As an update with Eli's development, he is making some amazing strides! He FINALLY started crawling just before 11 months, but didn't stay satisfied with that for very long! He's been totally upright and cruising around on furniture (with the occasional stationary independent stand) since around then, and we think he's definitely getting close to independent walking soon! The good news is that we had a comprehensive evaluation done by early intervention and he doesn't even qualify for services of any kind, and came out in the 95% for communication and cognitive parts, so he's definitely doing well overall! Just does things on his own time, I guess!
The weekend after Thanksgiving, my AMAZING, determined, driven, and committed husband ran the Seattle Marathon!! He did SO well, despite the freezing horizontal rain and wind, and finished it right around his goal time of 4 hours and 30 minutes! He is now determined to run at least 2 next year, and is back into training mode already! The next one will be in Yakima (eastern WA) at the end of March, and then we're hoping to go up to Canada for another one in November. Eli and I are SO SO SO SO proud of him!! Here he is about to cross the finish line:
And our biggest piece of news is that Eli will have a baby sister on/around May 3rd, 2012! Jake and I talked and prayed about it a lot, and really felt like we wanted 2 babies pretty close together in age (between 18 and 24 months apart), and on our first try, we succeeded....again! We're talented like that. HAHA!! So, Eli and his little sister will be almost exactly 18 months apart, which was the age difference between my dad and his brother, and between Jake and his sister Cassie. I'm totally ok with double diaper duty for a little while rather than 5-6 straight years of diaper duty, and we are SO excited that they will be close in age and hopefully great friends! Here is the first ultrasound picture from 9 weeks:
This little baby girl has been EXTREMELY active - I was feeling her move around 13 weeks, and could literally see her kicking from the outside of my belly at 17 weeks! She has had a perfect heart rate between 150 and 155 (which is about 10-15 beats higher than Eli's was - it seems to be true that girls tend to have higher heart rates), is a perfect size and appears to be in perfect health! Praise God! We had our 19 week ultrasound on December 9th while my mom was in town visiting, and she was the first to find out the gender! Jake and I waited to find out until the following night with the rest of Jake's family. This time, we chose to have a dozen cupcakes made at the same bakery that did Eli's gender reveal cake. My mom called them with the gender, and we asked them to pipe some pink or blue frosting into the middle of one of the cupcakes after they were cooked. That way, the whole family would eat them together, and one special person would get to make the announcement! Jake's sister Cassie was the one to officially reveal the PINK inside her cupcake, and it was SUCH a wonderful surprise because for whatever reason, I had convinced myself that this would be another boy! We actually got the reveal on tape! My favorite part is how happy and giddy Jake is! He is a VERY proud papa, and can't wait to have a little girl (he's even been excited to go shopping for girl clothes with me! It's adorable!):
Can you tell I really thought it was a boy?? Thankfully, I'm not nearly as nauseous this time around (though I have gotten sick a few times, even past the 20 week point), and even though I'm showing a little earlier this time (which I actually love...it was no fun when no one noticed I was preggo last time until almost 7 months!), I'm on about the same track for weight gain with a goal of 25 pounds, and I think I'm carrying her in about the same way. There HAVE been a few issues, however...
At my last ultrasound, they mentioned that even though the baby is very healthy, they were a little concerned that my placenta was laying so close to the cervix. This is called "low-lying placenta" and CAN develop into placenta previa, where the placenta covered the opening of the cervix and presents a risk for bleeding, premature labor, and will eventually require a c-section. Only a small percentage of low-lying placentas actually become a problem; most move up into a normal area as the uterus grows. So, at 28 weeks, they will repeat the ultrasound and see where things stand. In the meantime, I have to take it easy (which means no strenuous activity, and NO YOGA!!! :( :( :() so I've been letting Jake carry Eli whenever possible, and am getting back into knitting to force myself to sit still during the day. The other thing that's been happening since almost exactly 20 weeks is that I've been having some pretty intense discomfort pretty frequently, and I'm pretty sure that I'm having braxton hicks contractions. Those are pretty typical, even as early as 20 weeks, though most moms don't notice them or aren't bothered by them. Unfortunately, mine have been more frequent than normal (every 3 or 4 minutes for hours at a time sometimes), and can get very painful. I actually had a similar experience with Eli during the last 4-6 weeks of my pregnancy, and the midwives told me it was basically "prodromal labor" - anyone who has no idea what that is, be THANKFUL. It's worse than real labor, as far as I'm concerned, and very, very fatiguing when it happens for weeks and weeks at a time with no progress. Mine felt so much like true labor that when I finally did go into labor, I didn't even feel any different until transition. On the plus side, my actual labor was only 2.5 hours, so I guess all that uterine work paid off!
This time, I'm a little concerned because I'm still WAY too early to be having consistent contractions, and they are bothersome enough that it's hard to get stuff done during the day. They don't go away when I change position, lay down, take a bath/shower, drink tons of water, etc. That's just how my uterus is. Lucky me. If you're reading this, please join me in prayer that my placenta will return to the normal position, and that these contraction-like pains will subside. My biggest concern isn't so much my discomfort, but the wellbeing of this baby girl! I can't WAIT to hit age of viability (23ish weeks) just so I can know there is a chance of everything being ok no matter what. Best case scenario is that I make it to term, am able to have another natural, non-medicated birth, and have another short labor because of all the preparatory work my uterus has already done! But no matter what, I trust in my God and His power to heal and care for the people he loves, even the tiny, little, unborn ones! This is all in His hands, and it's actually such a relief to know that in the midst of so many things going on. She is just as active as ever, jumping around in there like a Mexican jumping bean, which has been a wonderful reassurance on an hourly basis that she is doing ok! What a blessing! :)
Half-way there at 20 weeks!
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