39 Weeks and Counting!

Here I am for the third time - 39 weeks pregnant!  I'm definitely not surprised, as my babes do not like to make early appearances.  Though I can't complain, as I am still feeling great with minimal swelling, no back problems or pains.  Just the usual heartburn and shortness of breath, which I actually think has gotten better the past few weeks, which hopefully means he has dropped a bit.  I'm waking up about twice per night, usually around 1am to go to the bathroom, and then around 5am to switch sides.  You would never think that moving from your left to your right side would be such a task!!  I definitely feel like I have a bowling ball sitting on my pelvic bone, the worst is when I go from sitting to standing.  But after I walk around a bit I feel fine.  Though going from cross legged on the ground to standing is a pretty tough task - I usually need a hand or two to help me up!

I've gained 40 pounds, which is right on track with what I gained with the other two, and my belly button is mega popped.  The kids LOVE their brother and are so sweet when they talk about him.   A few things I want to remember:

• Each day when I pick Hannah up from school, the first thing she says to me is 'Mommy, I love baby brother' and gives my belly a hug. 

• Henry will not go to sleep at night before feeling baby brother move.  He patiently keeps his little hand on my stomach while we read his night time stories until he feels his little foot kick him.  Then he pushes him back thinking it is so funny.  The two are already wrestling with each other!

• Henry sits on my stomach and refers to my bump as his 'chair'. 

Loving on their brother.

Sitting on his 'chair'.

Big Belly!!

Kisses and squeezes. 

The kids have had a lot of baby introductions with my sister Danielle just having Leah, and my friend Kelly just having Emmy.  So they know that mommy will go to the hospital and stay for a few days, and then baby will come home.  They know baby will eat from mommy's 'boo boos' and only drink milk.  They also know that babies cry and sleep a lot and have stinky diapers.  I think they have it just as figured out as I do!  I am still so anxious to see how they do once they realize that this baby isn't going back to the hospital and he is staying put in their house.forever....  Any day now baby boy, you will be in my arms, and I can't wait!!

4D Ultrasound - Baby Brother

This morning we took the kids to see their baby brother on the 'big screen'.  There is a place in town that does 3D/4D ultrasounds.  After our friends Jake and Erin took their little girl Peyton to see her baby sister when she was in the womb and just loved it, I knew I wanted to do it with the kids.  The kids loved seeing their brother and getting their own pictures to take home with them.  Hannah was very concerned with what the tech was doing to my tummy with the wand, but she watched the screen off and on.  Henry did great, watching the entire time.  He told us how he is going to tell all of his teachers and friends at school.  

Here are some great shots of our little boy's face!  Andy and I both said he has Henry's nose, and looks very similar to the other two kiddos when they were born.  The ultrasound confirmed he is indeed a baby boy, he has long fingers and toes, chubby cheeks, loves keeping his hands next to his face, has some peach fuzz (less than a cm of 'hair') measuring 4 days ahead, and he weighs 3lbs 14oz already!  

What do you think - look just like Henry and Hannah??

Check out that Henry nose! 

Sad face - look at that lip...

10 long fingers. 

Open mouth

His peach fuzz

His eye peeked out for a second. 

What a fun - quick experience.  I'm certain both kids understand what is going on, especially with a lot of close family and friends around us having babies - but this was one more way to get them to understand what is going on, and to try to prepare them as much as possible for what is coming their way in 2 months!!

We can't wait to kiss those cheeks!

Baby Boy's Nursery Progress

As most of you know, I'm not the most creative person when it comes to decorating.  For Henry's nursery we painted the walls blue and hung his letters on his wall.  For Hannah, not sure we did anything besides hang her letters on the wall, since she did stay in our room for the first several months of her life as we were in our two bedroom townhouse and her and Henry shared a room.  But with this baby, we have a bigger space, he has his own room, and the walls are bare.  We are still renting, so we can't go and paint the walls, which left me surfing the vinyl wall decal websites.  I fell in love with the tree theme, which went well with the colors we had in the nursery with the green fabrics (thanks to Kelly for giving us her green stuff she isn't using with her new baby girl), we moved over Hannah's green curtains and bought her new purple ones and the brown crib that we had with Henry.  

I found the tree, got it ordered, then let Andy know:)  I knew he would be thrilled.  The tree came just in time today- at 1:30pm - right before kids nap time.  We got the kids down and then tackled the vinyl tree.  It didn't take much time at all - and definitely dresses up baby boys room!  Who says the third baby gets forgotten about??  This boy is getting more things done for him so far that the others didn't!  Nursery decorated, we go for our 3D/4D ultrasound pics in 2 weeks, and I just set up his professional newborn session.  

Here is our progress from today:

Before 

Making sure tree is straight. 

Peeling off trunk.

Our fall tree. 

Finished!

Tree fit perfectly!

Still left on the list:

Two brown vinyl stripes on wall above his crib.

Frame ABC artwork to go over the brown stripes.

Move armoire over from Henry's room. 

Washing clothes now!

Getting very close!!

Baby Boy - 3rd Trimester

As of yesterday I am officially 2/3's of the way done.  Holy cow, this has gone fast, and this baby boy will be here before we know it!  I get asked a lot how I am feeling - and thought it would be a good time to do a post to remind myself in two years when I have baby fever that this pregnancy was not as easy as the first two.  Starting around 26 weeks I started to feel pregnant.  I'm guessing it doesn't help that I'm older, that my body and muscles are stretched out from the first two pregnancies, and that I have a 2 and 4 year old to chase after each day.  But I try to never lose sight of how blessed we are, this is what I/we wanted, it is only for a short 12 more weeks, and thankfully it hasn't been like this the entire time!

• Heartburn - brutal heartburn.  I definitely had heartburn with the first two, I just don't remember it being this bad.  By 10am each morning I have acid reflux up my throat, and it continues through the rest of the day.  I am taking two zantacs a day, and it helps a little bit, but does not make it go away.  It is to the point now where I even throw up in my mouth a tiny bit each day.  GROSS!!  Though I can tell you, that I remember the second I pushed Hannah out the first thing I noticed was the heartburn went away, like immediately.  And I only get it when I'm pregnant.  And no - that doesn't mean your kids have hair - Henry and Hannah didn't get hair until they were 2!

• Tender uterus.  It was so bad this past weekend that we made a trip into St. Lukes to have it checked out.  It was constricting my movements, I couldn't bend over without pain, anytime the kids brushed my stomach the pain was brutal, Hannah couldn't even lay down on my tummy.  Everything checked out fine, and I do notice that it does get better as I slow down, but how do you slow down when you have a 2 and 4 year old??!!

• Pressure on the bottom side of my uterus.  This just started this week.  It isn't terrible, but I don't ever remember having to slow down with the first two.  I could move from position to position without having to think about how I am going to transition.  Now I have to think about the easiest way to go from laying in bed to standing, how to get out of the car, etc.  Something again, that can be handled by slowing down, but that is tough to do!

• Shortness of breath, which is normal, and doesn't bother me.  I also snore at night - which doesn't bother me either!!  Andy has maybe had to pull up on my pillow to make me roll over so I'm not snoring in his ear every night! 

• I'm sleeping great - I make it through the night most nights without getting up to pee, which is pretty awesome. 

• This boy moves SO much.  Andy had his hand on my tummy the other night and he couldn't believe all of the acrobatics this kid was doing.  He asked me 'how do you sleep at night?'  It doesn't keep me up, which is great.  Maybe that means he is sleeping at night too and we will have a good sleeper on our hands!  I have definitely been feeling his different body parts over the past 2-3 weeks, his little hands, legs, knees, and elbows are punching through, which is so cool.

We have a healthy baby boy on the way, who is measuring right on, I passed my glucose test, keeping the weight gain under control, and am now down to every 2 weeks for Dr. appointments.  Ask me this week if I want to be pregnant a fourth time (not that the door is open for a fourth) but the answer is no way!

Here are a couple pics of the belly I took over the past week. 

Cousins!

Hard at work this week!

Stressed Out

Last Thursday, the 14th, I had a message on my phone from my OB Doctor.  Having a message on your phone from the actual Doctor usually means bad news.  I called back right away, got the nurse, who told me that we needed to come in for a Level 2 ultrasound at the perinatal office in town.  Ok...what is going on??  She said that they found some cysts on the baby's ultrasound that they needed to take a closer look at.  I was walking to lunch with Danielle, so stopped and asked the nurse a few more questions while frantically having my sister write down the name of the cysts.  Choroid Plexus Cysts.  Ok, so minor  major freak out here.  It wasn't until I called Andy that the tears started.  I had no idea what this meant, besides the nurse telling me the Dr. said not to worry, that the findings were incidental, and it should be no big deal.  I gave Andy a brief summary and hung up.  At lunch my brain was just swarming.  I Googled it of course, and found that these cysts are pretty normal, but they are also a marker for babies that have genetic disorders.  This is when Andy calls me back to say, don't worry, it sounds like this is no big deal, it is normal, and they usually go away by the 3rd trimester.  Well how do you not think 'what if they don't'???  So more Googling when I got back to my office led me to learn WAY more about CPC's then I ever wanted to know.  Only 1-2% of babies have them, they show up in the 2nd trimester and disappear by the 3rd.  But of those 1-2% of babies that have these cysts, 1% of these babies have a genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.  But babies that have Trisomy 18 also have many other markers, like clenched fists, smaller bones, organ problems, etc.  So I start thinking back to our ultrasound and of course I don't remember baby boy opening and closing his fists, and they had to remeasure his femur because it was measuring small by a week (she said it was because he was moving around so much, but still!), etc.  So freak out continues for 10 days until the next available Level 2 ultrasound appointment, which we had yesterday.  Over these 10 days I cried, hard, I had broke out in stress induced cold sores (I was just bragging to my family that I hadn't had one in years!), I lost sleep, and I prayed, a lot.  One of the worst things in the world is to hear that something could be wrong with your child. 

Monday morning was the longest morning ever until our 12:30 appointment.  The ultrasound began and the technician started walking us through everything.  She started with the brain, and I asked her if the cysts were still there.  She said she couldn't say, since she was not the Dr.  Ok - great.  She then got to the hands, I was pretty certain that I saw his little fingers outstretched several times, but asked just in case and she confirmed, he was actually playing with his feet.  I asked what the femur was measuring, she said right on track, and I saw the measurement at 23 weeks, which is actually ahead.  At the very end she told me we had a beautiful baby boy, and that she was going to write down on her report that no CPC's were seen today, but 'she didn't say that'.  What??!!  I was so confused??  So does that mean they were there originally I asked.  Yes, they were, she saw them on the original ultrasound, but they had already disappeared!  I held it together pretty well until we got to the car.  I then let it all out, just feeling so overwhelmed with emotion.  Andy cracked some jokes, which is what he does and always makes me laugh, and we went back to work.  What a day!  This morning I got the call from the nurse that everything indeed came back completely normal and that the cysts had already resolved, and there is nothing to be concerned about.  Feeling very blessed today - and totally ready for this baby boy to get here now!

I typically don't post ultrasound pictures since they are pretty freaky looking - but check out that perfect profile pic of our beautiful baby boy. 

Here is his little nose and lips - I want to smooch them right now!!!

It's a....

As you can tell by this video Henry is SO happy to share the news that he was right and mommy has a baby BROTHER in her tummy!  Hannah on the other hand was not so thrilled at first, which is just adorable.  In the three days that have passed since we broke the news, she has definitely warmed up to the idea of having a brother, and one day she will look back on this and realize how really lucky she is.  Yesterday when we picked her up from school the teacher told us that Hannah had been telling everyone about her baby brother all day, so I think it has set in.  It will be so great to add another boy to the mix of all the girls.  

So yes - we have baby boy Schmidt on the way and we couldn't be happier!  I had to share another video of the kids arguing over whether is was a baby brother or sister, and then the video of us asking them the day before we found out what they thought baby was.  These will be fun to look back at one day when all the kids are older!  Time to start planning for baby boy and cleaning out all of our girl baby stuff - good thing we know some people having girls in the next few months!