We even got a blizzard!!
At the Schliterbahn Christmas park:

Christmas Eve- hey, is that snow?

Snowball fight!!

Snowangels

Blizzard!!

Twas the night before Christmas… my lil sweeties!

The gift was a white gown trimmed in pink tucked into both pink and blue tissue put in a sparkly silver box and bow with a black and white card that said “We know… do you want to know? (picture of baby toes)/ “It’s a …” It was tagged to Mimi & Papa. Obviously my MIL thought nothing of it because she handed it to Papa to open. He started opening the box and DH shouted “No! No! Open the card” LOL! So he did and after he read the first page he started saying how he just knew we knew already. My MIL is realizing her mistake and snags the box but he manages to keep the card from her. He opens it, looks confused, looks everywhere for a clue in the card, lol. Then he remembers the box. She looks at me (I’m looking seriously hard at the floor trying desperately not to give anything away, my heart is beating furiously) and she says, “It’s a boy. I can tell by how she looks.” And to me says “It’s okay…” She opens the box, sees blue paper… then pink paper. She yells over at me “Jen?!?!” and gets a bit excited but is obviously confused. LOL! I tell her to keep going and open the rest, maintaining my scrutiny of the carpet. She does… pulls out the rolled up gown that looks totally white, unrolls it, sees the pink and I finally look at her and say “It’s a girl!” And she SCREAMS and hugs the gown to her. It was fabulously fun!
I also told my grandparents and aunt (& my mom via phone) simulataneously that it is a girl. That was fun too. Then they brought out an “It’s a girl!” cake. LOL! They all “just knew” it was a girl. Yeah right! I think they are having a midnight snack of “It’s a boy!” cake right about now. Haha!
18w1d. OB appt went well… blood pressure still slightly high, urine was fine, HB in 160s. 😀 And I gained 6 pounds!!! Holy Moly…

A perfectly healthy baby girl!!!
Wahoooooooo!!!!!!!!! We are excited beyond words!
OB appt update later tonight!

I was listening to a podcast with a certified lactation consultant (author of “The Breastfeeding Mother’s Guide to Making More Milk”) and something she said was really a eureka for me…
The absolute #1 thing a new mom can do to insure a good milk supply is to nurse and pump extra well and often in the first 2-3 weeks from birth. The reason is really neat. Only during this time period does the body create hormone receptors in the breast (ie the “lock” that the hormone “key” fits into to signal to the body). So if you get off to a poor start (can we say tight frenulum for the first 5 days? DOH! And a jaundiced baby kept in the nursery for long periods of time?) you’ll have fewer receptors to work with thereafter. It doesn’t matter if you make a gallon of prolactin (and others) if you have few receptors to work with them.
I think I’ll rent a hospital grade pump and use it after each feeding for the first 3 weeks. Maybe this is my solution.
It was highly educational even for an experienced breastfeeding mother. Podcast here. Click the “podcast on common causes of low milk supply” link.
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17w1d. I’ve hit a tummy growth spurt- my pants are tight!! But I am right at my prepregnancy weight still according to my scale. Nausea/food aversions are back. Peh. I’m on day 4 of that.

Today was the amnio. Wasn’t too bad except they must’ve hit a nerve going in- I had a good jolt down the left side of my body. WOW that was weird- and strong! He said he got a good sample so that’s good. I got a decent DVD of some of the ultrasound but no pics… … and no good shot in the video to take a screen shot of either. I have to go back in 4 weeks for a better anatomy ultrasound because the baby was still a little small for some of the measurements. Measured 16w0d for most things and I am 16w4d today. The specific things they looked for such as kidneys and the brain looked great! Nothing looks out of place.
The dr told us what gender he thought it was but he said it was too early and the baby too small to be sure so I’ll wait out the 2 weeks and let you know when we know for certain.

Sorry my blog was down for so long. It took us awhile to figure out what was wrong.
Passed my 3 hr GTT with flying colors…
Fasting = 77 (65-94 is good)
1 hr = 148 (less than 180)
2 hr = 108 (less than 155)
3 hr = 71 (less than 140)
15 min later I “crashed” and got very shaky and hot while in line to buy food. Considering the minimum for fasting is 65 I can easily see that yes it was low blood sugar that causes that. My instinct was right.
A lady from the billing company my RE uses has called me twice now saying I owe over $1300. It is driving me crazy because I know I don’t! I HATE HATE HATE money issues! 🙁
Tomorrow is the amnio and I am more nervous with each passing hour.
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Some Bren-bits & Andy-dotes:
10/19 Happy 8 weeks!!
Interesting things from our trip to Mimi’shouse… Mostly I lounged around and felt nauseous. I introduced Brendan to the gameshow Deal or No Deal and now he is obsessed with it! 😀 I’m going to find a board or dvd game version of it for him for Christmas!
My FIL made the boys wooden swords. ARGH! Men and their fighting crap! I let them play with them but only if they were in the middle of empty grass and nowhere near each other. Despite this, they both loved them, naturally. That definitely got picked as a Mimi and Papa’s House toy. Haha.
My MIL made me an early birthday cake- it was a 4 layered lemon cake with a frosting made of lemon juice, condensed milk and freshly whipped cream. It was yummy!!
The most fun I had was my MIL and I went to the casino one night. We ate in a British Pub- fried fish, chicken and shrimp and played some slots. The last thing we played was a Star Trek game where you actually picked a login name so you could save your progress (and eventually unlock new episodes). That was neat. I got down to my last 2 plays (70 cents) and hit the bonus game. It was the best bonus game ever!! The wheels would roll and if they stopped on any kind of win then you moved to a top screen and your ship fired on another ship with a bonus multiplier. The very first roll earned me $85!!! This bonus game went on until you had 5 non-winning plays (you lose a shield for each one). Then you get a chance to win all 5 back. I played this game for at least 20 minutes!!! In the end I won $178! It was great!
10/20 Andy pedals his bike for the first time!
11/3 Brendan asked how the baby got in my tummy today. I put him off briefly since the timing was bad. Andy came in while I was getting dressed and asked where my penis is. Whadda day.
12/13 The 15th week turned out to be great- much less tired and the first few flutters from the baby!!! I love it!
12/14 Brendan learned how to draw a tent today so we made camping pictures. He did great. He even drew a waterfall on his river! This is Andy’s… snakes at a campfire. LOL!

12/15 By our scale Brendan is 65.6 lbs and Andy is 35.0 lbs.
12/16 A cartoon star Bren drew… 😀

12/17 I think I felt a tiny kick from the outside today. I was just waking up and my hand was over my lower belly… it happens so quickly though- did I imagine it?!

DH told me an amusing story on our drive up to his parents’ house. He said that Brendan’s cousin Joseph (slightly older than Bren) came up to Brendan and asked him how old he is. Brendan replied “6”. Then he asked him what grade he’s in. Bren said “2nd”. Joseph thought for a minute and told him he couldn’t possibly be 6 and in 2nd grade. Brendan said “I am.” Joseph told him he must be really smart or something. Brendan said “Yup.” (groan) So Joseph asked him what 2 x 2 is. Brendan said “4”. Joseph said, “Nuh uh, it must be like 142 or something.” So he turns to Darrell and asks him what the answer is… and Darrell says, “Well… it IS 4.” Of course, he was thinking 2+2… but Joseph didn’t know this. Darrell and I had a good laugh.
Then I explained to Brendan that 2×2 is counting by 2s, 2 times. He understood immediately. So I asked what 2×3 is and he got it right. The I explained that he could count by 2s, 3 times or he could do it backwards and count by 3s, 2 times. I asked a few more problems I knew he could answer… this x 5, that x 10, etc. Then I got a glint in my eye and asked him what 422 x 0 was. He thought for a second and then said 0. Bowled us over!!! He quickly figured out anything x 0 is 0 and anything x 1 was the same number without any teaching at all… just thinking about it. Brendan has so far formally learned to count by 2s, 5s and 10s but with further discussion we quickly found out he could count by 3s, 4s, 20s and 25s as well. Within less than an hour Brendan could tell us most any multiplication fact dealing with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 or 25!!!
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14w2d. Tired but otherwise okay. OB appt yesterday. Heartbeat in the 160s. Blood pressure a bit high. Down 2 pounds. Bloodwork came back normal, I guess. It was all written in my little folder but not discussed. 3 hour GTT tomorrow morning. Yuck. I hate that test!!