up up and away

i am one lucky girl to have

not only one, but

t w o

amazing showers thrown in honor of brette and i.

the last one was hosted by my aunt mickie and sis-n-law, jaime.

hot air balloon themed - which is perfect for the nursery

since that's the look i'm going for.

in fact, mickie ended up making hot air balloon centerpieces

that i am going to use above brette's crib.

ah thank you.

 

i was able to catch up with all the mammas that watched me grow up,

ronnie's family and my family.

it was a fun day.

 

ready for all the pictures?

presents!

the whole gang

 

an amazing diaper cake topped with brette's very own cabbage patch doll.

(which is a good thing because there was no way in hell i was giving her willy.)

also, something i didn't realize - - every layer of this cake had goodies in the middle...

plus all the stuff you can see on the outside!

one of the hot air balloons - - soon to be nursery decoration.

 

all the ladies in my family.

 

eden lou

mom and i

baby shower game #1 - unscramble

the toilet paper game - dylanie won.

 

ronnie's side of the fam

pretty little favors

food, food, food!

the menu especially put together around my favorite things.

which included dessert - reese's brownie cupcakes.

yes, they are as good as they sound.

my grandma and my mom.

 

i know i use the word amazing a lot.

but amazing, right??!

 

thank you so much to my family for making so wonderful.

 

 

 

 

my luck at the doctor's office

i was so excited to get great news about brette,

i didn't get a chance to share the whole story about my appointment.

 

...

 

in the last 8 months of going to the doctor

i have never had to do anything more than lift up my shirt

so my doctor could access my stomach.

so i was a little thrown off when the nurse told me to disrobe

from the waist down at my appointment on thursday.

although caught off guard, i wasn't totally unprepared.

i had showered and shaved that morning

and i happened to be wearing my newest undies.

talk about luck.

it wasn't until i was "ready and waiting" for the doctor,

that i realized something was... off.

there was a definite stench filling the room.

my feet  - - they smelled horrible.

i was wearing my go-to black flats.

they are suede moccasins that have been wet a time or two,

and i wear them quite often without socks.

you can imagine.

and i don't have stinky feet - - i promise. 

except for in these shoes.

and they reek.

dammit all to hell.

so i'm sitting there with a freaking sheet on

and realize the doctor is going to come in a think she's walked into a men's locker room.

not to mention my feet are going to be
up by her poor face when its stirrup time.

shit. shit. shit.

i decide that masking the odor is my best course of action.

i wrap my sheet around me like a towel,

pray that the doctor doesn't pick this moment to come in,

get a couple of squirts out of the gallon sized hand sanitizer on the counter

and start rubbing down my feet.

surely, this will "clean" them and make them smell, if nothing else, sterile.

but no.

i'm pretty sure the combo was just as unpleasant.

and now my hands kind of smell weird too.

crap.

plus i realize that really, i hadn't dealt with the heart of the problem.

my shoes.

they are still down on the floor stinking up the room.

so i'm up again, sheet wrapped around me again, really testing the limits of the amount of time i have left before the doctor walks in. i decide to stash my shoes inside my purse.

hopefully this will conceal the problem and allow the room to air out.

once back on the table, i'm really wishing i had washed my hands and grabbed a breath mint,

the combo of soap and minty fresh breath could have surely saved me.

but i'm too scared to chance getting up for a third time

 

there's a knock at the door and in comes my doctor.

i don't know what she smelled when she walked in.

i know she didn't make any sort of face, so that's a good sign.

but i am sure she was wondering why i was mildly sweaty and had the sheet

that normal women lay over their laps, wrapped and knotted around me like i was testing her true need for this examination.

 

oh yes, hello, let me just stand up for a second to unwrap this sheet.

so embarrassing.
 

the results are in

i had my doctor's appointment on thursday.

the one i've been waiting for.

she measured me

and again, i was 4 weeks behind.

two weeks ago i was measuring 30 cm.

now i'm measuring 32 cm.

growth is good, so i'm really relieved that we are still growing over here.

however, since i'm more than three weeks behind,

its cause for a little concern.

she sent me to have an ultrasound done

and everything came back great.

my amniotic fluid is on the high end,

which was my #1 worry, so that made me happy.

basically, brette is just small.

her arms and legs are measuring somewhere between 34 and 35 weeks.

her little body is only measuring 33 weeks

and guess what...

ronnie was right.  she got the turner noggin.

her head is measuring at 38 weeks.

cheese and rice,

she might be a freaking bobble head.

 

but what makes me really happy is the ultrasound tech said

that she had gobs of hair.  she said she could see it

coming out from all sides of her head. 

i might just pack hair barrettes to take to the hospital.

that's going to be so cute.

 

right now she's weighing in at a whopping 5.5 lbs.

the tech told me that she will just be a smaller baby,

probably only weighing somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 lbs.

no 10 pounders over here.

(which, hello, that's great news to me!)

 

the doctor came back and had the tech do a bio physical.

that's where they measure her breathing, blood supply, tone and movement.

she did great in all four categories.

wahoo!

i am going back on wednesday for another ultrasound

because she is so little, they want to keep an eye on her.

but right now,

things seem to be fine.

 

i'll keep you posted.

predictions

awhile ago ronnie's dad found a picture

of ronnie when he was born and gave it to me. 

i had never seen him this young.

his family had a fire and a lot of photos from when

ronnie was little were lost.

i am so happy they actually found this. 

and while i was in warrensburg over the weekend,

i also grabbed the first known pic of me.

its dated two weeks after i was born.

my parents don't have a good excuse like a fire.

instead, they forgot to put film in the camera

so all photos from the first two weeks are undocumented.

i blame it on the "second child syndrome."

my mom blames my dad.

 

ronnie and i have been studying our baby pictures

so we have an idea of what/who brette looks like when she comes.

ronnie claims i look like an old man.

i swear he looks half asian.

 

so maybe ronnie and i are getting an asian old man?
 

  

 

(and yes, i took a picture of a picture because my scanner is somewhere in the basement mess.

i hope to retrieve it one day during clean up.)

 

 

so tired

i had another amazing shower this weekend

in warrensburg at my parent's

but i don't have all the photos from it yet,

so i'm going to skip to sunday.

 

the day of rest.

 

except for me, it was the most work i've done in awhile.

i started the day around 7:30 going out mushroom hunting with my brother.

he said that he wasn't going to be gone for very long

and that the only part i might have trouble with

is crossing over a creek.

that didn't sound so bad.

 

but no.

 

"not very long" in brian terms

equals 4 hours.

4 hours walking and walking and walking.

we found 8 mushrooms.

 

and the "creek" was actually a river.

steep sides, muddy, hard to get down

and even harder to get back up.

especially 8 months pregnant.  

and the last time i crossed over it

water was up to our thighs.

i was soaked by the time we got back to the truck.

 

wet, tired

and only mildly successful.

 

 

but that wouldn't have been so bad except for i had

another looooong job waiting for me when i got back.

 

one thing i hear over and over again is how tired

i am going to be once brette gets here. 

how i may not have time to even shower,

let alone cook dinner.

so i thought the best thing to do would be prepare several meals

that i can freeze and have for this summer

so ronnie and i don't spend every night either starving

or going to mcdonalds.

 

after my hike with brian, my mom and i got started cooking.

5 hours later we were done and 20 meals were frozen.

it was very tiring and my feet/back were rocked.

i haven't been in that much pain in a long time. 

but i am super excited to have one more thing done

in preparation for baby.

the more i can do now, the less i have to worry about later.

a big shout out to my mom.  she stuck by me in the kitchen

while we finished meal after meal.

 

if you want to do something similar, here's my tip:

buy gallon freezer bags and flatten them out as much as possible.

you can easily stack them and take up hardly any room in your freezer.

 

 

and that was my day of rest.

good thing i had off monday too.

dinosaur tracks

as i was walking into the kitchen

i realized the water in my glass was

rippling with every step.

 

a lot like this:

and that's when i realized

i am now comparable to

the tyrannosaurus rex in jurassic park.

 

 

not cool, people.

not cool.

unanswered questions

 

 

i had a dr. appointment last week

and i'm still measuring "really small."

so small, that after she checked for the heart beat,

my doctor went back and remeasured me to be sure.
hmmmm, not good?

 

i asked her about traveling to st. louis for a wedding in may.

she said no.

 

i asked her about the swelling on my left side.

she said that brette was making her home on that side.

and that was the reason for the slight swelling.

nothing to worry about.

 

i asked her what i was measuring.

around 30, but i'm supposed to be around a 34.

(normally, however many weeks along you are,

is how many centimeters you are.)

so i'm off about a month.

 

but do you know what i didn't ask her?

what that meant.
so now i have no clue what the deal is
and once i was home i had a million questions.

what does this mean for brette?
what does this mean for my due date?
what growth rate does she want to see out of me in the next month?
is there something i can do?
 (my mom heard i should drink a gallon of water a day. 
try it. its super hard and you'll most likely spend the
majority of your time in the bathroom.)
 

my doctor said to come back in two weeks and get remeasured.

depending on what my measurements are then,

i might have to get an ultrasound to check the level of my amniotic fluid.

that could be the reason why i'm measuring small.

if its too low, its dangerous for the baby.

 

since my doctor didn't freak out and thought i could wait two weeks,

i am also not freaking out.  but i wish i would have asked more about

what she thought the reason for my small measurements were. 

i obviously have lots of questions and i'm trying to wait patiently for next week

when i will know more.

 

pray for lots of growth.

(just not the extreme kind that will give me stretch marks.)