Surprise!!!!

On the afternoon of April 24th, I thought that I was headed to our last professional development of the school year, but it was actually a surprise baby shower for Baby Brokaw! I was shocked and appreciate the awesome Lincoln staff!

We've got a bump....

I knew I was never going to be the really cute pregnant person...you know the people that look like they swallowed a basketball and are just cute when they are pregnant. I knew that was not what pregnancy was going to look like on me and I was ok with it. I have Steve take my picture every month around the middle of the month. I'd been waiting for a while to get my baby bump, waiting for my regular pants to be too tight, waiting for shirts to start to get shorter, waiting for the time to bust out the maternity pants. 

This is my picture from February, I was about 16 weeks pregnant. 

This picture is from mid-March. There's a little bit of difference, but nothing too noticeable.

And now, welcome to April. This was taken on Sunday at 24 weeks and 5 days. We definitely have a bump! In fact, on Monday, one of my co-workers made a comment about me really starting to show, so it's obvious to more than just me. The funny thing is that is just happened out of nowhere. I never thought I had changed that much in the last month. 

Until mid-May......

Baby Update

We are 23 weeks pregnant today....so we have 16 weeks (or less) left! That's exciting to me! The last few weeks have been a little stressful, but I'm feeling good and baby is kicking up a storm lately which is cool and disturbing all at the same time! 

When we went for our anatomy scan at 18 weeks, the sonographer discovered the baby had a 2-vessel cord. This is not a big deal by itself, but having a 2-vessel cord is linked to other issues like chromosomal abnormalities and heart defects. Not what I wanted to hear at our appointment. I was upset and instantly worried. 

Our doctor spelled everything out for us: with the 2-vessel cord we will have to have ultrasounds every 4 weeks to measure the growth of the baby because 2-vessel cord babies can be smaller and gain weight slowly (right now we are measuring about 5 days ahead, yah baby!). I wasn't too upset about having more ultrasounds I love seeing this peanut! 

Our doctor told us about a blood test we could do that could tell us if there were chromosome abnormalities. Steve and I talked about it and decided to take the test. They took vials of my blood and sent it off to California. They told us it would be 10 business days until we got the results...it wasn't about a week later we found out that they are 99% sure there are no chromosome issues. Whoop, Whoop! I was so relieved! 

We had our next ultrasound at 21 weeks and there was concern over where the heart closed on the bottom and the possibility of a small hole in its heart called a VSD. Instead of having another ultrasound in a couple of weeks, we were sent to the pediatric cardiologist to have a fetal echocardiogram. 

Our echo was on Monday and I'm happy to report that everything appears to be normal! We are thanking God for a healthy baby so far! It really put into perspective for me all of the is it a boy, is it a girl talk, because right now the most important thing is that it's HEALTHY, Thank the Lord!