Baby Update

Today I had my 3rd doctor's appointment and I took Garrett with me again. Keith had initially planned to stay home with him for the morning but this is a really busy time of year for him and he just couldn't take off a few hours. It worked out well because Garrett has been really good at the last 2 visits with me. I know that with all the appointments I will have between now and June, he'll be attending several, so atleast he's getting used to it now.

The highlights of the visit:
-Lost 2 more pounds for a total weight loss of 9 pounds since getting pregnant. Not intentional, I promise, just a strange side effect that pregnancy has on me, not sure why! I do eat and I've only upchucked once...
-My blood pressure was good. I've never had a problem with it before, but now that I'm 30, I'm aware that there's always the chance it could start giving me problems. My mom started taking bp medicine when she was about my age. But today's was a good number: 120/70.
-Heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time, very exciting! This also confirmed that I have been feeling the baby move. This weekend I felt several very distinctive punches/kicks in the same spot. I basically assumed it was the baby moving, but when the doctor was searching for the heartbeat, I told him where I had felt it move the day before, he moved the doppler there, and we immediately started hearing the heartbeat! While he was pushing around on my stomach looking for it, baby was squirming a little too and I could definitely feel it. Very cool!
-And the most exciting news...4 weeks from today is the BIG ultrasound! I can't believe it! I really thought I would have to wait another month, but I asked when we'd be doing it and he asked me if I could hold off for 4 weeks.

He said their new technician is really good, which is exciting because at our first ultrasound with Garrett in this doctor's office, the tech at that time couldn't tell if we were having a boy or a girl. She did confess that we were one of her first ultrasounds, so she just didn't have the experience doing them. Plus, Garrett was stubborn even then, had his legs crossed and pulled underneath him, as well as the cord between his legs. So, while we have experienced the letdown of not finding out the baby's sex at the first ultrasound, I really hope we don't have to do it again. We did end up having a 3D ultrasound done and that was when we found out Garrett was a boy. Good thing too, since I had sworn up and down he was a girl. Had we not found out, we would have gone into that delivery room with pink clothes in our bag, I swear. This is why I'm hesistent to feel very strongly one way or the other about this baby's sex. I told my doctor today that I am still feeling like it's a boy and he said "Well, you have a 50% chance of being right!" ha ha He said you really can't go off of the similarities and differences in a pregnancy to determine the sex because it's not a good indicator. So 4 weeks from now we'll see if it's boy #2 or (heaven help me) a girl.

Garrett still insists it's a girl, which is just the strangest thing to me. Does a 3 year old really know the difference between brothers and sisters or boys and girls? The only brother and sister he hangs around with occasionally are his friends Drew and Avery, but they don't refer to themselves as brother and sister, so I'm not sure what he's thinking a sister is. But he did tell me today that he's a genius so maybe he does know. (My dad has this thing that he does with his grandkids where he teaches them to say "I genius" as soon as they start talking. Today was the first time Garrett has said it without being prompted by someone else. I hope that's not a bad thing...)

The only negative for today's appointment was the weather. It's very cold and rainy here and they were predicting freezing rain as well as slick roads. I watched the news before we left at 8:30 this morning and they said things were good at that point, so I drove through the rain with one eye on the roads and one eye on the outside temps. It hovered between 32 and 34 degrees. I left plenty early, went by the bank and still made it to the doctor's office 20 minutes before my appointment. They had me in and out before my actual appointment was supposed to start. Apparently a lot of people had cancelled today because of the bad weather potential. My doctor even thanked me for braving the weather to come in. I'm glad I did go because I didn't encounter any problems, other than driving in the rain, which I don't enjoy, but it wasn't bad. When I was getting Garrett into the car after the appointment, he started freaking out because the umbrella was dripping water inside the car. I had to ditch the umbrella, stand there and buckle him in, while it was raining without anything over my head. I'm sure I looked lovely on the drive home.

So now I sit here trying to muster up the energy to finish the laundry and clean the kitchen. I've got all my Christmas decorations on the dining room table and a bare Christmas tree standing in the living room. Eventually we'll get to the point of having everything packed away into the attic for another year. I told Keith last night that in 4 weeks I'll be exactly halfway through this pregnancy. That freaked him out a little. We both started listing off all the things that need to get done between now and then. It should be fun! I'm not as anxious to get this pregnancy over with as I was with Garrett. I guess this go around I know what's coming up and I'm not quite ready for it. I'm sure by June I will be.