18 weeks

So I've been waiting and waiting to feel some baby karate in there. There have been a few times when I thought I may have felt it but nothing for sure until today. I sat on the couch curled up to the coffee table playing around on my laptop and I'm pretty sure I felt some break dancing. Apparently this little one doesn't want to be squished. I'm 18 weeks today. This is all starting to feel a bit real. In 8 days we will (fingers crossed) know whether we have a baby boy McCabe or a baby girl McCabe. I really want to surprise the kids with the gender. They'll be in school when we find out so I'm considering throwing a mini gender reveal party. I've seen some really cute themes and ideas but I'm having a hard time choosing one. Number one in the running is a "HE or SHE, what's it gonna bee?" theme. Mainly yellow and black decorations and possibly a pink or blue balloon release. The other theme, in a close second, is a monkey theme with the words "Boy or Girl? We're gonna go bananas if we don't find out soon!". I don't have quite as many ideas for that one though. I have a week to get it all done. Oh yea and to finish up the odds and ends for Abby's slumber party. Oy vey!

There is a tenant in there!

This morning at 10:10am I had my monthly appointment with the midwives. My usual midwife, Becca, is out this month and next month because she had her hand operated on so I saw Amy. She's very nice but very quick and to the point. Becca is much more chatty. I gained 1/2 a lb and am up to 264.5lbs. My blood pressure by the nurses definition was a bit high (140/82), but Amy said that was fine and wasn't worried about it. With that she had me hop up onto the table to take a listen with the doppler. I held Alexa in between my legs and within a couple of seconds we heard this little peanut's heart beating nice and loud. I've had ultrasounds where we heard the baby's heartbeat but it always makes the pregnancy feel more real. When we couldn't catch it at my 12 week appointment I was very disappointed. Since then I've been waiting to feel any sort of movement in there but sadly I have yet to feel that either.

It's hard to believe that by my next appointment we'll know if Scooby Snack is a boy or a girl. My next appointment is October 10th. Boy! Boy! Boy! We need some more blue around here.

I can breath again!

At 6:24pm I got the call that took a giant weight off my chest. I've been super stressed thinking about the health of this little Scooby Snak. I couldn't imagine getting through the emotional wreck I would've been had I received bad news. Monday's blood draw went great. Patty the nurse who does the blood draws is exceptionally understanding. She knows how worried I am with every pregnancy since the twins. She knows why I'm a super neurotic patient and she's ok with that. We talked about how my risk ratio was very similar to the risk ratio I received with Alexa. She calmed me down a bit and promised to call with the results as soon as she got them. She said the earliest would be Thursday but that the office had off on Friday so I may not hear from her until Monday. She did however instruct me that if I didn't hear from her on Thursday that I should call early on Monday morning. She wouldn't be able to call me until the end of the day but if I called her she said she'd have to take the call and could then give me my results. I couldn't have been more surprised when I received the call from her tonight, 1 day after the blood was drawn. She started by saying "I have good news for you!". I said "Really good news? Like I can breathe again good news?". She said "Yes!". My new down syndrome ratio went from 1:140 to 1:1,200. Woo! Woo! My T-18 ratio stayed the same at the lowest possible risk of 1:10,000. My spina bifida ratio (which I never received last time) is 1:1,400. All of my ratios came back better then my age related risks. I couldn't be happier right now. I feel amazing!!!

Getting close

Today I go in for my second blood draw. I'm praying on a daily basis that in a couple days I hear back from the nurse with fantastic down syndrome numbers. I pray that this worry and nervousness will soon pass and I can once again enjoy this pregnancy. I feel as if I've been in a bit of a standstill. I'm still too worried to really feel like I'm pregnant even though every Monday this little munchkin is growing bigger. I'm trying to let myself get excited about being able to feel him or her kicking soon. I think I was 17 weeks pregnant when I felt it with Alexa. I know this baby is super active so I look forward to lots of movement. There's been a couple times when I thought I might have felt it.

Prayers prayers prayers!! C'mon my healthy little baby!

15 weeks and counting

I've been slightly hesitant about posting here since I got a not so good down syndrome ratio back from the triple screen. Some inner instinct is telling me to keep my distance from this baby. How could I beat the healthy baby lottery a fourth time? I guess I'll know more when the results come in from the second set of bloodwork. I go on September 6th and will hopefully have the results within a couple of days. For now I'll keep this short and sweet.

Great nuchal measurement!

My appointment for the NT scan was scheduled for 10:45am. We, as usual, arrived 10 minutes late but were taken back rather quickly. This u/s we were taken to the back room which has a TV there positioned for the mama-to-be to see very easily. Immediately I could see that the baby had grown much bigger since the last scan. I could clearly see it's arms and legs. A couple seconds later I saw the heart beating away. Phew! At one point the tech held still and we watched the baby jumping around. It was so cute. It kept arching it's back to bounce up off of my uterus. I think this was the first time I really bonded with this baby. I must've been smiling from ear to ear. Before we were done I caught a glimpse of the NT measurement. It was 1.57 (mm I assume). Great! Anything below 3 is considered normal. Dr. Weiners assured us that everything looked good and that the baby was growing right on target for my February 19th due date. Again with that stinkin' due date! I asked him if he recommended cervical length checks. He said yes and said that we would start them at the 18 week anatomy scan. A little blood draw and then I scheduled my next two appointments. One for September 6th (blood draw) and the anatomy scan was scheduled for September 27th. So close yet so far away. Yesterday (Wednesday) I got a call from Patty the nurse with my results. My risk for Trisomy 18 was 1/10,000. Great! My risk for down syndrome was 1/140. Not so great! This isn't a positive result but it is a much greater risk then most women my age get. Again it just gives me something to worry about. I'm hoping at the blood draw on the 6th I'll get more info and it will ease my mind a bit. For now I just pray for a little bit of peace of mind and a healthy little Scooby Snack!

2nd appointment down!

Midwife appointment number 2! I've lost 2 pounds since my last appointment. Not bad. My blood pressure was great. And no urine sample. Yay! Amanda came with us for this visit. I think she wanted some time out of the house. We left the big kids sitting in the waiting room as I usually do when they come. Becca spent a little bit of time chatting with Alexa. She kept telling me just how beautiful she is. We once again went back and forth on when my due date is. The first ultrasound had me due on February 23rd. My calculations (based on our oopsie moment, May 28th) have me due on February 20th. The midwives due date (I have no idea what this is based on) have me due on February 19th. For now I'm sticking with the February 20th due date as that is on a Monday and that makes it easy for me to remember when to change weeks. Becca said "we'll go with that". Not much talk about Scooby Snack. We tried to hear the heartbeat with the doppler but no such luck. That of course put me on high alert. The only other time we couldn't hear the heartbeat at 12 weeks was when I was pregnant with the twins. For now it's just a teeny tiny voice in my head that says something might be wrong. By Monday, the day of my next ultrasound, that voice may be screaming at me and I'll be scared to death to go to my NT scan. My blood tests came back good. I'm not HIV positive, nor do I have any other STD's. Go me! Just joking. There better not have been any or somebody would've had a whole lot of explaining to do. She also told me I am O+ blood type. I have always been pretty sure I was but now I know for sure. Again it came up that I am not immune to Rubella. After I gave birth to Alexa they told me that there was a shortage of the vaccine so I never received it. After this baby is born I will receive the MMR vaccine. At one point we both had a good chuckle about the size of my chart. I guess it had gotten so big that someone decided to retire it and start a new chart for me. With 6 pregnancies, 1 miscarriage, 1 high risk pregnancy with conjoined twins, and 1 pregnancy ending with HELLP and pre-eclampsia I suppose there was a lot to chart. Not this time. I intend for this pregnancy to be completely uncomplicated and of course end with an amazing epidural and a beautiful healthy baby.

Boy or Girl?

I am 12 weeks 1 day. I was hoping that this "all different times of the day on and off" sickness would've turned off like a light switch yesterday but no such luck. For some reason the smell of my upstairs makes me gag to a point of almost throwing up. I think it has to do with the fact that it's so dry up there and there isn't much circulation throughout the day. I keep all the windows closed and maybe I shouldn't. I've resorted to keeping a can of powder fresh air freshener up there to spray when I walk up. It's the weirdest things that really set me off. Yesterday I drank a cup of hot tea and felt sick for at least an hour afterwards. I'm having a hard time eating anything past 4 o'clock. I'm always hungry but don't want to eat anything. This little one is really giving me a run for my money. In so many ways this pregnancy seems a bit more hard on me. My gut instinct is pointing me to think it's a boy. And for the first time ever I really have no preference. Thus far with all of my pregnancies I have preferred one gender over the other and have gotten exactly what I wanted. With this pregnancy everyone is hoping for a boy. A boy would round out the bunch. 2 girls, 2 boys. Girl, boy, girl, boy. Kind of fun. And it might be kind of nice for Alexa to keep some of the attention on her as he would be the youngest girl. Besides, I don't know if I could keep up with making hair bows for three girls. But then I get to thinking and a girl would be a perfect playmate for Alexa. They'd be so close in age throughout life and they'd be able to share so many fun activities and memories. Besides girls are super fun to dress. Either way all I really want is a healthy baby. I visited the Heart Breaking Choice site last night. I don't know what's been pulling me there. Maybe some deeply buried fears. Some thoughts of "Could this happen to me again?!" A scary thought of course as we're all becoming pretty attached to the idea of having another newborn to cuddle come February. My NT scan is coming up too. This scan is when I got a slightly elevated chance of down syndrome when I was pregnant with Alexa. And I remember it sent me into a frenzy of worry. I'm hoping it's smooth sailing and that my blood work comes back with numbers that won't make anyone question the health of this little Scooby Snack.

Cravings

Chocolate covered pretzels. Yummmmmmmmm!!

Great ultrasound

Last blog update I was heading out for my ultrasound at the perinatologist's office. I brought Abby along since I was fairly certain we wouldn't be getting any bad news at this visit. Terrible how that has to be one of my first thoughts but I will never forget how hard it was trying to hold it together for them after receiving the bad news about the twins. The u/s tech wasn't the most friendly tech we've had but she was at least a bit informative if I asked the right questions. We did an abdominal ultrasound and pretty quickly she found the baby. It's always kind of weird to see them at this stage of development. They're starting to look like a real baby but they're still very disproportionate. The baby's head was much bigger then the body, but we did get to see little arm and leg buds wiggling around. I forgot to ask what the baby's heart rate was but I know I saw it beating beautifully. I even saw the placenta which had only started to form in the previous week or so. She did a quick check of my cervical length and then left us there to wait and speak with the doctor. At first I was a bit worried as I had never been left to wait to speak with the doctor with any of my ultrasounds with Alexa. But soon I felt a bit more confident because I didn't think you could really tell if anything was wrong with the baby this early on. What bad news could there have been? He came into the room and quickly left. Everything was fine. I scheduled my NT scan for August 15th. I may be a bit more nervous for that one. For now everything looks great and I'm enjoying the thought of having another snuggle buddy come February.

10 weeks

The good news is the morning sickness is fading. I'm 10 weeks today. I no longer wake up feeling like I'm going to be sick. Sometimes throughout the day I get waves of nausea but a quick gag or two and I'm back to myself. My energy is beginning to return little by little too. It's nice to finally feel like a normal human being again and I'm sure the kids are enjoying having their Mommy back too.

Today is a semi big day in Scooby Snax's life. Today at 11:30 I go for an ultrasound at the perinatologist's office. They'll be checking my cervical length for a base number. That way as I get further into my pregnancy we'll be able to tell if it's thinning out at all. They'll also be double checking that we don't have another set of conjoined twins in there. I'm happy to get another peak at the munchkin and hopefully a good picture. Abby is coming with me. She's really excited. A part of me is nervous. I guess the worry will never go away although my anxiety is nowhere near as high as it was at this point in my pregnancy with Alexa. See what a healthy pregnancy and baby will do for your mental health?

Scooby Snack's 1st ultrasound

At my initial meeting and pregnancy test at the midwives I was given a referral for an ultrasound to be done by the perinatologists at Delaware County. Since being pregnant with the twins I am almost guaranteed an early ultrasound. It is great for easing my worries and the midwives know that I am a worry wart. This time I had an additional reason for the early u/s. This time they want to check my cervical length too. One of the complications of the laser surgery on pregnancy is that sometimes the cervix can shorten too soon with the weight from the baby. I have an appointment on July 25th.

In other baby bump news I have been feeling extremely nauseous. I have only actually thrown up once but the sick feeling just never goes away. I'm sure if it weren't for my complete hatred of throwing up I would've done so a few times. There are times when I just have to sit quietly and breathe slowly so that I can get rid of the urge. The midwives have taken mercy on me and prescribed some anti-nausea meds. First I started out on reglan. It didn't seem to do much. Then I tried phernegran. Still no help. Finally my insurance approved zofran. The midwives seemed to think this would be the answer. Unfortunately I'm still gagging and suffering almost non stop. I pray that there's only a couple more weeks of this and then my hormone levels should level out a bit. The good news that came from all of my sickness is that the midwives wanted me to have an earlier ultrasound done to rule out twins. They said that with my "history of twins" and my exaggerated nausea it wouldn't hurt to have an ultrasound done in radiology.

July 7th was the day. Burt came along with me as usual. My appointment was for 10:15am so I started drinking my 32ozs of water at 9:30am. We arrived at radiology at 10:00. I thought for sure being early was a good thing and that maybe they'd take me back earlier. No such luck! 11:00 came and went and I was ready to pee my pants. I paced the hallway just waiting to be called. Finally when I was on the verge of having an accident the tech brought us back. I told her I didn't know how long I might be able to hold it in. She said she'd do a quick abdominal one but that we probably wouldn't see the baby that way. She kept to her word and after getting a few shots of my ovaries I was allowed to pee. Sweet relief! As soon as we started the vaginal ultrasound Burt spotted the baby right away. Just one little bean in there. Snuggled in. A heartbeat of 163bpm. She showed Burt the sac, the baby and the heartbeat. I finally got a glimpse of the baby right before she wrapped it up. A sweet little scooby snack! The tech printed me out two pictures. Neither one was very good. For some reason the radiology department prints their pictures on computer paper. They're not very clear and this time the tech even cut the paper so that the only part you could try to see was the baby. Weird! Needless to say I am excited for the ultrasound on the 25th where I'll actually get a good look at what will be our 4th child.

Announcements

I'm always weary about starting a pregnancy blog or about announcing my pregnancy to friends and family. There's always that small thought in the back of my mind. What if I loose this baby? So I wait. I usually wait until I've had an ultrasound showing me a healthy baby, but waiting is so so hard. It's especially hard in regaurds to Abby and Nathan. They have ears like a cheetah and hear everything. If the kids were to be left in the dark Burt and I just wouldn't be able to talk about this pregnancy. I wasn't quite sure what to do. Burt fixed that for me. Shortly after he learned of the news he came out to the living room where me and the kids were sitting. He made it short and sweet and blurted it out. "Mommy is pregnant guys". I'd be lying if I wasn't a bit shocked but mostly I felt relief. Abby seemed a bit reserved at first. Nathan was excited immediately. We all talked about how nice it would be to have a little boy to round out the bunch. Soon after Daddy left for work I talked more with Abby. Her initial response to the news had me a little worried. What was she thinking? After talking with her for a few minutes I realized my fears were silly. She was very excited! Probably more so then Nathan, but both kids talked about it all day. Before we announced it to anyone else I knew we had to find a cute way to tell my Mom and Amanda. I decided on buying Alexa a "Big Sister" t-shirt from Carters and wrapping it in a box. We let Alexa open the gift right after cake that night. Burt held it up and there was complete silence. Did they not understand it? Were they not happy? I finally said "If Alexa is a big sister, what does that mean?" And then it dawned on them. Everyone was a bit quiet after that. I'm pretty sure that most of it had to do with the tension that was already there about my mom moving to Amsterdam. Maybe she was sad at the idea of missing out on a grandchild. I'll never know, but I was definitely dissapointed. After we broke the news to them everyone else was just easy. I think I called Cindy and told her. Shannon knew even before Burt. I blurted it out on Rose's facebook page in hopes that it would make her call me ASAP. And of course my JB Mommas knew right away. I still kept it underwraps as far as a general facebook announcement. Those people could wait until I had my ultrasound. Giving immediate friends and family bad news would be much easier then having to tell the 150 something facebook aquaintances I have.

June 16th, 2011

I'm pretty sure I don't have to go into all the details about how this welcomed surprise came into our life. Although it is important to recall some details. May 28th was definitely the day. I remember it well. Not because I was charting or in trying to conceive mode this time. I remember it because it was our first oops moment since Alexa had been born. I remember checking my calendar right after the fact. I was only cd 18. Still could've been too early to ovulate. I made a short note in my "my days" app and we went about our night. 5 days later I had laser surgery of my cervix. I hope that this doesn't play a major role in this story but in case it does the facts are here. The morning of the laser surgery they did a blood pregnancy test. It came out negative of course because even though I must have been preggo my body showed no signs of it yet. The days passed. I was so consumed by Alexa's party planning that I gave the idea of pregnancy little thought. Only when I checked in my "my days" app did I even realize on June 15th that I would've been on cd 35. Even for me it was getting to be a bit long. That night I dug in the bathroom cabinet and discovered I had a digital pregnancy test still left over from my pregnancy with the youngst McCabe. I checked the expiration date. Not expired until July. Score! I left the test in the cabinet and went to bed. I knew if I didn't have my period by the morning that I should take the test. June 16th I woke up ready to celebrate my little miracle's 1st birthday! I stumbled into the bathroom and put in my contacts, peed, and took the test. I sat there as the little hour glass blinked. I wonder if the people who invented those tests thought about the effect that that little hour glass would have on millions of women trying to conceive. I remember staring at that hour glass time and time again when we were trying to get pregnant almost two years prior. I stared as it blinked and I'd imagine the word pregnant there. This time was quite different. I really don't think I was expecting to see the result that I did. But POP! There it was. Clear as day. PREGNANT. I hurried up and hid the test. I had a birthday girl to get out of her crib. Abby, Nathan and I walked into her room singing "Happy Birthday". My baby girl was one. What a happy day! The rest of the morning seemed as if time was standing still. I got Alexa dressed in her special "Birthday Girl" shirt and bib. We waited for Daddy to get back from a quick run to his friend's house. The wait seemed liked hours. I was worried about how he'd take the news. We had always talked about wanting to have another baby close in age to Alexa. We loved watching Abby and Nathan grow into best friends and we always assumed it was because of how close in age they were. We knew we wanted the same for Alexa. We just didn't know that we wanted it right now. When he came in he made a beeline to the sink. There was a sinkful of dishes calling his name. As he washd the dishes I grabbed Alexa and handed her the pregnancy test. I stood her up a few feet from Burt and let her walk towards him. I said to Burt, "The birthday girl is behind you". He immediately turned around and started singing "Happy Birthday" to her. He sang the whole song and never once saw the test in her hand. It wasn't until I said "Alexa, Daddy isn't very observant today" that he turned around and took notice. "You're pregnant!?!?!", he said. I just looked at him and nodded. We both stood there in shock for a minute. I think at that moment it finally sunk in. We talked back and forth for a few minutes. We discussed how Alexa would be 20 or 21 months before the baby was even born. By the end of the conversation Burt was feeling overwhelmed but excited. My mind was still racing though. I just had this laser surgery. What effect did the anesthesia have on the baby? Would my cervix be capable of even carrying this prenancy to term? And of course with our passed pregnancies not far from my thoughts...was this little baby okay in there? All of these thoughts had to wait. Afterall, I had a one year old to celebrate!