LA: 13 Month Update

I wasn't necessarily going to hold myself to getting monthly updates after the first year because things might start to get a bit crazy around these parts, but so much has changed with LA in the past month that I thought it deserved a post about it.

 

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You weighed 17 pounds at an appointment for URI just after the first of the year.

 

Your vocabulary is getting cuter by the day! You babble a LOT, and I am convinced that you said your first word - DaDa- on 1/12/14. Daycare has also commented on how vocal you have been lately.

 

Your 3rd tooth (top middle right) popped through around January 7th! By the looks of your gums, it doesn't look like the left one will be too far behind either. SO cute!

Still sleeping like a rockstar - on weekends it is usually 11-12 hours. You are starting to not need your usual morning nap soon after you wake and have a bottle, and wait more until 11 or 12 to lay down and usually that's the only nap you take on days we are home with you. On daycare days, you usually sleep from 12:30-2:30 and occasionally get by without an evening nap when you get home. We have been trying to keep you up more and put you to bed earlier since you are sleeping so well at night and it has been working pretty well.

 

You are a fairly good eater, especially if you can do it yourself. You typically insist on spreading all of your food out over your tray/floor before you begin, and then you will start eating. Daycare says that's what you do there, too. You mostly eat a Paleo diet (not necessarily intentionally, but it's healthy and actually what you eat the best). You will occasionally eat beef, but are mostly a fan of chicken. We get lots of rotisserie chickens and steam veggies and then a fruit when you are done with those. Not a big fan of potatoes at all and spit them out before even trying a bite. You LOVE bananas (usually eat a whole one these days), strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, nectarines and mangos. You get pancakes or waffles with butter and sugar free syrup and a fruit for breakfast on weekends for the extra calories and usually eat those pretty well. You also eat broccoli and peas the best and usually green beans.

 

You have also gotten your first (gentle) hand slaps and scoldings this past month while sitting in your high chair. You absolutely insist on throwing food over the right side of your high chair which was cute at first as it is in the exact same spot every time, but is now not ok and something we are having to discipline before you get carried away. At first you weren't sure what "NO!" meant and would just look at us and do it again, but the past week or so you give a very short, forced, fake cry that lasts 1.5 seconds. Usually just long enough for us to start laughing at you. After you had done it several times and we discovered you were starting to make it a habit of doing, I looked at Daddy and said "Slap her hand!" because NO wasn't enough. He looked at me and said "You really want me to to?" like he was hoping if he distracted me long enough I wouldn't make him because it was obvious he wasn't ready to do that yet. It was pretty cute. Let's just say you do not get more than a stern "NO" from your Daddy.

 

You are getting better and better at walking, but still not very sturdy. You constantly want to be on the go....I just wish you would learn to do it yourself because you are getting very restless! You also have started to become a lot more active - you love to sit on our laps and throw yourself backward, constantly leaning to look at and watch people, spin circles on the floor like crazy, and love to be carried and played with upside down. You are seeming less and less like a baby every day, and are getting really fun to play with and tease.

 

Your hair is growing by the day. I've been saying this for months, but really, it is getting long and even curly! You get compliments on it daily. Your aunts, who have been gone for 3 weeks, came back yesterday and noticed right away how much it has grown. You wake up in the mornings with the most adorable bed head.

 

You have also become quite the Mommy's girl this past week. Up until this point, you have been pretty partial to both of us equally. Your Daddy isn't crazy about this, and as my head swells his heart is just a little sad. (I reassure him, it's only a matter of time before it changes. Girl changes her mind a lot!). You even cry every now and then when I hand you off and have been known to be fussy and then be just fine when I get you. He made some comment one day like "That really sucks. I put a lot into this." It was pretty cute. :) If he wasn't such a great Daddy, he wouldn't care so much. And I love that about him.

You still suck that left index finger constantly. It has even had some broken blood vessels on it recently - you must suck pretty hard!

We absolutely LOVE the time of night after your bath before bedtime. You are so chill, and love to just sit on our lap, eat your bottle, and play with Daddy and I. You are so sweet, and are even starting to be a bit more cuddly. We both live for that time of night. After we finally force ourselves to put you to bed, we take you to the beginning of the hallway and you wave good night to whoever is in the living room. We have been working on blowing kisses but you aren't convinced you need to do it on your own yet - you just think it's funnier when we do it with you. We then say prayers with you and lay you down in your bed where you almost always do not even make a peep before you fall right to sleep. However you have been known to screech in there (even an hour after laying you down) or at times we can hear you doing your buckin' bronco, and we just smile. You love that crib so much. And as much as I wish you were a cuddler, I am also thankful that you are such a rockstar sleeper.

You are becoming much more interested in reading books finally. You love books with textures on the pages and touch them all immediately now. Your attention span, however, is still very short.

Cannot tell you enough, sweet Landry, how much my heart just swells with love for you. You are the best part of our day. Thank you for being such a sweet, little girl.
 

Baby #2: 28 Weeks

How far along? 28 weeks
Total weight gain: 8 pounds...still  (last time I was at 18 by now...starting to worry about this)
Maternity clothes? Still wearing all pre-pregnancy pants but adding in a few maternity tops - same as last week
Stretch marks? None to speak of, yet.
Sleep: Just getting more difficult to roll over or change positions these days. Right at 28 weeks, for 2 nights in a row, woke up in the middle of the night with really intense contractions that lasted 2 hours the first night and about 1 the second night.
Best moment this week: Just enjoying another weekend with Big Sister. She is more and more fun by the day, and I am just soaking up every minute of it!
Miss anything? Sweets. Been trying to limit them especially this week with the upcoming 3 hour OGTT hanging over my head.
Baby is the size of an: Eggplant
Movement: Quite a bit! And really at all times of day/night. Let's just hope you get those sleep/wake cycles figured out and aligned with mine in the next 12 weeks.
Food cravings: Ice water.
Anything making you queasy or sick: Mexican food.
Gender: Still thinkin' girl!
Name: Girl is a go, and boy might be pretty much there too. Still keeping options open, but if Babe was born tomorrow it would have a name either way!
Labor Signs: N/A
Symptoms: More heartburn, and contractions. Starting to feel heavy in my lower abdomen.
Things People Say: Just more guesses that Babe is a girl.
Belly Button in or out? Definitely an outtie, but hasn't started showing through shirts yet.
Wedding rings on or off? On.
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy. Content. Soaking up every minute.
Looking forward to: Getting the 3 hour OGTT over with. I don't know why I stress out about that SO much, but I do.

Love and Prayers in Week 29, Sweet Babe!!

Baby #2: 3 Hour OGTT

On January 13, 2014 I had the 3 hour OGTT. Got to drink the fruit punch flavored drink, and got it down better and faster then I thought I would. I was feeling shaky and was starving on my way to the appointment, so I was nervous how it was going to go down.  I would be ok if I never had to do that again. I was nervous about failing this test because I have had several episodes where it felt like my sugars had plummeted and was shaky and ready to pass out...always when I needed to eat.

Here are the results of my test:

Fasting: 79  (had to be <95 to take test)

-- 1 hour: 167 (passed it - had to be less than 180)
-- 2 hour: 155 (UGG - cutoff was 155, so technically it was a fail and got to proceed with the next hour just to be sure it didn't spike)
-- 3 hour: 109 (passed it - had to be less than 140)

So RELIEVED that I passed, and that it is over.

While I was in with the nurse, I had mentioned that I had had pretty severe contractions during the middle of the night for the past few nights and considering that with my little weight gain I was wondering if Dr. Martin would be concerned. She mentioned it to him and he ended up coming in to see me. He recommended that we do a fetal fibronectin test which if positive would mean there was a 50/50 chance I would go into labor in the next 2 weeks. I told him that if he wasn't concerned about it all then I wasn't either, and I wasn't pushing anything but just wanted him to know. He said that he would sleep better tonight knowing what that test showed and definitely recommended it, so that's what we did. If it was negative then he would be less worried about all the contractions that I have been having. If positive, we would likely do a couple rounds of steroid injections to speed up baby's development.

Update: Fetal fibronectin came back negative, which is a huge relief. So no more worries about preterm labor, at least in the very near future.

Thankfully my cervix was closed so that was reassuring. Even though my belly was measuring at 27.5 weeks, he also recommended that we do an ultrasound in the next week or two to check things also. Needless to say, it was a difficult morning when coupled with the OGTT that I was already stressed about.

Babe's heart rate was 140...always nice to hear that.

After I got done with the 3 hour test, I went and met Dan and Landry in the lab for some labwork that Landry needed to have done. I have been dreading it for a month now and today was the day. She tolerated it like a champ; it was definitely harder on me than it was on her. I am also very, very thankful for her Daddy. I had played over every possible scenario in my head, and finally decided after much deliberation that I was not going to be able to go back with her to have it done. I've always done well with shots and everything and am not normally a 'hyper' mom, but this was too much. Daddy never thought twice about going back with her. All he said was that it wasn't going to be fun, but he was taking her. I was so thankful for that. I needed him to say that. After it was over, he brought her out and she cried for just a minute after seeing me and then was quickly back to her happy, smiling self. I cannot imagine not having him to do this parenting thing with. He is my rock more than I know, and I couldn't be more thankful. I also couldn't be more proud of my daughter, the champ. Such a sweet, sweet girl.

It has been a long day, and I will definitely be glad when it is over.

Another Crazy Dream?

On the Eve of the official 27th week mark, I woke up and told Daddy that I had a dream that really shook me up...literally, because it felt so real. I just briefly told him how I had had a dream that there was an earthquake and it felt so real. It was just one of those dreams that was so vivid and I couldn't stop thinking about it the rest of the day. (Just like my Tiger Woods dream from last pregnancy).

 

The next day, I got a text from Grandpa Deaver that said "Did you feel the earthquake?" I immediately got chills and called him back because I seriously thought he was teasing me or something. That or it was some strange coincidence. He said that he wasn't joking with me and that he heard on the radio that there was an earthquake near Wymore that people in Lincoln actually felt too. After a little research, he was definitely right and it measured 2.9 on the Richter scale. Crazy!

 

Several days later, I am still creeped out about it, because I really believe that I honestly did feel the earthquake, but just wrote it off in my sleep as a dream. Although I am pretty sure that my mind must have amplified it a little bit because I swear I did feel our house shake pretty good.

 

Daddy has been teasing me about it nonstop. Apparently there was a touchdown at a football game this past week that actually registered on the Richter scale so he was making fun of me, asking if I felt that one too. Funny. :) I also dish it back and tell him that it really is true, that he CAN sleep through an earthquake.

Baby #2: 1 Hour OGTT

On 1/8/14, I had my 1 hour glucose screening test. I ended up failing it with a 166 (less than 140 needed to pass). I was pretty bummed about it, but having been through it before, I tried to keep perspective. So the dreaded 3 hour one was scheduled for a week later.

 

I had an appointment with Dr. Martin after the test and it was pretty short. Really all he did was measure my belly and listened to heart tones. Belly measured at 26.5 weeks and heart rate was 145. Weight gain only +2 from 21 week visit, blood pressure was 116/72, and no sugar or protein in the urine. So far everything looks good!

Nothing else to really note for now. More to come in a week with lots of prayers in the meantime.

Baby #2: 26 Weeks

~ 26 Week Belly Bump ~

 

How far along? 27 weeks...this is flying by!
Total weight gain: 8 pounds
Maternity clothes? Still wearing all pre-pregnancy pants but adding in a few maternity tops
Stretch marks? Nope!
Sleep: Can't complain too much. Haven't had to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night for probably at least 7 weeks now.
Best moment this week: Nothing too exciting this week - Big sister came home early from daycare on Friday with a fever and has been sick pretty much all weekend.
Miss anything? Wine. Been really craving a trip to a winery with friends.
Baby is the size of a: Rutabaga
Movement: I would definitely say this baby is more active than LA was. I remember not feeling kicks more than feeling kicks with LA and this one seems to be more constant, which is nice. Starting to have movement up in the ribcage now also, as well as increased heartburn. You also seem a bit feisty - when something rests on my belly, such as big sister, you almost always kick back!
Food cravings: We have had waffles on my new waffle maker every single day we have been home since Christmas. Other than that, probably just food in general these days. And ice water. That's been a given both pregnancies! Also, Jimmy Johns and Runza have sounded good for the entirety of both pregnancies. Not surprised that Big Sister also loves Runzas!
Anything making you queasy or sick: Mexican food.
Gender: Still thinkin' girl!
Name: Girl is for sure, boy is not. Might be making progress here though!
Labor Signs: N/A
Symptoms: More frequent heartburn, although still not going to complain about it at all compared to last time. Started having to go to the bathroom a lot more during the day now. Braxton Hicks are also a lot less frequent and severe than they were from November to December which I attribute to stress and over-doing it. Overall, can't complain!!
Things People Say: A few girls from work in our Lasik department think that babe is a boy because of how low I am carrying it (first time ever being told that!). Other than that, most people vote girl. Friends still cannot believe that we really haven't found out the gender yet (they must know me or something?).
Belly Button in or out? Definitely an outtie, but hasn't started showing through shirts yet.
Wedding rings on or off? On.
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy. Content. Soaking up every minute.
Looking forward to: Getting the dreaded OGTT over this week and having another doctor appointment. We have only seen our doctor 3 times this pregnancy. I have never had a Doppler (other than the 2 ultrasounds they did) and he has never measured my belly. I appreciate not having to go in there but every 8-9 weeks, but at the same time it would be nice to have a little monthly reassurance. Anxious to see how I am measuring, because I am a lot bigger than I was last time at this time. Also hoping to get one more peek of Babe's face on ultrasound before he/she gets too big and too far down to see.

Love and Prayers in Week 28, Baby Matthes!!