Doctor Visit Update

Monday was another doctor visit, and everything looked great. The baby's head is down, so we're praying he just stays that way from now on! Luckily, breech babies aren't hereditary, or else the odds would be majorly against us! Grace, our doctor, estimated that Baby D. weighs a little under 3 lbs...wow!

The only semi-bad news is that Grace is going on holiday April 1st and won't be back until the 11th. So the other doctor, Lucy, would deliver the baby if it comes during that time. I can't fault Grace, because she basically never takes holiday from what I've seen. And I'm not terribly concerned because Lucy is actually the head of the practice. She is extremely good from everything we hear, and we only picked Grace initially because she's a bit more "warm and fuzzy" than Lucy. Either way, it's very comforting to know that I will definitely have either Grace or Lucy, which is not at all the case if we had gone with a public hospital.

In public hospitals, you potentially see a different doctor every time you go in for a check-up, and have absolutely no idea who will deliver your baby. It may be someone you've never met, depending on who is on duty when you go into labor. Public hospitals are also much more limited regarding visitors, including husbands. This was definitely a deal breaker for us, as I am not interested in going through birth without my darling husband there at all times. And then there's the language barrier. From what we hear, doctors can usually speak a reasonable amount of English, but the rest of the hospital staff often can't. This could be a problem, as Nate and I speak about 4 words of Cantonese combined. (I know, it's terrible. I promise I'll do better if we ever live in Europe or something.)

As for me, the belly is getting bigger, but it's certainly not unmanageable yet. I'm very grateful that my back is feeling pretty darn good most of the time. I will admit, however, that a few things are getting more difficult. Tying my shoes can be a bit annoying, because it's really hard to reach them with my belly and pants waistband getting in the way. I also tried to take stairs two at a time today, and discovered that my thigh actually hits my belly now. Mind you, even with the obvious basketball under my shirt, I'm still occasionally getting comments like, "Wow, I bet you haven't had to buy too many maternity clothes!" Seriously? About the only non-maternity clothes I can fit in at this point are two t-shirts and my elastic waist pajama pants/shorts. But, I guess I'll take that as a compliment that I'm not yet looking like a beached whale! :)

The kids at school, on the other hand, are definitely noticing the belly. I frequently get comments from my class like, "Hey! The baby is getting bigger/fatter!" Unfortunately, the kids are right at belly-height, and they haven't quite gotten used to the enormity of it. This means I get a lot of hugs where students' heads kind of bang into my belly. I'm trying to mostly do side hugs instead.

A 1st grade class was walking by me in the hall today, and these were the comments I got:
Student #1: "Mrs. Dennison, are you going to have a baby?!?"
Student #2: "I'm so excited! I want to see it!"
Student #3 says in a very grown-up, serious way: "Is this your first child?"

3rd Trimester, Here we come!

We've made it to the third trimester! Hard to believe-- well, at least it's hard to believe until I look down and can't see my feet. I have to admit, I'm a bit attached to the belly and wonder if I'll miss it. Baby D is moving all over the place these days (and nights), and I just love feeling and watching my belly move with him! I've even started feeling his hiccups this past week!

We went for a check up two weeks ago, and everything looked good. Our doctor estimated based on measurements that Baby D weighed a little under 2 lbs. Right on target. We're going back again on Monday, and will have to go every 2 weeks from now on (until the last month when it changes to weekly visits).

Here's a photo of the basketball under my shirt:

And we bought an awesome diaper bag last weekend! Let the nesting begin!

Speaking of nesting, something possessed me to try to bake bread- from scratch- for the first time last weekend. Here is one of the 3 loaves I made. It's Nate's family's Shredded Wheat bread, and it turned out quite yummy! It was a bit difficult to find all of the ingredients in HK, so I modified slightly.

Home for Christmas: MI

Here are a few photos from MI at Christmas...

Amy wearing her shoe bag

Point Betsie...and it was even colder than it looks!

Tim and Marcia threw a lovely shower for us

Tim & Marcia's Christmas tree, freshly cut from their backyard

Home for Christmas: NC

Our trip home for the holidays got off to a delayed start this year. We had just under two weeks to manage to visit my family in NC, and then both sides of Nate's family in MI. But then a storm hit the northeast on our way in, and we got stuck in lovely Newark, NJ in a blizzard (a painfully cold welcome back to the US). We waited in line for somewhere around 3 hours, I think, in NJ and were very fortunate to get the only two seats on any flight to anywhere in the entire southeastern US for the next day.

We were exhausted after the flight from HK, so we got a hotel for the night somewhere in the middle of nowhere, ordered pizza, and cranked up the heat in our room. Fortunately, Continental accidentally paid for our hotel room (we didn't ask questions), and there was a free shuttle the 30 minutes to the hotel. Speaking of that shuttle, we had quite an experience riding it back to the airport the next day. It was a mini-bus with people and luggage absolutely crammed on it, but the door had apparently broken the night before. So, we're flying down the highway in the snow and ice, and some guy has to attempt to hold the door closed- much easier said than done- so that neither we nor our luggage would fly out. It was a very dangerous job, but I guess someone had to do it.

Once we actually got to NC, things were much better. We had a great time hanging out with my family, doing the traditional Christmas meals with extended family, watching our favorite holiday movies, warming our bums in front of the fire, and going to the Christmas Eve church service.

The photos below are courtesy of my parents, because I stole them off of their camera.

Christmas at my grandparents' house...

Loading our plates-- Yum!

Christmas music courtesy of my cousin Jacob and my grandfather.

Gift time!

Brandon and Jacob's matching shirts. Good thing they live in different cities.

Back at my parents' house...

Jessica and Brett gave us cute burping cloths. Nate shows he's ready for action!

Mom and Dad gave us a Baby Bjorn and cute little Carolina socks. Thanks!

We didn't have a baby to put in there (yet), so we felt compelled to try it out with Maddie. Surprisingly, she was quite tolerant.

This one is for those of you who keep pestering me with, "When are you going to start showing?" Well, here's the bump as of Christmas. I hope we can all agree that I am, in fact, pregnant and showing now.

Christmas 2009 Allen Family Photo. From left: Brett, Jessica, Mom, Dad, me, Nate.

Next Christmas there will be a new generation in the photo!

Stay tuned for a few more holiday photos from MI...coming soon!

Ultrasound Pics...better late than never

I finally got some the pictures scanned from our last ultrasound a couple of weeks ago. I was 20 weeks, 5 days at the time. The baby was so big that he couldn't fit in one picture, so we have a lot of pictures of different body parts.

Spine & Ribs

4 Chambers of the Heart

Split screen of the Feet

Brain

Split screen of Arm Bones (check out the foot up by the arm on the right half of the picture)

Face Profile (with hand up by mouth)

Jen's Wedding

I made a super-short trip home last weekend to be a bridesmaid in Jennifer Parks (now Jennifer Hooker)'s wedding. It was exhausting, but I'm so glad I was able to be there for the big day. Jen and Brian looked great, and you could see so much love and happiness on their faces. (I spent a lot of the ceremony trying not to cry!) Didn't bring my camera, but here are a couple of photos from my dad.

Doctor Visit

We went to the doctor and sonographer today for our big halfway point visit. I'm going to keep this post brief, because I have to go pack for my trip home to Jen's wedding, but the doctor visit went great! All of the baby's body parts looked like they're developing appropriately, and he's still measuring a week older than my due date. Sonographer said 99% chance it's a boy. The coolest part was probably that the baby had the hiccups during the sonogram, so we could see his chest hiccupping!

Here's the growing belly!

We got a copy of the sonogram on DVD and tons of photos, but I didn't have time to scan them at school this afternoon. So, I took a quick photo of a couple of them...not good quality at all because of the shiny paper, but you can get the idea for now.

This is a picture of the baby's profile. There's a hand up by his mouth...maybe sucking his thumb?

And I like this one...cute split-screen shot of the two feet.

Once I get back from the trip, I'll see about trying to scan these photos and more so you can get a better view. Off to pack now!