Halfway there!! - 20w 4d

I am officially halfway through the prenancy now. I saw my doctor on Wed and she listened to the baby's heartbeat. She said that we both looked fine and I'll go for my next appointment in a month. I also went to have the big 20 week ultrasound on friday morning. The doctor that I work with, Dr Tynes, offered to do the 20 week ultrasound to make sure that everything was ok with the baby even though he isn't my doctor. So we went to the ultrasound. Because of timing Lonnie was only able to go about 10 min of the appointment, which he was bummed about. The doc checked out the heart, stomach, brain, umbilical cord, placenta, and just general anatomy. He said that the baby looked really good. He was very proud of his boyness and was showing his parts off. The dr tried to get a good picture of his feet but he had them pressed up against the side of my uterus really hard and he couldn't get a good picture. This was our first "official" ultrasound even with all the others we've had. It's just so nice to know that our baby looks healthy and that everything is going well with the pregnancy. I have been very very fortunate in how easy this pregnancy has gone.

There are some changes in store for me at work. I found out last week that because our OB unit is overstaffed that I will be moving down in ER. I will be working in OB and ER for the next six weeks. After that I will be working on my orientation into ER for the next 12 weeks. At that point I will be going on my maternity leave. I'm not sure about the logic of moving me into a new position right before I'll be leaving on maternity leave, but it's not up to me. I know that God has a plan for it and he's put it all together, so that's why I think I have handled and dealt with it as well as I have. I figure that I'll take in as much as I can, learn what I can, and let them pay me to get certified in many different ER specific areas. The trouble is figuring out what to wear to work because I am starting to grow out of my scrub tops.

Lonnie's job is continuing to go well. He is starting to get more responsibilities and is liking it. He spends some of his time in court watching court precedings or giving testimony or recommendations to the judge. He also spends some time working on and writing reports for the judge. So far it looks like it will be a great job and fit for him. He's also staying busy taking Akido which is a martial art, playing tennis on wed. He is still leading worship at church most Sun.

IT'S A BOY!!!!! - 18 weeks

Well we found out. We're having a baby boy. We weren't planning to find out the gender, we'd been planning for a surprise. We'd decided this much to the shagrin of all the people who want to know what we're having. We've been doing ultrasounds about every two weeks just to see the baby and watch the baby change and grow. We've really enjoyed it, but we knew we were tempting fate by looking at the baby so often. I guess I naively thought that we wouldn't find out and that it would be too hard to see unless we specifically asked someone to look. However, after work on Saturday (May 9th) we decided to take another look at the baby, I was about 17 1/2 weeks. There was a nursing student in our unit who hadn't seen an ultrasound so we decided to do one so that she could see. We got started looking but couldn't figure out exactly what we were looking at, We could tell that the main thing we could see was the baby's abdomen. Then we could see legs and the baby had his legs in a frog like position, then we could see his butt facing us. We were having trouble locating the baby's head. Then we figured out that the baby was curled up facing my back. At one point while we were looking for the baby's head the baby flipped around and opened up his legs. There was a collective gasp in the room as a number of us identified the baby boy parts front and center on the screen. The nurse doing the ultrasound was just sweeping around and there they were again. After that I was pretty sure we were having a boy. However, ever since we got pregnant I've been saying that it's a boy the whole time.

I got home from work a little bit later and told Lonnie. His initial reaction was that he was disappointed. Not that we were having a boy but because now we likely knew what we were having and it would no longer be a surprise. I also felt the same way, I was really looking forward to that surprise. However, I do have a tendency to ruin surprises before holidays. After this we had the decision to make on whether or not we would find out for sure what we were having. My leaning was toward yes, Lonnie said he was unsure.

Well, Monday we got to have another ultrasound. I was 2 days shy of 18 weeks. On the ultrasound we could still see the baby moving and wiggling. She used the 3D wand so that we could see what the baby looked like. Mostly the baby looked really creepy because of the 3D. It will start to look better as it gets bigger and more developed. But we'll probably slow down on the ultrasounds now that the baby is bigger, not only because it's harder to see things because of the size but because there aren't as many changes now. The baby is just refining the features it's already developed. But she asked us if we wanted to know the gender, I told Lonnie it was up to him and he said "We might as well." So she took a look and confirmed what we already strongly suspected....It's a boy.

We also decided on a name for him. After much debate and negotiation we decided to name him Stephen Michael Reyman. We came across the name Stephen when we were reading Acts at church. It was a name that jumped out to both of us, and the name Michael popped into my head and we felt like it flowed really nicely. So now we can shop even easier and give our families a gender to focus their attention. We so look forward to seeing our little boy in just about 5 1/2 months.

Baby moving??

I have been paying really close attention lately to see if I am feeling the baby move. What I thought might be the baby moving last week was a little bit high in my belly to be the baby, so it was probably gas. But yesterday at 17 weeks 2 days when I was sitting in a really awkward position on the couch I am pretty sure I felt the baby moving. It felt like a tiny little flutter on the right side of my uterus. I hear this is how it feels when the baby starts moving. It's only very slight, and I've only felt it that once. I try holding my breath to see if I can feel it moving because my breathing is distracting, but my ability to hold my breath is limited so eventually I have to breath again. I'm hoping that in the next few weeks I will begin to feel the baby move more, and then Lonnie will be able to feel the baby moving too.
We are still in negotiations on a baby name. We have picked a name for a girl, Rebecca Grace, but we are still negotiating on a baby boy name. We have a whole list of names that we have "ranked" or at least Lonnie does. I have to have him rank the names from 0-5 with how much he likes them, just so I know if the name is in or out. The main list of names is on the blog, but we've also added another name to the list, Stephen. We both really like the name, but still haven't concluded our discussion It's a big responsibility to name a child. I told Lonnie that we HAVE to have a name for this baby before it's born. So no matter what we will have a name for this kid.

16 weeks and counting

I am now officially over 16 weeks (16 weeks 2 days today). I have still been feeling excellent. I am starting to feel a lot more pregnant lately. In the last week or so my belly has really started to fill out a lot more, and you can tell that I am pregnant now depending on the shirt that I'm wearing. I am not sure if I have been feeling the baby move yet, I suspect that I have started to feel some movement but it's very soft. I only notice it when I am laying in bed to go to sleep and I lay really still. It kindof feels like gas bubbles bubbling around in there. Not sure yet if that is the baby or if it is indeed just gas. Hopefully I should be able to start feeling it a lot more distinctlly in the next few weeks.

We got to have another ultrasound just before 16 weeks. Unfortunately the ultrasound tech that usually does one every 4 weeks had a family emergency so she couldn't do it. We did a more informal one with our lame machine in OB. The baby was moving like crazy the whole time we did the ultrasound so it was hard to get really good pictures. I didn't realize the extent to which I really look forward to those ultrasounds until I wasn't able to get one as planned. I'm hoping that the tech will be back at work next monday and she can fit us in for an ultrasound when I'm closer to 17 weeks. She is always able to get much better pictures than we do with our machine. One thing that we could tell with the OB machine is that the baby is getting A LOT bigger. We could hardly fit the whole baby on the screen because it was so big. Next time we do it I'm sure that we will only be able to look at one part at a time because it will be too big to get all of it on the screen.

I also had my doctors appointment for 16 weeks. She was very happy with how things were going. I had gained 5 pounds since my last appointment (I blame at least 1 of those pounds on the water I was drinking to generate the pee that they wanted) which is an appropriate weight gain between appointments. Supposedly I'm supposed to gain about a pound per week from now until the end of the pregnancy. If I can do that then hopefully I will stay within the recommended weight gain for my size. I am still trying to work out and eat "right" (easy mac and cookies are on the pregnancy diet, right?). Lonnie had to leave work to make it to the appointment and got there in just enough time to hear the baby's heartbeat. It was really strong and really loud which means that the baby is getting a lot bigger now and is healthy. She didn't measure my uterus like I thought she would but I suppose that may start next visit. They drew some blood at the end of the appointment for what's called the quad screen. This test tests for proteins(I think) that show up in the mom's blood if the baby has a number of defects. It tests for down syndrome, and spina bifida among others. We'll get those results when we go to our next appointment in a month. I see my doctor again on May 27th for 20 weeks, and I have scheduled the 20 week ultrasound for the 29th with one of the other doctors that I work with. This ultrasound is where most people find out the sex, but we aren't going to find out and are going to wait for the surprise in the end.

In other important news, Lonnie's job is going very well. He started on April 3rd and has now been there for about a month. The assistant chief called him into a spare room and told him that he was going to make everyone look bad. This freaked him out a little bit but then she went on to explain that his first report that he did was one of the best that had ever gone out of the office! She now calls him "Hemingway" as a joke to play off of his writing skills. Apparently around here being able to put words together to make a coherent sentence and thought is a hot commodity. He's been enjoying having more to do around the office now that he is no longer stuck reading the penal code for hours on end.

That's our life for now!