next Monday. *Sigh*. Anybody familiar with the use of benadryl on toddlers for extended periods of flight?

As the belly grows - 25 weeks

Little Mason man will be twenty five weeks (gestationally speaking) tomorrow. That means only fifteen more weeks(ish) until he enters into this side of the world. I can't believe how quickly the last few weeks have flown by. It scares me to think how quickly we will now move to thirty and *gulp* beyond. I have definitely popped, I know this both by my own observation and the willingness of the general public to now make their own observations. I have been receiving a lot more comments from strangers lately, mostly women asking if I know what I am having. Though I did meet a lovely homeless man while I was parking my car today who inquired if it would be rude to assume I was expecting.

We also had a doctor visit today, all is going well and I am measuring right along if not a bit ahead. Technically I am measuring at 26 weeks, but again I am just going to keep sticking with the 26th of June as it's too much hassle to keep switching. Mason's little heart was ticking along at 150, he gave the doctor a run for her money as he was being a squirmy little bug and she had to keep readjusting to get an accurate reading. As Andy has noted, and I have noticed too, Mason is much more of a mover than Skyler was in utero. Skyler pulled lots of kicks and jabs, and by the end of it I seemed to constantly have a foot lodged in my ribs. Mason seems much more interested in full on body movements, lots of stretching,flipping, and scooting around. I also found out that thus far I have accomplished the astonishing feat of only gaining 13 pounds. This is practically a miracle if you compare it to the weight I have gained by this point with Skyler, you could pretty much triple that number and it would be accurate. Now if I can just keep it up...

Here's the belly:

Cleared!

Well some more good news on the Bean front, I just got a call from my doctor's office and they already had the results back from my quad screen. All clear! Strangely this time around I wasn't even really thinking, or worrying, about these results. Everything in general is more laid back about this pregnancy, by necessity. I recall being much more hung up awaiting the results from this screen when pregnant with the MR. Fortunately even if had been a worrier I wouldn't have had long to dwell on it, they got back to me pretty fast. So yay healthy baby!

Also here's some proof that our kiddo is slowly on the mend from his ills. Poor bug continues to have an awful cough, but he is gradually improving in mood and is almost back to sleeping through the night. Long warm baths make most people feel better though.

Catching up

Sorry for the lack in posting, I have been sick, tired, and generally uninspired this last week. No pictures for this one either, we all have been sick (with several colds) the last two weeks and none of us has been picture-worthy as of late. To play catch-up and help me feel a little less behind here is what's going on, in list form to make it easier.

-My grandma was doing really well for about two days and then she went downhill again. Her circulation pretty much disappeared in her right leg and yesterday they did have to amputate below her knee. This has been a big shock for my family as this grandma has been the very picture of health for quite some time, and lead a very active and independent life. This is going to mean some big adjustments, especially for her.

-We started out last Friday with a cold for me, and then Saturday the mister caught it. We spend the rest of the weekend miserable and snotty and only started feeling well again around Monday. Then BL brought home a new cold and, hooray, now we all can share! Blech.

-BL's first week of work went really well. Exhausting, but well. He really thinks he is going to enjoy this line of work, but it is taking a lot of brainpower and hard work to take on all the new information and tasks being given to him.

-Daycare, well yesterday was MR's start back to his second week of daycare. Monday and Tuesdays he will be spending with my mom, the rest of the week he goes in with us to daycare. BL finally got to drop him off today for the first time, and reported back that MR was a little upset but was showing him around and said hello to the caregivers. Small steps here, but hopefully we are getting closer to better.

-Little Bean had another check-up yesterday and I am happy to report that despite my feeling like a bloated balloon I have only gained two pounds so far! Two!! I think that by this time last time I had gained about twenty, hopefully experience does help a bit. Especially since I am really hoping to avoid the gestational diabetes this time around, which I get to test early for next appointment (yuck). But to counter that, next appointment (Feb. 11th) we will hopefully get to see what we are having. I am really excited for this because I think that with this I will really be able to start preparing for this baby, especially knowing which direction we are headed. The Bean itself is doing well with a very healthy heartbeat of 160.

So you can see, some ups and downs in the list but generally I am hoping we are on the road to normalcy - or our version of it.

Little Bean check-up

I had my first official appointment with my new OB today, and things went well. It will take some time to get used to my new doctor and assess my comfort with her, but so far so good. Everything is well with the little bean, we did get to hear the heart beat today. Somewhere in the 160 range. It was reassuring to hear them in there, the weird thing is that now that I am feeling better (KNOCK ON WOOD) I almost forget that I am pregnant sometimes and the reassurance is nice. Of course there are still obvious signs, mood swings for one, and I am definitely still pooched out there. It's just that without the constant haze of nausea/exhaustion and prior to feeling any little kicks and punches... it's really a pregnancy grey area. My due date got switched, again, I am back to being due on June 26th. So that puts me at a little over 12 weeks now. I will post an updated belly shot for week 13. For now I am just glad that things are safely under way.

Fixed

Sorry for the lovely negative post previous, I just so rarely have time and/or energy to post lately and when I finally sat down to remedy that... well Blogger poo'd on it. Bleh. Anways, things seem to be in working order now, so I have resolved to get over it.

Thanksgiving around here went really well, we had my parents over to our house and BL cooked. Have I ever mentioned that he is a fabulous cook, and he makes me yummy dinners every night? I am a lucky lady, especially since I am not very culinarily inclined. Anyways, he had the honor of cooking up the bird this year and it turned out great, see:

So that went well, though the kiddo was a little overwhelmed from the big day and didn't have much of an appetite for the fare we put in front of him. Guess he is more a chicken guy.

Also, to update from a few posts ago: the doctor's appointment went well. I didn't get to hear the heartbeat as it was mostly a history appointment and they generally don't like to use the doppler until after ten weeks or so. I was a little disappointed by this, but the rest of the appointment went really well and I ended up leaving feeling reassured. Since we moved I had to find a new OB-GYN down here, thus far I am pretty pleased with my selection. I will be going back for another appointment in a little less than two weeks and am actually looking forward to that. Things have been going relatively smooth in the baby-brewing, my nausea really only seems to rear around certain foods (and smells) and the exhaustion has really toned down. All in all I can't ask for much more.

Oh my, oh my, oh my ovaries

The last few days have been pretty unpleasant, and for an entirely new reason than our other recent discomforts. I have been suffering a pain in the area that I can only assume is my ovaries, I can't say I have a perfect picture in my head as to the exact location of those little guys. But if I had to make an educated guess, my left ovary has been killing me. It started out as a general discomfort, the whole of my lower abdomen seemed uncomfortable and bloated. Things escalated the next day to the point that I became concerned enough to concede to a trip to Urgent Care. I am pretty conservative in seeking out medical care, it's not that I have any distrust or dislike of doctors themselves. I just don't care for the hassle of seeing a doctor when generally things get better with a little time and rest. So for me to actually go to Urgent Care was pretty unusual, I really was in pain. We saw the doctor with relatively little to-do and he seemed to think I had suffered a ruptured ovarian cyst. I wasn't too surprised to hear this, I had came to the same conclusion in self-diagnosing via the internet. He prescribed some vicodin, an anti-inflammatory and an ultrasound to be performed the following day to ensure nothing else was amiss. I went home and dutifully took my doses, the vicodin knocked me out within minutes. Things would have been fine if they had continued like this, unfortunately this was not the case. Me and vicodin don't mix apparently, as became violently apparent the next day after another dose and two upchucks later. I was miserable. I still had the pain in my ovaries but I refused to take any more pain medication because of what they were doing to my stomach. Of course I wasn't sure at the time that this was the reason for my stomach revolting, so we went back to the Urgent Care, which then sent me to the emergency room, which ultimately led us to spend nigh on five hours waiting just to be told that my ultrasound showed nothing out of the ordinary. Thank you, goodbye. I'm still feeling pretty uncomfortable, though at least today I was lucid and not losing my lunch. I am reassured in knowing atleast that things down there are all in fine working order. BL, who is well aware of my general distaste for receiving medical care, told me that if only my other ills were tied in to my reproductive health I would have seen them taken care of long ago. Sad but true, there are very few things on my person that I value as much as my uterus and it's tagalongs. I think the whole experience was just scary in the fact that I was worried that something seriously wrong had happened down there. For now I will just be thinking happy ovary thoughts and self-medicating with some tried-and-true tylenol.

And in this corner

We had the one year check-up today, and MR braved it out as best he could. He didn't even notice the first shot, the second one he definitely did. He was also kind enough to take a huge poo right before the doctor came in. I am sure that was pleasant for the next occupants of that room. He's doing well though, still a big healthy man impressing the nurses with his size (and hair). Here are the stats:

Height: 34 (almost three feet tall!)

Weight: 26.5 lbs

Head: 19

I'm a big boy now?