Leave Update

This might be a bit long because we've done so much over this mini-leave. Joshua's on his way to the furniture store to pick up our new kitchen table set (yay!) so I have a couple hours to catch up on the week's activities because we live in the middle of nowhere so it'll be at least two hours before he's home again.

First of all, I'm home blogging instead of with Joshua to pick up the table set because the boy is still asleep...it's 2:00 in the afternoon. Yesterday morning, we drove about 3 hours to my parent's house because my Aunt came into town for her annual "beef pickup." Basically, my family lives in the middle of nowhere and has a couple cows slaughtered every year at which time my Aunt makes the 12 hour drive to fill her freezer with organic beef in various forms. This is the same Aunt who has in many ways adopted Joshua...I say that partly because she's more like a mother-in-law than an Aunt to me now-she always agrees with my husband and they enjoy ganging up to make fun of me and because she's now officially seen the boy more times than my real mother-in-law but that's a post for another day. We had a great day planning our next family vacation, holiday plans (requires a bit more planning when everyone is spread so far out) and getting excited about the new babies that are about to join the family (4 infants in about 3 months). After dinner with the family and the boy's Godparents, we went back to my parent's and played games until about midnight at which time we had to leave because we hadn't brought the dog with us. To our surprise, the boy stayed awake the ENTIRE three hours back to the house. Oh joy. So today I see him waking up, hopefully soon, and we'll obviously skip any nap and hope to get him back on track tomorrow.

Going back to this week though, I had two OB appointments. My high risk perinatology appointment on Tuesday (which went GREAT!) and my regular OB on Thursday which also went well.

Tuesday's appointment showed that the echogeneticity of baby girl's bowel is significantly less although not totally gone which is actually the best of both worlds because although it's barely present, I will (oh darn) have to have another 3D ultrasound next month....for free. Insurance rocks. Also, the ultrasound showed that the bleeding I was experiencing has pretty much gone away totally and so certain pelvic restrictions were lifted...8 hours before Joshua came home. Woohoo. That is all I'll say about that.

Here's a couple of my favorite shots from the ultrasound Tuesday.

I think she really looks like her brother and I can't wait to see what the next ultrasound will show because she'll have some more meat on her. For the record, I'm not offended  if you think 3D ultrasounds are a little creepy. A lot of people do...I've noticed it's especially true of men who don't yet have kids of their own. It's a strange fluid environment but as my little girl, I think it's awesome. I loved getting video of our son in utero sucking his thumb and now battling the same bad habit almost three years later.

Serious moment: it struck me, watching my daughter get annoyed with the poking and proding of the ultrasound that legally, because I have a heart condition which with pregnancy can be life-threatening, I have the legal standing for another week (almost two weeks after these pictures were taken) to request an abortion. It's unspeakable. I can't really imagine how anyone could look at those pictures and still tell me that she doesn't have the right to continue living. That somehow my rights outweigh her rights because she's not yet real? not developed enough to have rights?

Ok I need to stop. Serious moment over.

Wednesday we did the swim lesson thing with the boy and just hung out at the house.

Thursday was my 2nd OB appointment of the week and I found out that baby girl is in the 46th percentile for size which is pretty good because I've had a really hard time gaining weight. In fact, in a weird twist, I'm still not gaining enough pounds in general but my stomach is now measuring larger than the normal pregnant belly at this stage. For the record, I wasn't overweight to start with so it's not like the weight is just relocating. My OB said it's most likely because I only have about two inches from my ribs to my hips so what little there is of her, is sticking out, a lot.

That's about it for the leave update...lots of running around and having fun in between OB appointments. Good times.