Ultrasound and Non-Stress Test (NST)

I had another ultrasound and NST today. The baby had the hiccups when they first started the u/s, so we had to wait a few minutes for him to get rid of them before getting started with the measurements. His kidneys are still dilated, but last week they were 6 and 7 mm and today they were only 5. That's good news. My amniotic fluid was measuring right at 22, and last week it was 21.6. She said that small of an amount could probably be explained as a discrepancy in measurements based on the baby's movements. So it looks like it hasn't increased any. He had his right hand over his face during the entire ultrasound. I don't know what the deal is with my kids and their hands near their faces, but let's hope he doesn't try to make his appearance like that.

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The NST went well. His heart rate is good (at 133 beats per minute during the u/s) and he moves around JUST fine. I apparently had a good Braxton-Hicks contraction while they were monitoring me. I have them so frequently that I don't pay a lot of attention. The nurse asked if I was on any medication for contractions. I don't know if that will become an issue or not, but I'm sure hoping it doesn't.

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While this certainly doesn't mean we're out of the woods, it is nice to see that the kidneys look better and the amniotic fluid issue hasn't gotten worse.

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I'll go back Friday at 10:30 for another NST and keep you guys posted.

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**** Oh, and I'm 29 weeks pregnant this week, not 28. Somehow I got confused along the way.

Our 1st "kids say the darndest things" moment

We walked into Wendy's today for our fancy Sunday afternoon lunch and there was a kid hanging out by the door who had a curly red fro. I giggled, turned around and said "looks like Ronald McDonald" to Blake. We went about our business of getting the kids settled and ordering. We weren't paying any attention, but the Ronald McDonald kid and his parents walked out the door. Right at that moment Camden yelled out "bye bye Annie!" Blake and I about fell out of our chairs!

Norton Art Gallery

We went to Norton Art Gallery today to try and get some decent pictures while the azaleas are still in full bloom. We got a few good shots, but most of what I captured are pictures of Camden as he was running and/or walking away from me. He was entirely too preoccupied with the leaves and sticks and flowers to pay attention to what I was asking him to do. Landry didn't run away from the camera, she just refused to look at it. Three will be even more fun, am I right?

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Thank you to my friends (and one or two family members) who continue to tell me how good I look, but I now have evidence that you are all full of bologna! And it's pretty indisputable!

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I hope you are all enjoying your Spring!

A very belated happy 13 and 14 months to Landry!

Wow. I'm a terrible mom! It looks like I completely missed Landry's 13 month day and missed her 14 month day by 4 whole days. Poor middle child.

She's trying her best to make words, but it doesn't usually work very well. She has "bite" down pretty well, and tries to say "ball", "balloon", "tickle", "night night" and a few other things that don't come to mind right now. She's walking everywhere she goes, but still looks pretty unstable. It seems like after Camden started walking he just took off, while she still seems a little skeptical about the process. She figured out how to unhook the cabinet locks, and of course her favorite is the trash cabinet. She kindly taught her brother how to open them as well. Blake finally replaced the locks with fancier locks that require a magnet to open, so until they grow to about 5' 2" and can reach the magnet we should be safe. The bar stool in front of the trash cabinet was working well, but I'm not able to squeeze myself and baby between the cabinet and the island anymore, so the new locks were a necessity. We tried to take her pacifier away when we put her down one night last week, and that went over like a turd in a punch bowl. I didn't make it five minutes before I made Blake go in and give her one of her pacifiers. She only takes them at night and nap time, so we figure a little while longer probably won't hurt, right?

27.5 weeks pregnant

We had our follow-up with the maternal fetal medicine specialist today, so I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and knock out the glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes since I had to be at WKSouth anyway. It turns out that wasn't the best idea I've ever had. When you're faced with the possibility of not-so-good news (because they can't tell you anything bad quickly), it's probably better to have at least a little bit of food in you. I thought I might have time to grab some fries or something between the lab work and the appointment with the specialist, but no such luck. So we get to the specialist's office and wait in the waiting room for a solid hour past our appointment time. Do you know how much food I could have consumed in that hour? Most of you would probably be embarrassed to know what all I could have shoved in my mouth in that amount of time. Anyway, we get back to the examination room and the tech does her deal. The kidneys are still dilated, with the right measuring 6 mm and the left measuring 7. They still describe this as slightly dilated. As she's wrapping up, the nurse starts to walk out the door and the ultrasound tech says "something, something, she's got Polly". Now, I don't know exactly who Polly is, but here I am thinking that she's down the hall and another nurse is with her. Not so much. When the doctor comes in they discuss the fact that I've got poly - polyhydramnios - which is an increase in amniotic fluid. Sounds potentially scary, right? The tech later explains that the upper limit of normal is 20 (ccs, I guess - not sure of the measurement) and mine is measuring 21.something, and that it's not uncommon for it to be in the normal range on future ultrasound. So now we've got slightly dilated kidneys and slightly increased amniotic fluid. So I'm slightly worried at this point.

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The doctor goes over the possibilities, but starts with something to the effect of: there's no structural explanation for the dilated kidneys or increased fluid, and his experience is that in 99.9% of the cases where they see no structural explanation for the findings, they deliver a healthy baby. There's a possibility that the baby has issues swallowing, which would explain the increased fluid. There's the possibility that I have gestational diabetes, which could explain the increased fluid (although we should know tomorrow whether this is the case or not). There's the possibility that he's not urinating properly, therefore he's not swallowing as much fluid . . . I think the possibilities are endless. He offered us an amniocentesis to rule out a chromosomal disorder, which we again declined.

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I had a non-stress test today, which I guess I passed. The nurse came in to check the print out and asked me if I was experiencing any tightness or discomfort. I explained to her that I had a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions, and she relayed it to the doctor, which must have satisfied him for the time being. There for a minute I thought they were going to put me on bed rest. Because that would be my luck, right?

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The verdict: I have to go in twice a week for non-stress tests and ultrasounds until a) he decides there's no reason to keep going, or b) I have the baby. What the hell they think that will accomplish is beyond me.

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I'm pretty angry about all of this, because in my heart of hearts I don't think there's anything wrong with my baby, but with all this freaking information flying around I can't help but second guess my gut. I'm mad that Dr. Pineda had trouble finding the heart rate that day back in December, because if he hadn't had that issue we wouldn't be sitting where we are now. I realize that means there's a chance we could be oblivious to a problem until his birth, but I'm wondering if it might be better that way.

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So that's it, in a very long nutshell.

p.s. They said he weighed 2 pounds, 5 ounces today. And he really does have arms, contrary to what a couple of those pictures seem to show. The tech was pushing pretty hard on my belly trying to get him to rotate, and it distorted the picture to where it looks like his arm just stops. In another couple of shots that I didn't scan he has his RIGHT hand in front of his face. Seems he's taking pointers from his big brother already!

River rats

We spent Sunday at Caddo. It was a beautiful day for it. Landry enjoyed her first boat ride, but wasn't happy at all when I put her in Blake's lap to "drive". Conversely, Camden wasn't very happy unless he was driving. It got pretty ridiculous at times. Fortunately, Nana and Chappy joined us so we had two extra sets of hands to tackle him with.
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In the future we'll have to send Blake up the day before to unload all the kiddy paraphernalia and wipe down the outdoor living areas so we can be ready to enjoy ourselves when we get there. It's lots of work trying to get the place tidy enough for kids to wallow around on while they're present - especially with all the tree pollen that's lying around right now.

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Thanks, Alexanders, for letting us enjoy the camp once again!

For your viewing pleasure

Geez! I've been trying to upload new photos to this stupid thing since Tuesday night. I finally figured out that it just was not going to let me upload five photos at a time. I tried and tried and tried, though. Here are a few pictures from the past week or so, uploaded two or three at a time with love.

Christine and Camden are enjoying all sorts of new and fun activities while Landry naps.

These are finger paints, but he doesn't like the paint actually touching his "shingers".

Camden and his beer and popcorn.

Chill out people! It's only water.

Camden and his girls. We had the Millers over and learned that three kids will fit in the Learning Tower without collapsing it.

Landry quickly figured out what t-ball was all about. But it's not so much fun when Camden runs up swinging the bat while she's still holding the ball!

I found Landry in our bedroom laughing her rear off the other day. She and Miller were playing fetch.

My handsome boy!

Teething, maybe?

He hasn't quite figured out where the batter's box is yet.

There is often quite a bit of congestion on the slide.

Pretty blue eyes. (Ignore the snot!)

Smelling the "showers".

And again.

Rubbing Daddy's back.

The birthday party

We had Camden's birthday party today at Gymboree. It was a huge hit. I'm a big fan of trashing somebody else's place and then letting them clean it up! We got home and everyone crashed out in short order. We still haven't opened the gifts and it's about to kill me! Look for pictures of the birthday boy and his gifts soon.

The almost finished product

We bought a play set from a family in our neighborhood, oh, about 8 months ago. It sat on a trailer in the backyard until just a few weeks ago when Nana and Chappy started fixing it up for Camden's birthday. They have done a jam up job getting it ready for the kids to play on. The only thing left to do is to add one more set of swing hooks and for Blake to stain it. We're going to give it a good workout this weekend when the Giovengos and Schoonovers come over to play. Thanks, Nana and Chappy for all your hard work! We all love it!

Camden's 2 year check up

Height: 35 inches (66th percentile)

Weight: 31 pounds (80th percentile)

Head: 19.5 inches (75th percentile)

Dr. Scott was impressed with the five-word sentences Camden was spouting off, and said he should have a vocabulary of 100 understandable words by the age of 3. I think we're probably already there, but I'm not going to do any counting to find out. Health-wise and developmentally he's doing great!

And besides us paying for waking him up prematurely from his nap this evening, today has been MUCH better than yesterday. Thank goodness!

Terrible and Two

Oh my. What a day this has been! I guess we've seen it coming, but Camden decided today of all days to debut his terrible two behavior. There were moments of rationality, but for the most part today was the worst day the little guy has had. He was very testy and would pitch a big, fat fit at the drop of a hat if he didn't get his way. And obviously he didn't get his way much today because he spent a lot of time pitching fits.

Even though he was awful, I guess we'll keep him and try to focus on the good parts:

• Last night, as he sat on the potty, he actually pee-peed a little. In the toilet. Pretty exciting, right? He asked to sit on the potty a couple of times today, but was only interested in toilet paper and flushing. It's progress, I suppose.

• Today he sang the alphabet all the way to the letter P, only missing a couple of letters, and counted to ten like a pro.

• He spent a good while actually paying attention to Christine (our mommy's helper) while she went over colors with him.

• We made birthday cupcakes, and after he threw a fit when the electric mixing part was over we had a glorious time making a mess.

• We had dinner with the Giovengos, which was probably the longest period without a major meltdown. I guess we should at least be proud that he controlled himself in public.

• I had him repeating "Don't be bad" this afternoon, and somehow he turned it into "be be bad" by the end of the day. I guess he knew better than I did how the day would end.
  

In spite of all these things I'm bitching and moaning about, he's still amazingly bright and generally a joy to be around. We love him very much, even when we feel like shaking him!

Camden did not like this at all:

Joshua enjoyed the cupcakes WAY more than anyone else: