Daphne Alive: June 2013

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Baby Bean is a....

If you've just stumbled upon my blog looking for weight loss advice please check out the side bar to the left, and top posts to the right. It might also help to start at the beginning of my posts and read forward to current date. I'm currently not updating as often, partially due to my pregnancy and partially due to other medical concerns. I still check my email so feel free to email me at: daphne@daphnealive.com if you have any questions. Or check out my Facebook Page!

I'll give you all good news first! Our beautiful baby "Bean" is healthy and well! I was told to bring a bunch of extra clothing and to be prepared to stay for awhile. So I did. I brought a whole mini suitcase filled with stuff I might need.

When we got to the women's hospital I had to fill out some paperwork and sit and wait for awhile. Maybe an hour at most. The hospital was beautiful and huge and so many windows. I had so much to look at just looking around, you can tell I'm used to our small local hospital. When we where called in we where told that Dan could stay for the entire ultrasound which was a treat! Usually they just call the husbands in afterwards and give them a little tour of the baby's landscape. This time he got to see the sonographer measure arms and legs, and so on. Afterwards a doctor came in and told us that although the fluid was still low that our baby was perfectly healthy and he didn't see any reason to be concerned. He did ask that we come back in two weeks for another ultrasound to double check that everything is still going swimmingly (ha!).

We did some baby shopping afterwards at Babies 'r' us since we don't have one where we live and I've been dying to go there! We bought a high chair, a stuffed toy, some crib sheets and a mobile. We also hit up the Disney store and bought a little Tigger onesie with a matching hat! Buying things in a bigger city is so much fun!

The car ride was absolutely the worst part. After about half an hour in a vehicle my legs start to either ache or fall asleep. After an hour I have to get out and walk around for about 10 minutes or so. It rained for most of the way so it was a pretty miserable trip in that sense. Hopefully I'll be in a roomier vehicle on my next trip down so I get more leg room. My car is cute, but cramped.

On Monday we had our gender reveal BBQ! We've known since May 8th what the gender was but we where waiting for another ultrasound to confirm what we saw. Since all the ultrasounds where fuzzy and not very good we where a bit hesitant that the first ultrasound was correct. Well it seems that Bean wanted to hide his heart, head size all that fun stuff, but when it came to between the legs he was more than willing to spread 'em all three times!

We had a small BBQ with our parents, siblings and a few very close friends. Afterwards we brought out cupcakes for everyone to have. Inside revealed whether it was a boy or girl!

It's a boy!

When we had our first ultrasound the sonographer brought the wand down for the gender shot and said, "and here are the boy parts!" I was completely shocked! I don't even think I said anything. I didn't cry or anything. I just laid there with my belly exposed and I was thinking... "I'm growing a penis?!"

Yes, that's exactly what I thought.

Now that the shock is over I'm so so excited! I had always planned on a dinosaur theme for the nursery. I found some stuff on etsy that could work for either a baby boy or girl. (Think pink dinosaurs with bows or blue dinosaurs). So this solidified the dinosaur theme.

On the left is the baby blanket I crocheted, and in the center is the dinosaur I bought as babys first new stuffed toy. On the left is a blue dinosaur blanket.

All of the old wives tales pointed to boy, except for the Chinese baby predictor that one said girl. So Dan had guessed boy and I had guessed girl. Mostly because girl stuff was more fun to look at!

I have a post planned about this new food subscription I found online. I was really hungry and full of pregnancy cravings in the middle of the night about 3 months ago and I found a place online that ships you food to your house once a month. Most of the food is either Organic, gluten free, healthy etc. Most of it is made in Canada also. Unfortunately it's not available outside of Canada, but so far I've gotten two months worth of snacks and they're all awesome! I'm hoping to get the post up tomorrow. Food.ee is what it's called if you want to check it out in the meantime.

Thank you all for sticking around, I have been terrible with posting and have been completely preoccupied with baby stuff. If I'm not doing baby stuff then I'm either trying to spend as much time with Dan since he worked like a dog all winter, or resting. I start my third trimester soon and I've been getting tired!

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Baby Bean is swimming in the reeds!

**First things first! I'm happy to say that I did an interview at How I lost 100 and it's been posted! Please check it out and leave comments over there! I think the interview did a good job of summing up my weight loss experience and my outlook.**

This past weekend I had an awesome time at my 10 year high school reunion. YUP! 10 years! I can barely comprehend that amount of time passing. Maybe because I see many of these people on Facebook often so 10 years seems so crazy! It was really nice to see some people and to see where they are and to see their kids as well. It was also interesting to see everyone is still friends with the same people!

I had a handful of people mention my blog (Hi guys!) and every time it startled me. Oh yeah, I have this big personal thing out on the internet for everyone to read! Sometimes I forget that people I know actually read it. It's easy for me to see international readers and forget about these people close by reading too!

Last Wednesday I had my third ultrasound at 24 weeks. My 20 week ultrasound was okay, but they couldn't get as many photos of the heart as they needed so thus needing another ultrasound. Well the ultrasound was really quick and she called in my husband right away to show us our little Bean squirming around. It never gets old! She said the photo quality this time was much worse than last time and recommended that we don't get photos at all. She showed us the arms and legs and I remember thinking that the baby looked so squished! I thought that babies didn't start running out of room until well into the third trimester.

We went home afterwards and Dan went off to work. I got a call a few hours later from my Obstetrician (Pre-natal doctor) telling me to head into Triage on the Labour and Delivery floor of the hospital. The ultrasound showed that my amniotic fluid was too low and they had to make sure my water didn't break. I asked when I had to go in, and they said "right now, your Doctor will meet you there." They certainly made it sound serious! Serious enough that my doctor would meet me there right away!

I left a message on Dan's phone and then headed in. I registered and headed into triage where they strapped a monitor to my belly to make sure I wasn't having contractions (uhh what?!) and they quizzed me about contractions and if I noticed my water breaking. Then they used a doppler and listened to baby's heartbeat a few times. Then I waited about 30-40 minutes for my Doctor to arrive.

Right before the doctor arrived Dan showed up. I think he practically ran to the hospital! He was sweating and in work clothes and had a pretty wild look to him. My text message to him was pretty vague I found out, oopsies! Blame it on baby brain! So my Doctor showed up right away and she tested to make sure my water didn't break or that I wasn't leaking fluid, which I wasn't. She then let us know that she's been contacting the Perinatal specialist in Edmonton and that they will call us within the week to let us know when to come in for monitoring (uhh what?!).

On Friday (two days later) we had our regular appointment with my OB and she again explained the low amniotic fluid. In her words she just said it was "Very low". And that in our city and in her practice she's not equipped to diagnose why it's happening and that our ultrasound techs are trained to do ultrasounds for everything and not specifically trained for pregnancies. So she's sending me to the big city to get an Ultrasound and check-up done by people who do it everyday. It's a little frightening, but she reassured me that it's my best option at this point.

I did a little googling and found that very low amniotic fluid is more rare, especially this early. Affecting only 4-8% of pregnancies. There can be a few reasons, sometimes it's dehydration and sometimes it's the baby's kidneys not working properly (which is not good). Sometimes they don't know the cause. In a worst case scenario we have to deliver the baby early, which my OB told me this hospital is equipped to do. (Yikes again!). I'm not ready to deliver, but I am ready to do anything necessary to help my baby out!

So tomorrow bright and early Dan and I are heading into the city. We hope to be home by Thursday night if all goes well and I hope to provide updates by the end of the week! I really hope they can get some good photos for me to take home and to show you guys too!

Saturday 1 June 2013

Baby Bean and a trip to the mountains

Don't worry friends, I haven't forgotten about a single one of you. I guess I had decided to put my blog on hold and just not tell anyone that. I find that if I focus inward I do fantastic and when I start to focus outward such as writing a post I start to just feel out of place. Not exactly sure why, but that's the way it is.

Don't worry, I've been doing much better. At the end of April Dan and I went to to the mountains and spent a few days there. The days leading up to the trip where nerve racking. I still wasn't leaving the house on my own. I never drove anywhere, nothing. I found that if I did go anywhere with Dan that I tired easily and my foot and leg would spasm without much notice, so we'd have to rush home. So as you can imagine it was scary to think of sitting in the car for hours, then trying to limp my way up stairs into a hotel room. If I even made it that far. Then I was scared I wouldn't be able to leave the hotel room the whole trip.

Dan was a sweetheart and spent a whole evening calling different hotels and found one that had a main floor room (no stairs for me to worry about) with a nice view. That way it'd be easy for me to get in and out of the room, and if I couldn't leave the room at least I'd have a good view for our stay.

It turns out the trip did me wonders! I was much less stressed out when Dan was around, so I did a lap around the hotel parking lot with him clutching my hand. We took a drive through the mountains to a glacier and we stopped along the way so I could get out and stretch my legs and I would walk up and down the road a little on my own and it was fantastic! I wasn't too adventurous, but I was used to clutching Dan's hand and limping everywhere.

By the time we made it back home from our trip, the sharp pains and electric shocks in my legs started going away day by day. I'm not sure if I just needed to stretch my legs more and walk around or what exactly. I still get deep aches in my calves, but I think that is more pregnancy related .

Since then I went to the grocery store with Dan twice and gone out several times baby shopping with him. Yesterday I did my first unaided grocery shopping trip all by myself! I really really missed being mobile and independent. Mentally I feel much better. Unfortunately I had to quit my job. But I think even short work shifts would have been too much too soon.

On May 8th we had our anatomy scan on baby Bean at our 20 week appointment. The baby was turned towards my spine so they couldn't see the heart very well, so we go back on Wednesday to get another ultrasound done. I'm actually very excited to have another ultrasound done!

I've begun feeling lots of twitches and kicks too. The baby loves jumping off of my bladder especially. It's also interesting that baby seems to be active for a little in the morning, then very late at night. Like after 11 pm if I'm still awake.

My 23 week photo. I also have weird claw-hand going on!

So far my Obstetrician still has no concerns about my weight gain, but I see her again next Friday. I have gained slightly more than "goal" so we'll see if it's becoming an issue.

It's weird to think that in less than a month I'll be in my third trimester already! We all know the first trimester was utter hell for various reasons, the second trimester really is turning out well and now hopefully the third will go well too. We already have part of the nursery set up, and I plan on getting photos of the nursery once we have more done in there. We where gifted a really wonderful glider, and we found some furniture on sale so we're doing fantastic in that area so far!

Thank you all for your kind emails and comments lately. It's nice to know that it's okay to take a break and that I'm not disappointing anyone. Like I said above, feel free to email me or even drop a line on my Facebook page!