11 Weeks!

We've hit 11 weeks. I can't believe it, but we're almost out of the first trimester! Here's what's happening:

Maybe you’ve noticed… your baby is a super-duper grower! Your lil' fetus will be gaining a substantial amount of weight this week and has already achieved fruit-size-status comparable to a plum. What's more, your little scientist is already starting to explore their body, focusing most intently on touching their head, and especially their face and mouth. Their mouth in particular will provide them with hours of entertainment. This happens not only because your baby is gaining coordination, and is therefore able to move a hand on command, but also because their palms have gained sensation and can actually “feel” what it touches. They're also developing their swallow reflex this week. And lastly, your baby's smelling and other olfactory senses will begin developing this week, which when combined with the maturing taste buds, will provide your baby with their first experiences of taste and smell.

I'm feeling better, little by little. I went off the hormones on Saturday, which was a little nerve wracking, but also welcome. I felt so significantly better when the dose was cut in half, that I'm hoping I'll feel that much better again when this gets itself out of my system.

I was with the kids tonight, and the following conversation ensued between Skyler and I. I had a really sour stomach today, and I've found that a little bit of pop soothes it.

Their neighbor lady always lets the kids come over and have candy and pop. This doesn't make their mom very happy and the kids are sick pretty often. She pretty firmly believes that their immunity is tied to their sugar intake, so she's been telling them this week they can't have pop all the time because it will make them sick.

So I picked them up today and Skyler (3) saw that I had a pop. He asked me "Doodah, why you have pop? It makes you sick." (Side note, he calls me Doodah, because one day, he heard my DH say "Dude" and it was just when he was learning to talk, so he repeated the word, and DH said it back, and back and forth, and finally he decided to call DH Dude. So the friends tried to teach him to say "Dudette" for me. But it came out Doodah (as in Zippity). So cute.

Anyway, I told him that I had a baby in my tummy and the baby was making me sick and the pop helped me feel better.

Him: There's a baby in your mouth?
Me: No, there's a baby in my tummy.
Him: There's a baby in your tummy? How did THAT happen?
Me: God put the baby there.
Him: No, I think Lewis did!

Who knew the dog had a day job as the stork. Maybe that's why he's so tired all the time! :D

Fortunately, by then, we were laughing so hard that Skyler became pleased with his own apparent humor, and dropped the subject.

10 Weeks and a Book Recommendation

I'm awe that God has brought us to double-digit weeks! Here's what's going on with baby at 10 weeks:

Your astonishingly tiny baby has been hard at work growing as fast as possible—almost doubling in size in the past three weeks! Amazingly, you’re in for a repeat size doubling performance within the next three weeks! Your tiny champion still weighs less than a quarter of an ounce but has already completed the most critical stage of their development. Using Doppler technology, your doctor or gynecologist can let you hear their tiny rapid fetal heartbeats this week (145-165 beats per minute!). Chances for miscarriage are greatly reduced when the heartbeat can be detected, so take a sigh of relief if you’ve been needing one—it hasn’t been an easy ten weeks! What’s more, they’re getting ready to make their first baby poop! Your little one’s major organ systems are developing, including a functioning digestive tract capable of moving food all the way through their bowels. The final shiny gold star on their fetal behavior chart for the week: your little scrapper has already developed defense mechanisms to protect them on reflex!

and my IPOD App says this:

This week your baby is officially considered a foetus, which means "little one." Vital organs are formed and are starting to work together. Your baby is now aw big as a prune. Tiny toes have formed. External genitalia is beginning to differentiate. External ears are formed, as is the upper lip. The biggest accomplishment this week is the disappearance of the tail!

I also have a book recommendation:



Expecting: Praying for Your Child's Development-Body and Soul is a devotional that walks you through what is happening with your child's physical development, and then includes a devotional on praying for that specific trait, both physically and spiritually.

For example, this week's entry focused on the upper lip. And the devotional included suggestions to pray for your child's facial development and for her self-esteem, that she would always see herself as beautiful in God's sight. It then guided the reader through a devotional and prayer that your child would always use her mouth to speak the words of the Lord, to speak praise and love to people, and to refrain from unkind and unclean talk. In another section where it talked about ears and eyes, she suggested praying that your child would hear the Lord, and see people as Jesus sees them. In the week on the formation of the brain, she suggests that you pray that your child would use her mind, whatever its capacity, to the best of her abilities, and that she would have the mind of Christ.

There's also a devotional for the mom to pray for HER growing body changes, too. When it talks about your growing womb that protects your baby, it teaches you to pray about protecting your child all the days of her life.

I've really enjoyed it and it's really helped me pray for our baby more specifically. The chapters are short (3-4 pages) and it's just one chapter per week. There's also a space at the end of each chapter to journal. It's just a really neat little book and if you're pregnant or know someone who is, I would recommend it.

I will put a disclaimer here and say that I've only read 1/4 of it because I don't want to read ahead, so forgive me if the book suddenly goes sour, but I really don't think it will.

On the other hand, I do NOT recommend this book: Praying Through Your Pregnancy: An Inspirational Week-by-Week Guide for Moms-to-Be. I'm equally as far through this book (through 10 weeks) and my major complaint with it is that it's very "name it and claim it," which readers know from past reviews, is a theology I have a huge problem with. She claims a right to a quick ability to get pregnant, an easy, complication-free pregnancy, and a perfectly-formed child. While I'm sure we all would love these things, and want them, it's not something I see scriptural evidence that we're entitled to, and anecdotal evidence from the lives of many Christians demonstrates that God doesn't always work that way. My IF friends will also have a hard time because she spends the first few chapters talking about her "difficulty to get pregnant," which means, it took her 4 months. Definitely take a pass on this book.

I have to be at work in 40 minutes so I need to sign off! But definitely check out that first book if you can!

Update

Hi Everyone,

Well, my friend says this one must be a girl because she's given us nothing but drama.

Everything was fine. Heartrate was fine, growth was fine, and today, we could even recognize her features (head on left, arm sticking up in the middle, foot on right)



Ironically enough Lewis sleeps the same way ;)


He had no explanation for the bleeding. He could tell it wasn't related to the friable issue. His best guess was perhaps the placenta separated a little (from what, I don't know) and the cervix opened to let that blood out, but he said today everything was shut tight the way it should be. But even at that, the cause was just a guess-it was just some kind of freak thing, but it had no lasting effects on baby.

Thank you for your prayers. It's been an emotionally exhausting several days, so we're off to go rest.

Not doing quite so well today

I'm having a little trouble keeping my thoughts in check today. I think I'm just not ready to deal with the fact that today's appointment could be very final in nature. So, I'd really appreciate your prayers for my heart and mind. Please do also pray that he can fit me in today so that we don't have to continue to wait. He doesn't even open until noon so we won't know for a few more hours if he can even see us. Thank you...

Rough Day

Yesterday was a positively rotten day, but in the rottenness, God's glory really shined.

It started out harmlessly enough. We went to church and my friend pulled me into a room and said she had to talk to me. She told me she has breast cancer. Then, during the Sunday school hour, so many of our church family members shared truly heartbreaking, life changing, serious prayer requests. Several people are dying, another woman was rushed to the hospital during church yesterday, others are facing other types of loss. It was just lousy for everyone! And I was already upset about Mike (news is not good), and the floodgates just opened. I cried, and cried, and cried, and so did several other women in the room. Then Mike and Krista arrived, and he was looking terrible, and she gave me more of an update, and the whole thing stunk.

It was M&K's anniversary, so we took the kids to lunch so they could go to lunch together alone. And it was so wonderful. I love those kids more than life itself, but yesterday, the time was even more enjoyable than usual. They were just sweet and snuggly and cuddly and we just had a nice time with them. Little kid hugs are the best medicine. Then we brought them back to the house and when Mike and Krista came home from lunch, we just sat around visiting for hours. It was wonderful. Mike was actually himself (rare these days), Krista was relaxed (also rare!) and we just enjoyed rich fellowship. It was so fruitful, and precious. They're in for a rough week this week as he has another surgery, so it was really great to just have some quality time with them. Then the kids woke up and we spent time playing and giggling and it was so nice.

Krista shared something she's been learning. We spend so much of our prayer life and spiritual activities on the physical world and not a lot on the spiritual world. But even when Christ was on earth, He ruled the spiritual, not the physical. So while our first instinct is to pray for Mike's healing, they've been praying for their peace. That really challenged me a lot. And was very timely...

DH and I left their house and stopped on the way home from dinner. I used the ladies' room and everything was fine. We had a nice, quick meal. 45 minutes later, when we got home, I used the bathroom and found that I was bleeding everywhere. It was a ton more than I had bled previously with this pregnancy, and way more than the doctor had told me was safe and acceptable. I bled for about an hour constantly, and was convinced that miscarriage #2 had started. I sent a quick text message to a couple of prayer warrior friends, and I posted a prayer request online with some other friends, and DH and I started praying.

And God was so good in directing our prayers. He guided us to pray for our peace, and for His will, and THEN for our baby. As I prayed He gave me the courage to tell Him that I would accept whatever was in store for us that night. He keeps teaching me again and again that He KNOWS our heart's desire, and what we need to be focused on is aligning that desire with His will, not telling Him the obvious. I cried some more and then we just left it alone. I talked to the doctor on call, who said there was nothing we could do but wait and see.

I couldn't help but think about how timely the conversation with Krista had been.

But miraculously, by the end of the next hour, the blood flow had stopped and and reduced to spotting. By the time we'd gone to bed, even that had stopped. I don't think the timing was coincidental; I believe that was God intervening for us. When I woke up this morning, I was back to feeling completely normal, with no signs of the issues from last night.

My doctor's office is closed today, so I really could do nothing but wait and pray. And He's given me a peace that could only come from Him. We really don't know if everything is ok. The amount of blood I lost was a lot for pregnancy and way over the amount the doctor had told me to be concerned about if I saw, but it was less than I lost with my miscarriage.

A friend is an OB in another state and she checked on me this morning. She said that given the sudden onset, the high volume relative to the time, and the quick stop, she thinks it could have been some sort of placental hemorrhage or bruise, both of which I guess can be perfectly normal. Especially given the emotional stress of the day, and the activity of lifting the kids and such, I may have just provoked something, or it could have had nothing to do with those things, but how tired I was could have made it freak me out more than it might have another time. It wasn't enough blood to have been a complete miscarriage, and if it was just the start of a miscarriage, she said I likely would have started bleeding again by now. So she said there's a really strong possibility that everything is fine.

I will call my OB tomorrow but I was really dreading waiting through today and God was really gracious in passing the time quickly and restfully. What's done is already done and all we can do is wait, and He's been carrying our worry for us.

Thank you to everyone who prayed and who will keep praying. Obviously, I have a preference as to the outcome. It was a rough day, but God's mercies were overwhelming and we saw His strength in our weakness. We are praying for good news tomorrow, but more than that, we are continuing to seek His will for us and for our baby. We'd love for you to join us in those prayers, and also in prayer for our friends with the cancer issues.

Love to you all...

The Generosity of Friends

This baby is already SO loved. And I love that so much.

People have been lining up to bless us with their generosity. Between a combination of hand-me-downs and presents, this baby is already sitting pretty!

Mike and Krista have given us boxes and boxes of clothes that their kids have outgrown. They also gave us their Pack-N-Play (and it's a really cute one, too!), bouncer and glider rocker with ottoman. An old friend gave us their bassinet. I hung out with another friend yesterday, who gave us her baby monitor, a white noise machine, and very nice nursing pillow. Still another friend offered us her breast pump when she's done and gave us a huge stash of Tot-Locks (child-proofing locks for cabinet doors). Those are several huge purchases we won't have to make.

We've begun to receive gifts, too! A friend of my mother in law mailed us a beautiful little sleeping gown and picture frame. When we were pregnant before, my sister in law gave us some darling little clothes and a blanket that are still waiting to be used. If baby's a girl, we've got a beautiful dress waiting for it that my mom bought, and another beautiful dress from a blog reader. Another friend has already emailed to say that she and her daughter are going to crochet us a blanket when we know if it's a girl or a boy and still another friend is making us booties. Still another friend made us clips that can make anything at all into a nursing cover. My friend Henrietta crocheted us this adorable little elephant. Isn't it darling?



And my brother and his girlfriend bought us these cute little slippers a long time ago and believed that they'd get to give them to us one day


We're just overwhelmed! We didn't expect any of this and we have been so surprised. While the gifts are nice, what really blesses us is the knowledge that this baby is already loved and prayed for by so many. That's the best gift anyone could give us--thank you so much for knocking our socks off with your generosity of love and spirit!

On a side note, there's a distinct possibility that the heartrate I posted the other day is in fact, my own. Someone listened to it and commented that it's too slow to be a fetal heartrate. Sure enough, when I counted, it was almost 75 bpm less than what the doctor counted two days earlier. I feel a little sheepish!

Product Recommendation

Heather mentioned to me that she'd found an inexpensive at-home doppler for listening to the baby's heartbeat. When she told me the price, I couldn't believe the thing would actually work, but she played her baby's heartbeat for me and the recording sounded great.

So, I ordered one. A lot of the reviews I read said that it was a great way for DH to bond with baby, especially this early on, since he won't get to actually feel anything until this is almost halfway over.

So I ordered one. This thing is awesome!

This is the specific product:


I was also prepared for it to not work yet, as I'm only 9.5 weeks along and I'm overweight.

I also bought this gel.

This thing is awesome! My gel got shipped somewhere else by mistake yesterday, so yesterday I just used a gel I had here (the reviews say you can use anything, even water), and it didn't work. But the regular gel came today, I applied it generously, and I was able to find baby's heartbeat, multiple times.

The doppler comes with everything you need, except the gel. It comes with a battery, a set of headphones, a jack to plug it into your computer if you want to record, and two blank mini cds. The doppler has a second jack on it so you can add a second pair of headphones for your DH to listen.

I just downloaded free sound recorder and I was able to record the sound as an mp3.

It was so cool to just hang out today, listening to baby I checked with my doctor and he said it's perfectly safe for use. Heather said the info she found was that it emits about the same amount of waves as an FM radio.

Just thought I'd pass it on in case anyone else was interested! DH and I sat and enjoyed listening to it together and then I was able to send the mp3 to the grandparents.

Here is the recording, if you care. :) Then I sent it to my cell phone so I can take it with me :)