Pregnancy- The Photo Progression

    Ok, so I know I'm not done yet, but I thought it would be fun to put

 together a collage now of my growing bump! 

   

30 weeks!

    We've reached the 30 week mark today! Baby is growing still and we are getting more and more excited to meet him! It'll be here before we know it.

Symptoms: 

• Acid Reflux- I've had issues with this my whole life, but it's definitely worse being pregnant! I do my best not to eat before going to bed, and especially not anything spicy. I sleep with 2 pillows to stay angled enough that it doesn't get too bad. This symptom was WAAAAAAY bad when I had my cold. For some reason, being congested was a sign for the acid reflux to act up. Cough drops were needed, but also made it worse. So if i started coughing during the night and had to use a cough drop, I was done for. I'd have to sleep sitting up for the rest of the night. 
• Pelvic Pain- This comes and goes. Some days it's so bad it hurts to walk, other days I barely notice it. Certain things I do will cause stabbing pain, like when I roll out of bed in the morning. It feels like a knife is being stabbed right in the front of my pelvis (in the pubic symphysis). Not very pleasant, but at least it isn't as regular as it was during weeks 15-25.
• Back Pain- This is similar to the pelvic pain. Some days it's awful, other days it's not too bad. The more I walk, the more it hurts. This is just a fact of life!
• Frequent Peeing- This one has come and gone for me throughout the pregnancy. I guess it's getting to its worst phase now though, since some nights I get up twice in night to pee instead of just once like I was during the other trimesters. I wouldn't say I have to pee all the time though. Yet. :)
• Breathing- Since he's sitting breech, he's not kicking my lungs and ribs, so I don't feel that I'm really having any trouble with breathing yet. I get out of breath faster, but that's cause I'm carrying extra weight! This will probably get worse over these last few weeks as he keeps growing and hopefully flips.
• Swelling- Still don't have much of this! My wedding ring has started to feel more snug, but since I can still take it off I think we're doing ok. I still have my tiny ankles, so maybe I'll get through this pregnancy without having the dreaded "cancles" (or however it's spelled)!
• Emotions- I feel like I've started becoming more emotional lately, kind of like when I was in the first trimester. I'm more prone to crying over silly things, and having my feelings hurt more easily. Ryan is handling all of this like a champ, and just letting it happen. 
• Weight Gain- This one is hard for me. I know that weight gain in normal, cause I mean come on, I'm growing a human being! BUT, it's still hard to see the numbers increasing. Since I haven't been active and I don't always eat the way I should, I've gained more than is necessary. My OB says my weight looks fine and hasn't said anything else about it, but I'm getting more and more aware of it. I'm up 32lbs currently. Hopefully watching my diet better and walking regularly will help that not to rise to a much higher number by the end. 

Exercise: 

• I've started doing 30 minute walks around the track at the rec center with a friend. That seems to be the perfect amount of time. By the end I feel swollen, especially in my hands, my back starts to hurt & my waddle increases, but I feel good and not like I've over-done it. I think if we went for a longer time, those discomforts would become real pains. It is hard to find the motivation to go everyday like I want to, since at the end of the work day I just want to go home, have dinner, and veg. So it's a work in progress!

Other:

• I've been sleeping with a pregnancy wedge pillow thing to try and help with my back pain. I think it helps, but not so much that I think it's the best invention and I need to tell all pregnant women about it. We'll see if it becomes more important to me as my belly continues to get bigger and heavier.
• I ordered a maternity support belt at the suggestion of my OB, and I'm excited to give it a try once it arrives. It's supposed to help with both the pelvic & back pain I have.
• I've been making some of my regular shirts work as maternity shirts, but I'm at the point now that I won't be able to continue doing that. I do have maternity shirts, but even those seem to be getting snug. I don't want to buy more now since I only have 10 weeks left, but wearing the same things over and over gets boring. A sacrifice I'm willing to make though to save money!

Baby:

• He is still breech, but has plenty of time to flip before the big day. I don't mind not getting kicked in the ribs, so this arrangement works out great for now!
• He isn't a super active baby, so I cherish all of his movements. He's more active in the evening and later, although I'm starting to feel him during the day more frequently.
• He responds to music and flashlights that are placed on my belly
• He hasn't done anything that causes me pain, although I think he's found a nerve or something to bump in there on the left side that he'll hit sometimes. It sends this shocking feeling down my leg. Since it catches me off guard, it normally makes me jump. It happened at church once and startled Ryan when I jumped suddenly. Pretty funny!
• He should be almost 3lbs, and about 15-17in long. 

Overall, I still LOVE being pregnant! I'm going to miss feeling him move once he's out, that's for sure. It's still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that there is a BABY in there, and I'm not just gaining weight. It blows my mind how we're able to grow people. Take a second to think about it, like REALLY think about it, and you'll probably have your mind blown too! It's such an incredible thing to be a part of. I'm grateful to have this opportunity, as I know that not every woman does. Sometimes when I look at my belly (stretch marks and all), I can't help but feeling incredibly blessed. 

New Year Scare

    I've decided that Baby Deuel has a goal to give his mom & dad heart attacks before he makes his grand arrival into this world. Here's our latest adventure caused by him!

    We flew home from California on January 1st. We got to the airport that afternoon and said our goodbyes. After Ryan and I checked our bags, we started walking towards security. Baby felt reeeaaaally low, and I felt a ton of pressure. It was making it difficult to walk. I made a comment to Ryan about needing to ask the doctor at my next appt if it was normal for him to be so low at only 27-28 weeks. We walked slowly throughout the airport and finally got to our gate. We boarded the plane, and once we took off I started trying to get comfortable so I could sleep for the flight. My back was hurting, but that wasn't anything unusual for me and my poor body. I was able to fall asleep, and slept for most of the flight. I wasn't sleeping so deeply though that I wasn't aware of how bumpy this flight was. We were on one of those little planes, the ones that just have 2 seats on each side. I think the size of the plane made it so we felt the turbulence more easily. But other than that it was an uneventful flight.
    Once we landed and got off the plane, I let our ride know that we were going to get our bags and then we would call them once we were ready. Ryan and I both decided to make a stop at the bathroom before heading to get the bags. When I wiped, I discovered blood. Not just spotting either, but like I had started my period. My head started spinning and I couldn't quite catch my breath. With tears streaming down my face, I got myself together and headed out to tell Ryan what was going on. Seeing my face he obviously knew something was wrong right away, and I did my best to explain without starting to sob. We headed towards baggage claim so we could find someone to ask where the closest hospital was. I was reviewing in my mind when I had last felt him move, and as I thought about it I hadn't felt him move since before we boarded the airplane. It was getting harder to breath as my panic kept growing. We got downstairs to the baggage claim and Ryan headed straight to a police officer he saw.  After they spoke for a minute, the cop had Ryan him to me, and then over to some chairs. I was so scared, and on the borderline of having a panic attack. The cop asked for details of what was going on, and he jotted down some notes as I spoke. He then said that he was going to call in the paramedics to come talk to me. As we waited for them, several other police officers started gathering around me. One went with Ryan to watch for our bags. By the time the paramedics arrived, we had about 5 cops around me, plus the one with Ryan. I'm sure to on lookers, it was quite a scene with me bawling and surrounded by cops, and Ryan being escorted by a cop. There ended up being 4-5 paramedic firefighters in addition to all the cops. They took my vitals, instructed me to calm down so I didn't cause problems for the baby, and then told me to tell them what was going on. As we were talking to them, I continued praying mightily for our baby, and for guidance. Ryan and I both felt that it would be ok to refuse the ambulance and just have our ride take us straight to the hospital, and the paramedics seemed to agree. Since I wasn't coding they wouldn't have gotten us to the hospital any faster, and we couldn't really afford the bill for an ambulance ride! The paramedics left but all the police officers hung around until our ride got to the door. The one that had been by my side the whole time took a look around, laughed, and said "Obviously you've got quite a few officers hoping that they would get to deliver a baby today!" I guess so! Haha.
    Our friends let Ryan drive, knowing how I am in cars and not wanting to get me more upset than I already was with everything. How thoughtful, right? We got to the hospital quickly, and were sent straight to the maternity ward. We sat there for quite some time before they had a room ready to take me to, and in the meantime we made some phone calls to let our families know what was going on & to ask for extra prayers. Once they got me into a room, they had me change into a gown and then hooked me up to 2 monitors. One for baby's heartbeat, and the other to watch for contractions. As soon as she got me attached to those, he finally moved. So with that and hearing his heartbeat, I finally started to really calm down. We told the nurse everything, then waited for the doctor to come and do her evaluation. When she got there, she continued to put us at ease. She had a GREAT bedside manner, and we liked her a lot more than my own OBGYN. She asked us to go over our story again, and then listed off the tests she wanted to do. I ended up having some blood tests, a urine test, regular ultrasound, intrauterine ultrasound, and the fetal monitoring. Once baby moved again, he had the wiggles and just kept going. He even got hiccups once during the time we were there, which sound funny on the heart monitor. It would cause a funny static sound when he moved, and then when he had the hiccups it was a different sound. All of the tests came back normal, and they couldn't find the cause of the bleeding. It had stopped on the way to the hospital, which was a good thing. I didn't have any contractions, and his heart rate stayed strong the whole time he was being monitored. They did say that he is currently breech, but that isn't something to worry about yet since he still has plenty of time to flip. He was sitting really low though and putting a lot of pressure on my cervix. That would explain why it was uncomfortable walking! Eventually they said that either it could have been related to the subchorionic hemorrhage I had back at week 6 of the pregnancy (the initial bleeding scare), the altitude changes from the flight (although it didn't happen on our way there), or it was my body just having a freak moment. I think the last is most likely, since I have a long history of it doing just that! I was given instructions to stay home from work the following day and rest, and to keep taking it easy over the next few weeks. If it happened again, I was to call my OB immediately and go from there.
    After all of that, I was finally released a little after 2 am. We got home and into bed by 3am. Our flight had landed at 9:35pm, so it had been a looooooong and exhausting night! Our dear sweet friends stayed with us the whole time, and then went to work as usual the following morning at 8am. We are so lucky & grateful to have such amazing friends!!
    Since that whole episode, things have been just fine. Although I was going to the bathroom every ten minutes (at least that's what it felt like) for the next few days to check for bleeding, there hasn't been any more. Like I said, I think baby just has a goal to give me a heart attack before he comes! We were both grateful that everything turned out so great, and not having a teeny tiny 2lb (give or take) baby join us almost 3 months early. He still needs time to grow in there! I had my regular follow up appt with my OB on the 10th, and I told her about the whole experience. While she could access the records electronically, they didn't send them to her so she had no way of knowing anything had happened. I was surprised they didn't, but oh well. She didn't like what had happened, and again gave me strict instructions to call if anything seems to be going wrong. We discussed the upcoming birth, and we are going to move forward with a regular vaginal delivery. After hearing her talk about it, and the fact that she got 4 other opinions from various maternal fetal doctors & orthopedic surgeons, I feel much better about things going this way. They all feel that there isn't any risk of re-breaking my pelvis (which was a HUGE worry of mine), and that even with the screw my pelvis should still allow enough movement to let baby get through. And because my doctor is aware of my history, she will be watching baby extra closely to monitor him for fetal distress. At that point, we would switch to a c-section.
    It's hard to explain how I feel about all of it. After operating under the absolute knowledge of needing a c-section for the last 6 1/2 years, it's really hard to suddenly switch gears mentally and be happy and excited about this change. I know that there are pros and cons to both ways of delivering,  but you don't really know how your own body will respond to a certain type of delivery until it happens. No one knows for sure what really will be best for my body, because my circumstances are so unique. The way my doctor put it, I don't have a problem (like gestational diabetes, etc) where she can go research medical journals and get ideas on how to proceed. So she's just coming up with the best plan that she can, based on her knowledge and my medical history. I have to trust that. If at any point I start to have a feeling that things need to be done differently, I most certainly will voice that opinion! We're feeling pretty good at this point that things will all work out ok.

Christmas Vacation

    We were so excited to be able to spend our Christmas vacation with our Deuel side of the family for Christmas. We got to stay with my in laws, as well as enjoy time with Grandma Deuel, and a few visits with uncles Bob & Tom (yes, those are their real names. Awesome huh?) We ate TONS of delicious food, enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL weather, and just overall enjoyed getting away from life for 11 days.

Are these temps even allowed in December? I sure wish they were in Utah!!

On Sunday after church, Ry and I decided to take a walk on the beach & the pier. Although everyone else on the beach was wearing a jacket, I was basking in the 60 degree day and enjoying the sunshine! 

The family took me to my first professional hockey game. They are all big fans of the LA Kings and it was fun to have the experience. It was SO loud though, and baby was probably wondering what the heck was happening! The team lost in the last half, but they still played well (I think, but what do I know!)

 After the game ended they had a pyrotechnics & laser light show to celebrate the holidays. It was pretty fun to watch too. A fun way to end the night!

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love animals. Like, borderline obsession. Especially small animals, cause I'm totally obsessed with tiny things. So Ryan made sure to take me to the tidepools so I could go "be one with nature" and frolic among all the fun critters. The sun was really bright, so I couldn't take many pictures because the sun kept reflecting on the water's surface. It was still fun though and again, it was a beautiful day!!

    On Christmas, baby woke me up by moving around a lot. And I felt him having hiccups for the first time. That was his gift to me I guess. It was fun! I caught some of his movements on video, but he always did the bigger movements when I would turn the camera off on my phone. Of course. I tried to load a tiny clip on here, but it won't work. Fail! Oh well. Life goes on. 

    Ry and I made a big Christmas breakfast for everyone, carrying on my family's tradition. My mom's parents started in, and my parents continued it, and now we are hoping to continue it in our family too. We do orange julius, scrambled eggs, orange or cinnamon rolls, and tator tots wrapped in bacon. SOOO YUMMY!! Not to mention it has always been my Christmas breakfast, so it's a comfort thing too. After breakfast, we opened presents which of course is always fun! Everyone received amazing things, and it was so much fun to watch everyone get so excited for their presents. Later we had a delicious feast made by Grandma Deuel of ham, potatoes, rolls, veggies, and homemade cheesecake. It was divine! A magical Christmas. 

    One of the other highlights of the trip was doing a session with Ryan at the LA Temple. I had walked the grounds years before with some friends, but hadn't ever been inside. It's fun to experience the different temples and enjoy their beauty. 

    We loved our vacation, most especially spending time with family. We are SO grateful to have them in our lives. We know that we are truly blessed to call them family. Especially me, since I know that not everyone is able to say that about their in laws. We may not be related through blood, but I sure love them as much as my own family!!

                                           

Winter is upon us

    Winter is fully upon us now! I don't HATE the snow, but it isn't my favorite thing either. Especially when driving. I feel pretty confident in my driving abilities, but I DON'T have confidence in the drivers around me. I swear, every year people forget how to drive in the snow. They may have grown up here in Utah and driven in the snow for years, but somehow by the first snowfall each year they forget all of their snow-driving-memories. Retards. Anyway, we've had a few snow storms that have each dumped quite a bit of snow, but for the most part it hasn't been too bad weather wise. With one of the first storms, we woke up to find like 8 inches of snow on our car. We dug it out so we could go to work, and then at the end of the work day we went out to find the car buried in snow again. Isn't winter fun?

(Giant icicle from our next door neighbor's roof)

    This month went by really fast for us. Each year at work (we both work at a mental health office) the case managers and therapists review their clients' needs and find those that have no family or support system in place to give them a Christmas. They then fill out wish lists and those are submitted to the committee chair. I'm the co-chair, and this was my second year doing it. Once the lists are all turned in, they are adopted out to various people. Usually these people are employees, local organizations, church members, etc. Any clients that aren't adopted out are adopted by work. This year, we had 149 wish lists. Only 18 didn't get adopted and needed to be sponsored by work. The chair and I worked together to fill those 18 lists so those clients would also get Christmas. The whole project is massive and takes LOTS of time & organization. Most of that is done behind the scenes, so other employees have NO idea how much work is involved. It is a rather rewarding program to be so closely involved in, and I'm grateful to have been a part of it. I will say though it was MUCH easier doing it last year when I wasn't pregnant! My body tires out much easier, and I can't do the heavy lifting and such that is sometimes required. So I had to ask for help for things that normally I could do by myself, and that was frustrating. But since there's a good reason for it, I couldn't get too frustrated with it. At least I tried not to anyway. :) I loved doing it, and will love it even more once it's done! ;)

    This year for Christmas we decided to save money and do homemade gifts instead of buying them. So after talking to a friend who makes beautiful embroidery hoops for her Etsy shop, I decided to try making some myself. And I think they turned out great! I was so happy with them! Here are the ones that I remembered to take pictures of. 

 
 

    

There are two others, the one for Ryan and the one for Grandma Deuel that I forgot to take pictures of, but oh well. I plan on making one for Baby's room too once I can decide on a quote for it. As for making these, they went a lot faster than I expected. I started back before Thanksgiving thinking I wasn't going to be able to get them all done in time, but I didn't have a time crunch at all! That made me much feel a lot less stressed, especially with all of the Christmas stuff I was already involved in at work. 

Can't wait for the holidays!!

November

    November has been a fun month for us. Closer to the beginning of the month, we had our 21 week ultrasound. That was the anatomy scan, to make sure that baby is growing healthy and developing correctly. He passed with flying colors. I just started feeling him move at the beginning of week 20, and it's not very regular. We were hoping to see him moving all around on the ultrasound, but he's just not a very active guy! We did get to see him yawn which was really cute. We're glad that he's growing on target and is healthy!

    My mom, sister & niece came out for a few weeks near the end of the month. They stayed with us for one weekend of that and up north in Ogden with my mom's family for the rest of the time. When they were down visiting us, one of the things we did was take them to the Provo Recreation Center. My niece Heidi LOVES water, and the rec center has a big kiddie pool area for her to enjoy. She loved splashing and playing in the kiddie area, but loved the foam and bubbles found in the little lazy river more. Every time we went around, when she started to see the bubbly area she'd start yelling "Bubbles!! MORE BUBBLES!!". It was so funny. Since Ryan and I were playing with her while my sister rested, everyone kept telling us how beautiful she is, and that was almost always followed by "But where does she get her red hair??" Apparently two brunettes can't have a redheaded kid in the eyes of the world! Tragic. I guess we shouldn't hope for redheads in our kids, cause no one would believe that they were ours! Anyway, she loved the water so much that when we tried to get her out of the water to leave, she would start to cry. Finally when her lips started having a bluish tint my sister played what she calls the "mean mom card" and made her get out in spite of the tears. We took her home and got her bathed, then hung around the house playing her silly games and dancing to her favorite song, "What Does The Fox Say".

              

 

    For Thanksgiving, Ryan and I drove up to Ogden to stay with my Aunt and spend the time with my mom's family. We had such a great time with them! Thanksgiving was a fun day, starting with setting up the rooms at the church for eating, then a quick volleyball game with the cousins. That is not an easy game to play when pregnant! My hustle sucked! Haha. The food was delicious, and we of course stuffed our faces. It was good to see family that I haven't seen in a long time and catch up with them. We all opted not to do any Black Friday shopping, so we got to enjoy that night just lounging rather than going out to get in lines at the various stores. I don't think that my bladder would have agreed with waiting in long lines, even if I had wanted to go. Which I didn't. So it all worked out!
    On Saturday my sister and I went out to have a "sister date" for breakfast, and I thought that's all it was. When we were finished eating and she asked if we could run a few errands, I figured she was enjoying the quiet time away from Heidi for awhile. Once we got back to my Aunt's house and walked inside, I quickly learned that she was just buying time for everyone to set up a surprise baby shower! It was so sweet of my family to do that! We worked on quilting a blanket that my Aunt & Grandma made, all while enjoying the good company and yummy treats. Then I got to open the presents my family had bought/made for us, which is always fun! Even though I had just seen them all a few days ago, it was nice to be able to catch up and also pick the brains of my aunts & grandma about becoming a mom. I learned a lot through their stories. I'm so grateful for a family that loves me! Below is the finished product! It's the cutest set of animals that my Aunt found, enlarged, and traced onto the fabric so we could end up with such a cute quilt. I'm sure that baby will love it too!

    We were sad to say goodbye to everyone, especially my mom, sister & Heidi since they live so far away. But knowing that we'll see them again in a few months for the baby blessing eases the sadness a little.

Weeks 14-16

So as far as the pregnancy goes, there’s not really anything new to report. Everything has still been pretty easy breezy! I do have more acid reflux than normal, but since I’ve been dealing with that since the 4^th grade (yes, literally) it’s not a big deal. The one thing that has started becoming a problem is my tailbone. I’m pretty sure it’s due to the fact that it was broken in my car accident, but I think in my mind I wasn’t expecting so much pain this early on!! I ordered a coccyx cushion (a special seat cushion that has a cutout where the tailbone is to relieve all pressure) to see if it would help, but so far I haven’t been blown away by it. Sometimes it helps, but more often than not it just changes the pain from one area to another. Since I’m a secretary, I’m sitting all the time. Not such a good thing when it feels like you have a broken tailbone all over again!! Unfortunately it seems to be the worst at church. Sitting on those pews just does NOT feel very good. I can make it through the first 2 hours before I have to go home and lay down to give my back a break. It’s frustrating, but of course I can’t complain when I’ve had such an easy time with everything else so far!

On Friday, we got to have the optional early gender scan and found out that we’re having a BOY!!! All along I haven’t really cared what we were having as long as they are healthy, but I have had a feeling that it’s a boy. Ryan on the other hand was absolutely convinced that it would be a girl. That’s what he was really hoping for, so it may have clouded his guessing ability. Haha. However, he’s just as excited as I am that we’re having a boy first. That means any girls that come later will have a big brother! We’ve talked about several names, and have a few that we both really like. We’ve come to the decision together that we won’t completely choose a name until we see him. Then we’ll know for sure. We hope. It was so fun to see his little profile and watch him wiggle a bit. I’m still not far enough along to feel him move yet, so it was fun seeing him move on the ultrasound. I was hoping he’d be moving a lot, but at least we got to see some wiggles. That’ll be good enough until I actually can feel him in there! At this stage (16 weeks) he’s about 4.5 inches long and around 3.5oz. Roughly the size of an avocado. In the next few weeks he’s supposed to double in size. Talk about growing pains! I know that’s how it’s supposed to go, but if you think about it, that’s a lot of growing. Can you imagine doubling in size in the space of a few weeks? Holy cow.

Hopefully in my next pregnancy post I’ll get to talk about feeling him move! My fingers are crossed that it happens soon, cause I’m just not very patient! J