Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Finally some good news

After about a month of bad news, from Ryan's dad being in the hospital to my sister in law having high blood pressure while pregnant, and then our mirrored baby, it has been a month of bad news after bad news.

Today, we finally got some good news.

After a 2 hour ultrasound, the doctor came into the little tiny terrifying waiting room with a big smile on his face, "His heart is very healthy!"

*cue happy tears*

He sat down and explained that baby boy is extremely healthy. My amniotic fluid has doubled (was 5.4, now it's over 10, close to 11. Normal range is 5-25). His kidneys, liver, bladder and stomach are, albeit mirrored (flipped around), they are all functional and perfect. They saw him swallow, his bladder fill up, and he peed. That means everything is working and functional. He is the perfect weight (which means, if he was small, that something could really be wrong but he is big and strong.)

We have to go for another ultrasound in a couple of weeks to keep checking my amniotic fluids; if they go down again, they need to do more tests to find out why, but at this point, we're confident everything is going to be ok.

Doctor today said that he expects nothing other than a normal, healthy, full-term labour and delivery. They are sending us to a geneticist to talk to us about... well, basically all the scariest reasons as to why this happens, only to prepare the hospital for baby boy's birth.

If my next ultrasound is like today's, I will be off the "high risk" factor and I won't be going for a bunch more ultrasounds; which is awesome (it's extremely inconvenient to find a sitter for Aryn. Special thanks to my very good friend Cathy and her little Anna for watching Aryn all day today, feeding her, putting her down for a nap, letting her jump on the trampoline like a crazy person. Guess we need to buy the kid a trampoline!).

I said a lot of "thank you's" to God on my drive home. I feel so relieved, and confident that baby boy is going to come into this world and change it for the better.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Blogging Awards

There is an award among bloggers called the Liebster award. It is for newer bloggers who have less than 200 followers that deserve some recognition and support. The award is passed on to other bloggers that fall into that category to help share and support their blog.  It is also a great way to get to know your fellow bloggers!

The real "gist" of the Liebster Award is that there is no real award. There are no judges, no special rules. No website with an official team to congratulate you and hold your hand. It's mostly what you want it to be. If you receive the award, you can 1) accept it, and 2) pass it along. It's literally that easy. 


I was nominated by my friend Ashley at Momma on a Mission. Thank you, Ashley!

Here are the rules:

1. Each blogger should post 5 random facts about themselves (I was given this with the request for 11 random facts, but as I Googled this - cuz that's what I do when something unknown pops up in my life - and nowhere does it state in any previous years rules to post any random facts about yourself, so I assume it was just added for fun over the years. So, because I can't think of 11 random facts, I'm going with 5. And that's still pushing it.)

2. Answer the 5 questions about yourself (delete my answers). Or, make up new questions and answer them. (Again, it said 11 questions and I made it 5. And I also think this was a random add-on over the years.)

3. Choose 5 new bloggers (with less than 200 followers) to pass the award to and link them in your post.

4. Go back to their page and tell them about the award.

5. No tag backs.


Ok, so 5 Random Facts about me: 

1. I grew up in Northern Alberta, in a small town called Fairview. Ever heard of it? Yes? Yeah, our one doctor murdered our other doctor. Great namesake. 

2. I have 2 younger brothers.

3. I love to crack my neck. If I don't crack my neck, my eye twitches.

4. I'm terrified of having 2 kids. 

5. I have 2 tattoos and I hate them both. With a passion.


5 Questions About Myself:

1.  Why did you begin blogging?
I have family and friends all over Canada and the US who wanted to be kept up to date with our family. I started blogging when I found out I was pregnant the first time, which I lost, and I just kept it going. 

2. What did you want to be when you grew up? Are you there yet, and are you what you wanted to be as a child?
I wanted to be a teacher and a mother. I think I wrote that on every single "what do you want to be when you grow up?" question sheet in school. I never became a teacher, but I am a mom!

3. What is your favourite type of exercise?
Exercise? What's exercise? I hate exercising; which shows considering I'm extremely out of shape. I prefer the elliptical, and I'm hoping to get back into running... if I can psych myself out enough. I do love yoga and palates though!

4. What is your biggest vice?
I speak/type before I think. And I worry too much about what others think of me. 

5. Is there a single person that has influenced your life in a big way (family or celebrity)?
My parents. I hope to have the marriage they have and raise my kids to be just as awesome as I am. 


My Nominees for the Liebster Award:
1. AnnaLuv Designs (one of my besties; starting a new fantastic business!)
2. Crazy Working Mom: Diary of a mother on the brink of snapping! (over 200 but not by much... and we're pretty much best friends even though we've never talked or met or she has no idea I exist.)
3. Schurman Shenanigans (The MAM's)
4. Sew Sassy by Ashley (See? No tagback! I cheated.)
5. My Singing Soul (beautifully written. Her life is beautiful, magical, and colourful)

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

New life

"What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."

Ryan and I discovered what that quote truly meant yesterday. I don't want this blog to become gloom-and-doom, rather a hopeful, fun and funny account of our life. Family reads this blog, and so do so many people around the world, according to my nifty little "flag counter". I love posting photos of Aryn (and baby #2!) and making fun of the hilarious hijynks we get into.

Unfortunately, this post isn't about anything fun or funny. We'll get back to those soon, though; promise.

On January 7 I had an ultrasound. The tech said, "huh," and left to find the doctor, who was not available. They requested I come back in 2 weeks for a follow-up. The info results said I had "abnormally low" amniotic fluid (which is what baby eats and pees out) and there was no fluid in the baby's stomach. That's it. I was on "take it easy and rest as much as possible" and "drink until you're swooshing water" orders. I did both.

Yesterday was our follow-up. I was originally supposed to go to the same ultrasound tech as the January 7 appointment but my appointment was changed to the Foothills Hospital Fetal High-Risk department.

FYI, that itself is extremely daunting.

7:45am appointment. 2.5 hour ultrasound. 10 minute appointment changed our lives.

Our baby boy - yes boy! - potentially has an extremely rare (0.01% of the population) condition called Situs Inversus.

Basically, what we know is this: baby boys stomach is on the right side of his body, rather than the left side where it's supposed to be. There is no explanation as to why this happens. However, because ultrasounds can't detect the insides of the fetal body other than fluids and bones, they can only make this assumption at this point.

We will know more when he is born. He'll be in for a whirlwind of tests and checkups to see if he does, in fact, have Situs Inversus.

Definition of Situs Inversus: basically a mirror image of your internal organs. Where everything is normally left-to-right, his could potentially be right-to-left. It's extremely rare, however if that's the only issue, he can grow to be a very healthy, normal little boy with absolutely no health issues.

At our next doctor's appointment next Wednesday, we will know more from our second 2.5 hour EKG ultrasound when we find out if there are any heart defects. If there are no heart irregularities, there is no reason to believe anything else is wrong with our boy other than he is extremely unique and stubborn.

If there is something irregular about his heart, we will go to Step 3 of this whole thing: find out what else is wrong. If there are heart defects, there is a higher possibility he has a syndrome, or more issues.

Thankfully, his heart is on the correct side of his body and it's beating normally according to yesterday's ultrasound. So that is very good news. We are praying that his heart is just fine.

How do we feel about all of this? We have no idea. We're terrified and stressed. We're anxious for the future. We're worried about our boy. We are fearful of the future; yet we're excited for a potentially very healthy little boy.

Bottom line: we don't know how to feel.

I am grateful for my faith; that I know God doesn't make bad things happen, but He is definitely there for you when they do. He gives me hope, and I feel I can entrust our little guy to Him and know He's taking care of him.

Are we mad at God? Perhaps a little. I think I'm more mad at the "I knit you in your mother's womb" biblical verse. What was God smoking 6 months ago?

Ultimately, again, we don't know. We don't know what the future will hold. We don't know what's going to happen a month from now let alone 6 months from now. Our entire lives could very well change drastically. Or, everything could work out perfectly and we just have a little Mirrored Baby Boy.

And that is, quite honestly, pretty damn cool. A red head with blue eyes and a mirrored baby boy. We'll make a fortune!

Thanks for the good thoughts and prayers. We're going to need them.

Friday, January 18, 2013

New Look

So my good friend Ashley emailed me saying she wanted to play with blog templates. I gave her my password, and let her go to town. This is what she came up with. It's bright, fun, and much more organized than I had previously.

If anyone is interested in using her, please email her at mommaonamission@comcast.net. She's ridiculously easy to work with, and very affordable. I have no doubts you'll love what she comes up for you! 

To supporting local moms!

Monday, January 14, 2013

Crazy toddlers

It has been an interesting last few weeks, to say the least.

I am not sure what cosmic phenomenon happened 2 weeks ago, but something definitely did happen and my sweet, now-I-know-how-calm-she-actually-was redheaded toddler woke up one morning as a crazy person. This crazy person has taken over everything. She runs around like a tornado; like the Tazmanian Devil himself has actually magically appeared in our home.

She used to wake up at 8am every single day. It was beautiful and glorious. Since the cosmic phenomenon occurred, she is waking up earlier and earlier everyday. Today it was 6:15am. Let me tell you this: if she gets up any earlier than that, we're going to have serious issues.

Once she's up, she's been playing in her room for about 45-minutes to an hour. Not necessarily because she wants to - it's because I ignore her until then. Mama needs her sleep. I even took the tape off of her light switch so she can turn her light on and play in her room alone. That's right: mama chooses sleep over 6am playfests. Judge me all you want.

Once I'm up and washed the exhausted sleep out of my eyes (heaven forbid I go to bed earlier to make up for this early wakeup call!), we head downstairs for the Wizard of Oz tornado to take over. She runs around saying "good morning" to all of her babies and then spontaneously kicks them straight across the room. Then she laughs and does it again. I am confident that from the moment she wakes up to the moment she passes out at 12pm (yes, early wake-ups mean early naptimes, which means early naptime-wakeup, which means no change in bedtime because heaven forbid she go to sleep a moment before her "regular bedtime") she never stops moving. I cannot stress this enough.

Case-in point:

We're finally off of Ice Age (for the time being) and onto Madagascar (thank goodness because Madagascar is MUCH funnier than Ice Age). While it's mostly background noise, when she sits there watching it, she doesn't stop moving. Her feet are going or her hands are moving or her entire body runs in circles and spins while her eyes never leave the television. It's like The Exorcist for hyper toddlers.

To curb some energy, we were going for walks, before the Ice Age started (yes, that's a reference to the above mentioned annoying cartoon). Maybe that's why my kid has turned into a tornado: she's bored stiff of being stuck inside all day. -20C is too cold for outdoor fun. And mama is tired and stressed being pregnant that I can't think of any crafts to do with her that involve me laying on the couch. Why has Pinterest not come up with something like that yet?

But we were going for walks, and they took a total of 3.2 hours to walk around our measly block.

Every piece of snow needs to be tasted.  At first I was fighting the snow-eating altogether, but I've since stopped the argument and just conceded her allow her to stick with the white snow instead of the brown, black or yellow. Again, judge all you want.

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My brother even came up and we spent the day at the zoo. It really got rid of a lot of energy and all the extra eyes and arms really gave me a bit of a crazy-toddler break.

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In other news, and something I haven't put on Facebook yet and not something I hope to see comments about... we had our big 20-week ultrasound on January 7. The tech made a "huh" comment during the exam, tried to get the doctor in, and told me they'll get back to me. Well, at the doctor's appointment I made later that week for the results, it turns out that the baby is adequately visualized but no fluid is seen within fetal stomach, likely a transient issue and amniotic fluid index of 5.4cm is significantly abnormal, well below the 3rd percentile. Thankfully Oligohydramnios is no more than mild and everything else is looking awesome (baby is a good size and all its organs are there). According to Dr. Google it may all be because of how nauseous I was at the beginning, I may have been dehydrated and never got rehydrated enough for the baby. It could mean absolutely nothing, and baby is perfect, or it could mean there's something is wrong. We'll know more January 21st at the next ultrasound. We're nervous and scared, but faithful that it'll all work out fine.

So what does this mean? Well, apparently (again, Dr. Google here) taking it easy and being "on bedrest" can help amniotic fluid counts. So while I'm not "on bedrest" (hello, tornado toddler!) I am taking it much easier. No more walks with Bauer, no more zoo trips, no more mall trips until we know everything is ok. Here's to hoping it helps!

So any readers who are faithful, a little prayer would be greatly appreciated!

On that note... peace out!