24-28 weeks

Well, a month has passed since I posted - I have no excuses, except for being pregnant... and along with that goes the 'pregnancy brain'. I never really knew if it existed or was just one of those myths created to make pregnant women feel better, but it's definitely very real, and it's definitely very apparent in our household these days!

Sometimes I just forget a few things that I was supposed to do, or appointments I had coming up... other days I can't string a comprehensive sentence together, but the worst is when I just can't get the right words to come out of my mouth. Simple math is a big no-no, and at times I just feel like a bit of an idiot - but hey, growing a person is hard work, it's gotta take a lot of brain & body power, so I guess I'll let it slide for now... I just hope my brain returns to 'normal' once baby is no longer chillin in my uterus!

Two weeks ago we went for another ultrasound up at St Vincents - it was so much more clear than the one we had at 20 weeks. It was amazing - our little baby actually looked like a baby on the screen. You could make out features of the face (and let me tell ya, it's a pretty cute face - sure, I'm biased, but who wouldn't be?!?), you can see everything so clearly. The most fun part about the ultrasound was seeing the bizarre position our little one was laying in. Baby was laying transverse, with head to my left side and spine along my pelvic bone.... which meant the butt was up against my right side. The fun part was that the legs were up and over reaching to the head - like he/she was doing a toe touch! At one point we were looking at the face and hand in a shot on the screen, then in popped two little feet - it made me laugh so hard! Baby is already like me - uh oh, what are we in for?

My belly at 25 weeks!

We were delighted to hear baby was happy and healthy and was in the 54th percentile for growth. They estimated that baby weighed 1 lb 14 ounces, and that was at 25 weeks. Sounds like a pretty good size to me! :)

The next two weeks really passed without much commotion - we made a big dent in working on the baby's room and it's really starting to come along. Now we have custom fit shelving up in a nook behind the door, the dresser is refinished and looks great in there (big thanks to our good friend Janet for refinishing it for us). We have an awesome mirror in there hanging above the dresser and we're starting to get things organized. Cory fitted a ceiling light and fan in there too which will be nice in the summer to move the air around, and since I'm such a shortie he even wired it in to a switch on the wall for me, so it would be easier to operate (especially one handed with a sleeping baby in the middle of the night).

Last Sunday the fun and games started though - it might be a little long winded, it probably needs a post of it's own....

Introducing Miss Olivia

I am so excited to introduce you all to Miss Olivia, the newest member of our little family! I am sure you will agree that she is as cute as a button, but I will also add that she's a lively and feisty little thing!

A little over a week ago Cory had to drive down to Myrtle Point to pick up some newborn calves, so I decided to go along for the ride. I'm a sucker for baby animals, especially cows, sheep and kittens - I don't know what it is, they are just the cutest and most fun little things. I had always wanted to own my own little herd of cows but never really thought it would happen...

So, along I go for the ride, pretty content to just get to oooh and aaah over the babies, and then something happens when we get there. Cory sees me almost drooling over the babies and decides that I should get my own little calf. He said he was pretty sure his Dad would let us pasture it with his own cattle and so we didn't have to worry about not having the room right now... So, I pick out a little girl - Miss Olivia! She's half Angus, half Holstein - she's 100% beautiful!

While we were at the dairy we didn't have any cell service so we hadn't been able to check with his Dad before buying her, I was just hoping it was ok.... So, we bring Miss Olivia and the others home and talk to his Dad. He was fine with it and said she'd be just fine in with the rest of the babies and Momma's.

So, we get our three into their new pen and give them a bottle feed, then Doug took the other two calves up the road to the friend we were picking them up for.

Miss Olivia turned out to be a character - she was feisty, thirsty and craving attention - she's a funny little thing, so much personality!

She loves it when Cory comes to visit her during the work day for loves and when he goes to leave she always gives him a playful nudge on the butt as if to say "one last rub down before you leave".

The last few days she has been taken under the wing of one of the other Momma cows which is just amazing. She has her own baby (Shep) but she's happy to feed Olivia too and to look out for her. I'm so glad Miss O has found her place in the herd!

Here's some more pics - I couldn't resist, she's just too cute!

 

hello again

Well, I haven't really been good about blogging lately, actually, I haven't really been good about anything lately!

Things have picked up since I turned the 18 week mark... the sickness started to subside, I now have just a day or two of sickness per week and while it's still fairly frustrating to be sick on a regular basis it's no way near as bad as being sick all day and night. That was just plain exhausting, not to mention frustrating!

I'm at the 23 week mark of my pregnancy now and it's exciting and fun to be able to not only feel the baby moving, but to actually see the baby move inside my belly. At first that was a little weird, I must say... but now it's just exciting and fun at the same time.

We had our big ultrasound up in Portland a few weeks back and that was just plain amazing. We got to see the baby in such detail - we got to see and count fingers and toes (YAY, we counted 10 of each), we were able to see the baby moving and jumping and flipping all over the place and we got to see a profile shot of the baby's beautiful face.

I am just so excited to see that cute little face in person, to kiss those little lips and look into his or her eyes!

After the big ultrasound we talked with a perinatologist, and he was one of the most amazing Dr's I think I may have ever met with. He took as much time as we needed to talk through with us all the concerns he had due to my thyroid disease, and he reassured us that everything was perfectly on track, but that between him, my OB and my midwife they would be keeping a very close eye on me & baby and would be doing blood tests and ultrasounds every 6 weeks to make sure everything was good, and that way if anything went even slightly off course they would catch it quickly.

Since then my belly has been growing quickly, some days I wake up and can't quite figure out if the baby had a growth spurt in the night or what happened? My belly feels huge, and honestly, it's fairly uncomfortable some of the time but having our baby wriggling around inside of me is the most amazing feeling ever - I am starting to feel like a Mum already.

We've been working on the baby's room - we have a bird & tree theme going on in there that I totally love. We have also started slowly buying the more expensive items so they don't all have to come out of one pay check, it's good to find a nice deal or a bargain on something too - you know me, I hate to pay full price for anything!

Here's some pics of my growing belly in the last few weeks - it's crazy how much it's growing :)

19 weeks

20 weeks

21 weeks

Oh baby!

OK - So, if you haven't noticed in the mammoth posts below I'm preggers... up the duff, knocked up, baking a bun - whatever you want to call it, I'm it!

I'm right at 16 weeks and so that means I'm in my second trimester, I should be starting to glow and enjoying being pregnant and looking beautiful... hummm, well two of those things haven't happened and I wouldn't exactly say I'm 'enjoying' being pregnant, but it is exciting.

Flying while pregnant - not recommended!

Being back home with my family for Christmas was great, getting there was horrible!

I never, ever want to travel longhaul again while pregnant. Travelling to LAX was bad enough, but then having to get onto the 10.5 hour flight to London Heathrow was bad... real bad. I thought since we were there for almost 4 weeks that I'd be feeling 'much better' by the time we had to make the journey back home... I was wrong. The flight(s) home were even worse. The flight to LAX from London was a nightmare, nothing else can describe just how bad it was. I had sickness the whole flight and I couldn't get a moment's rest. I'm sure having just experienced an emotional goodbye a couple hours before flying didn't help but let me just say, DON'T DO IT! It's horrible!

Mr & Mrs Marvin Fast

Here are a couple of photos from Grampa & Wilma's wedding. They both looked lovely and it was a beautiful ceremony. They are such a special couple and great together - I am so glad they found each other!

Love you both!

It's been too long.... Hello Again!

OK, firstly my most sincere apology for having left it so long since I posted on here. I have been wanting to post an update for a while now but life has just been totally crazy and it hasn't happened... no excuses, I know, but you might just understand why here in a little bit.

At the end of October, we went to Salt Lake City to visit with some friends for a long weekend. Alex & Tara are an amazing couple and are so much fun to be around. I had a blast in SLC (for my first time in Utah) and they were the perfect hosts, showing us the sights and giving me the low down on the history of the place. I was a little sick while we were there tho, headaches and feeling 'odd' but we kind of put it down to the altitude and hoped it would be long gone after a couple days back in Oregon...

Well, not so much...

On our flight back to Oregon for the first time ever I thought I was going to have to use one of the barf bags on the landing at PDX. Cory laughed thinking I was joking but I was more than serious. I really wasn't feeling good, and that niggling feeling I'd been having for the past week or ten days was back in the pit of my stomach... something wasn't quite right.